Everybody In.
Nobody Out.
We are fighting for a national single-payer healthcare system because access to healthcare is basic to human dignity
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The Podcast for Everyone Who Needs Healthcare! (opens in new tab)
Check out our podcast for stories from the front lines of our broken healthcare system!
Our hosts Gillian Mason and Benjamin Day offer up the latest in healthcare news, politics, activism, and pop culture with a dose of humor and shade. We feature true stories from the dystopian capitalist hellscape that is US healthcare and honest conversations with the people who are fighting to change it!
The Medicare for All Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube Music, and most major podcast platforms.
Find past episodes and more info on how to subscribe here.
Recent Episodes
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Return to Oz
For this episode, we’re going back to a familiar villain from podcast-past because unfortunately, healthcare villains have a habit of staying relevant. This is a guy who made his fame by cozying up to Oprah while schilling diet pills, supplements, and medical conspiracy theories – it’s Doctor Oz, who is now Trump’s nominee for Director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. That’s right, the man who has previously claimed that there are deadly…
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20 Years of Healthcare NOW!
Listeners, what were you doing in 2004? Perhaps you were strolling down the street in low rise jeans, Uggs, and a Livestrong bracelet listening to Outkast’s “Hey Ya!” Or maybe you were sitting in a movie theater ready to have your mind blown by Ashton Kutcher’s tour de force performance in The Butterfly Effect. Well, the folks joining us on this week’s episode of our podcast may have missed some of that stuff because they…
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MAHA: Getting to Know RFK Jr.
Well, the voters have spoken, and despite all of our recommendations to the contrary, they seem to have voted for Trump. Yeah, we’re pretty sad/scared/pissed off/trying to cope by dissociating and stress eating as well. Regardless, once again, it’s Trump’s America and we’re just living (or dying) in it. We know from experience that a Trump presidency is bad for our health, but now he has a surprising new ally in making our lives shorter…
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Medicaid Privatization Smackdown in Connecticut!
We spend a lot of time griping about the insidious power of corporate health insurance in our healthcare system here. But you would expect that taxpayer funded public programs for our most vulnerable friends and neighbors are free from profiteering right? Sadly, no. Medicaid – the public program that serves the lowest income Americans, plus some people with disabilities, and a lot of the country’s long-term care – has been extensively privatized in most states.…
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Boo and Vote Local!
In case you’ve been asleep or under a rock for the past six months, we need to let you know two things: First, Kendrick won his beef with Drake, and second, there is a presidential election coming up. Like any presidential election year, everyone’s so focused on the big showdown at the top of the ticket, but that means that a lot of the local and state races, congressional races, and referenda that will make…
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Medical Debt in the I.O.U.SA
The United States is unique among industrialized nations. Lucky for us, we can accumulate medical debt! Most industrialized and some developing nations have national healthcare programs that guarantee care to their residents. But we in the richest nation in the world have the freedom to get insurance through the free market, and go into debt when it doesn’t cover the care we need! USA USA USA! According to the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), while over…
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Episode 102: Committable
Usually on the Medicare for All Podcast, we talk about people who want healthcare but can’t get it, but today we’re talking about people getting healthcare they have specifically refused: folks who have been involuntarily committed. For plenty of our listeners, the idea of being held against your will at a psychiatric institution feels like a nightmare from another time – something out of gothic fiction or horror movies set far in the past. But…
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Project 2025 Will Kill Us All
If there’s one thing everyone is talking about these days, it’s JD Vance’s affinity for couches. But if there are two things everyone is talking about, it’s Vance’s couches and Project 2025. You may be wondering, what is this mysterious project, and what does it have to do with me? Well, it turns out, a lot! Project 2025 is the right-wing map to a terrifying future, and if its proponents have their way, the future…
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“Hot Virus Summer”: The Next Pandemic
It’s our 100th episode folks, and we are celebrating the only way we know how – by sharing our predictions of the grim, apocalyptic future that surely awaits us if we fail to get our healthcare system together! That’s right, we’re talking about the next pandemic, and if experts are right, it’s coming sooner than we think. In addition to several somewhat less familiar pathogens on the rise this summer, COVID is back, and this…
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The View from Capitol Hill: A Very Special Conference Episode
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! For activists in the movement to make Medicare for All a reality, this is the week when we gather to plot, scheme, and kvetch. Welcome to the 2024 Annual Medicare for All Strategy Conference, “Healthcare Beyond the Ballot Box,” organized by Healthcare NOW! For those of you who are attending the conference right now, you are getting a sneak preview of our Very Special Conference Episode! Since…
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Dude, Where’s My Union Health Plan?
