Tag Archives: John Conyers

Would Medicare For All cause millions of people to lose their jobs?

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And would those lost jobs disproportionately affect women? Even worse, low-income women? From Bernie’s Sept. 13, 2017, editorial in the New York Times titled, ‘Why We Need Medicare For All’: The reason that our health care system is so outrageously expensive is that it is not designed to provide quality care to all in a cost-effective way, but to provide huge profits to the medical-industrial complex. Layers of bureaucracy associated with the administration of hundreds of individual and complicated insurance plans is stunningly wasteful, costing us hundreds of billions of dollars a year. As the only major country not to … Continue reading →

Maxine Waters, Bobby Scott, Elijah Cummings, Barbara Lee and Jim Clyburn support Medicare for All.

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“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhuman.” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Chicago, March 25, 1966 — Medical Committee for Human Rights) Rep. Barbara Lee (CA-13), Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (VA-3) and Rep. Elijah Cummings (MD-7) were all among the original co-sponsors of HR-676 when Conyers first introduced the bill in February 2003. Rep. Maxine Waters (CA-43) joined them in December 2005. Rep. Jim Clyburn (SC-6) signed up as a co-sponsor in April 2008. All five are members of the Congressional Black Caucus. The CBC provides core support for HR-676, 38 out of 47 … Continue reading →

Progressive Lion: John Conyers Jr. (MI-13)

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John Conyers Jr. is Dean of the House of Representatives, he was first elected to Congress in 1965.He is currently in his 26th term, and is one of only seven people to have served over 50 years in Congress. Conyers was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus. Rosa Parks served on his staff for over twenty years and he visited Selma to meet with Freedom Riders multiple times in the 1960s. In many ways, his longevity makes him a living link to our past. Four days after MLK was assassinated, Conyers introduced a bill in Congress to make his birthday a … Continue reading →

If we want single payer healthcare, progressives have to pressure the Democratic leadership

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Meet the Press had Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) on today to talk Health-Care. Cassidy made headlines in May for insisting any healthcare plan meet “the Jimmy Kimmel test”. Cassidy supposedly agrees that healthcare is a right. The devil though, is in the details, and when he began talking about letting state legislatures and governors determine what was “affordable”, I realized it’s just a talking point for him, to appear “bipartisan”. Block grants, or state administered programs allow Republicans to play the game they’ve been playing for several decades. Attacks on progressive programs generally fail under the bright lights of Congress, so they … Continue reading →

Warren says Democrats should campaign on Single-Payer healthcare.

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Elizabeth Warren has been on a campaign footing to push back against Republican efforts to bestow enormous tax breaks on millionaires and billionaires by decimating health-care coverage for ordinary Americans. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is traveling to Trump-friendly areas of her state hoping to connect with his backers and provide a road map for her party to win back working-class voters. […] Democrats, she said, would do better if they campaigned on that progressive platform rather than blurring the lines between themselves and Republicans. — WSJ Warren highlighted the lengths to which President Obama and Democrats had gone in 2009-2010 to garner Republican support … Continue reading →

HR-676: Medicare for All has 100 co-sponsors. Over 51% of Democratic House Caucus now supports it.

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H.R. 676 now has 100 co-sponsors, the most it has ever seen. Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA) was the 100th co-sponsor, he signed on yesterday: John Conyers (D-MI) has sponsored the Medicare for All bill since 2003. Here he is explaining why: The current tally of 100 co-sponsors is the most this bill has ever had during Conyers’ relentless effort over 15 years to get it passed. The past high was in the 110th Congress, when the bill had 93 co-sponsors. The Democratic caucus was 233 members then, which meant less than 40% of Democrats supported Medicare For All. Today, we are over … Continue reading →