Jonathan Michels is an independent journalist and heath care worker based in Atlanta, Georgia.
Of the 32 US states that forcibly sterilized people in the 20th century under the influence of eugenics, only three have taken accountability by compensating survivors. A group of researchers is trying to make Utah the next.
The South has long been the Achilles heel of the American labor movement. The United Auto Workers are trying to make inroads — including with a heated contract fight between workers and bosses at the multinational corporation Daimler Truck North America.
United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain has called on unions to come together for a national strike in 2028. This is a radical idea — and elevating Medicare for All as a central demand would give workers across sectors a reason to join in.
Doctors’ unions are rare in the US, and unions comprised of both physicians and other medical providers are even rarer. But in North Carolina, a group of medical providers has successfully organized an interprofessional union.
The National Health Service Corps has been placing primary care providers in working-class communities since 1972, though few have heard of it. We need to not only scale up the program but consider it a model for a health care system that puts people over profit.
A Medicare for All system would benefit almost everyone in America — except health care profiteers. The only way to overcome their opposition is to build a mass movement that’s large enough and powerful enough to defeat them.
The fight for Medicare for All is one of the most important in the United States today. And despite the many horrors of 2020, the movement demanding an end to our privatized health system actually made some headway this year.
For decades, the American Medical Association has fought single-payer tooth and nail. But the US’s corporatized health system hurts doctors too — and cracks are forming in the AMA’s opposition to Medicare for All.