We are in the middle of a resurgence of organized labor in the US. From Amazon workers to auto workers and grad students to baristas at Starbucks, everyone is getting in on the action! One of the big reasons workers are so hot to get that union card is because of… you guessed it, healthcare! Today we’re going to be talking union healthcare plans – how they work and how workers have managed to use…
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Mental Health & For-Profit Insurance: A Deadly Combo
The U.S. is wrestling with a massive mental health crisis – impacting young people in particular. Half of young adults and one-third of all adults report that they always feel anxious or have often felt anxiety in the past year. One-third of respondents could not get the mental health services they needed. Why? 80% say they couldn’t afford the cost and more than 60% said that shame and stigma kept them away. The shortage of…
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Cyberattacks, Messaging Wars, and the Capitalist Hellscape
We hear it over and over again – the private sector just does it better. Whether we’re talking education or healthcare or our criminal justice system, the default Republican (and sometimes Democratic) talking point is that competition in the marketplace allows the best ideas and best people (Elon Musk, lookin at you) to rise to the top and lead us to a utopian future (sponsored by Meta). But then something wild happens like the cyberattack…
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The Battle of the Letters: Medicare Advantage
Occasional fistfights aside, most of our legislators make the choice to use their words when they’re angry, and a lot of those words go into public letters they write to presidents, officials, and even each other. Despite the fact that no one else in this country has written or read a letter in decades, the public comment letter is still popular with politicians, who have elevated this obscure literary genre to a competitive sport, using…
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Hospital Merger Mania!
Here at the Medicare for All Podcast, we love calling out all the bad actors in our healthcare system – greedy insurance companies, soul-less CEOs in Big Pharma,profit-hungry “non-profit hospitals”, and all our favorite villains. Mostly, we look at the ways those predators target sick people and poor people for exploitation, but today we’re looking at what happens when they start fighting each other for a bigger piece of the pie? Specifically, we’re going to…
Calling All Small Business Owners!
We are working with Senator Ed Markey, ranking member of the US Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, and Representative Pramila Jayapal, lead sponsor of the federal Medciare for All Act, to get a sense from small business owners about the impact that healthcare costs are having on small business. We want to hear how you are coping with trying to sustain your livelihood and your workforce at a moment when the price of providing insurance is rising quicker than most folks can keep up. Our elected officials need to know how the affordability crisis is hurting our local economies, so your voice is critical!
335+ Progressive Organizations Demand Medicare for All!
We've had enough of this country's predatory for-profit healthcare system -- and we're not alone. 335+ organizations from across the US have signed on to the letter we cowrote with our partners in the National Coalition for Medicare for All demanding that our elected officials stop dragging their feet and commit to passing Medicare for All! From national organizations like Indivisible and MoveOn to prominant labor unions like UAW, UE, Actor's Equity, and so many more, these groups represent millions Americans who are ready to fight for real healthcare justice!
When It Comes to Healthcare, We Won't Give Up the Fight!
This is our moment. Healthcare is under attack from all sides, but Americans are more excited than ever about real change in our healthcare system. So here at Healthcare NOW, we're gearing up for a summer of action to demand Medicare for All!
There will be vigils, rallies, delegations, trainings, a huge celebration for Medicare's birthday in July, and even some actions that take less than five minutes! No matter who you are and where you are, there's a way to plug in.
We'll be updating our No Surrender Summer page with more opportunities to join in as they come up!
Struggling to Afford Healthcare?
You Need Medicare for All!
More than ever, folks across the country are struggling to pay for medicine and doctors' visits, while insurance companies get richer by denying us the treatments we need. It's way past time for a change!
The Medicare for All Act, reintroduced in the House of Representatives this session by Rep. Pramila Jayapal and in the Senate by Sen. Bernie Sanders, would mean that all of us -- regardless of income or zip code -- would have access to comprehensive healthcare.
The majority of American voters now support Medicare for All, but Congress hasn't caught up yet. That's why we need to take action.
Want to get involved? You can learn more and contact your legislators to ask them to sign on as cosponsors here!
Our Stories Are Our Power!
Voices of U.S. Healthcare captures the voices of people who have been impacted by our healthcare system - people whose everyday reality has been ignored and silenced for too many years. Healthcare "horror stories" pop up on the news as interest pieces, but inaccessible care, skipped medications, medical debt, and worse have become everyday experiences of the American landscape.
The Voices of U.S. Healthcare database contains stories from across the country that demonstrate the human cost of our for-profit system. You can browse them by state, the medical conditions our storytellers are dealing with, the insurance companies they're fighting, and more.
If you have a healthcare story, we want to hear it! You can write your story down or upload a video, include your name and a photo or remain anonymous, and help us to document just how desperately we need real change!
Join Our Rapid Response Team!
Right now in the U.S., our access to healthcare is under continuous attacks from all sides!
The current administration is aggressively pursuing an extreme, dangerous healthcare agenda: making deep cuts to Medicaid; privatizing Medicare and the VA; denying care to immigrants; and limiting our ability to seek reproductive care, gender-affirming care, and even vaccines. Thes are huge fights, and the stakes are high, but we can't afford to lose.
Join the Healthcare Emergency Action Team to receive email and/or text alerts at critical moments when you can take quick direct action to defend our healthcare!
Sign Up for Updates!
Signing up for Healthcare-NOW's updates is the best way to learn about organizing victories, opportunities to take action, and the latest developments in the movement to win Medicare for All. Your information will never be shared with or sold to any other organization. Your information is private and we plan on keeping it that way!
Find your local group!
Find your local group!
Healthcare NOW is a Proud Member of the National Coalition for Medicare for All!
The coalition includes grassroots organizations, unions, and policy experts -- all united to win Medicare for All! We strategize and take action together to strengthen and grow the movement for healthcare justice, bring new groups into the fight, and build the political power we need to take on Big Healthcare and get profit out of our healthcare system!