Demand the DC City Council Support Medicare for All!

Sign the petition below to tell DC City Councilmembers to acknowledge healthcare as a right by passing the proposed single-payer resolution in support of national healthcare reform legislation that would expand and improve Medicare to cover everyone in the United States.

The system is sick.  Under our current system, healthcare is not a right but a privilege enjoyed by those who can afford it.  We spend more on healthcare than any other industrialized country but still have over 46 million people who are uninsured.  People of color and the poor are more likely to be uninsured, creating health disparities in many cities across the country, including Washington DC.  Nearly 45,000 people in the United States die annually because they lack access to health insurance.   

The healthcare crisis not only affects the uninsured but also those with access to some insurance.  The rising costs of healthcare in the US have caused a 60% increase in the underinsured from 2003 to 2007, pushing the number of underinsured to over 25 million in 2007.  Debt from skyrocketing out-of-pocket costs also contributed to two-thirds of all bankruptcies in the US in 2007.

The reason for this is the dominance of the for-profit insurance industry.  By making healthcare a commodity, insurance companies have made massive profits by driving up costs and have a more powerful voice in the system than patients or healthcare providers. 

The solution is simple.  Expand Medicare to cover everyone in the United States.  This approach to healthcare delivery is the basis for single-payer legislation currently before the US House of Representatives and Senate.  Single-payer would create a national health insurance system, similar to the system in Canada, that would cover all medically necessary services.  It would also generate hundreds of billions in savings, enough to cover the uninsured and underinsured, by eliminating the bloated administrative and marketing overheads of the insurance industry.

As DC residents, you can make a difference.  A campaign to get the DC City Council to pass a resolution in support of national single-payer, Medicare for all legislation, initiated by the Coalition of the Uninsured and Underinsured for Single-Payer (CUUSP), has recently been launched.  The US Conference of Mayors and over fifty state, county and city councils have passed similar resolutions in support of such legislation.  Sign the petition to demand the DC City Council add its voice to the growing movement for a single-payer, Medicare for All system. 

To join the movement for single-payer in DC, email medicare4allnow@gmail.com

Photos by Adam Wright/Union City and Mario Tama/Getty Images North America