Do You Want Single-Payer Healthcare?
I do. Do you know what the secret to getting it will be? I know that, as well.
It has little to do with which Democrat becomes President, although it does require that some Democrat be in the White House. What it has to do with is Congress. It has to do with every member of the House of Representatives and the Senate. It has to do with who they are, and what party they represent.
The deal is that single-payer healthcare is something that will have to be passed by Congress. No President can enact it. The reality is that only a Congress with Democratic super-majorities in both houses will ever pass legislation establishing single-payer healthcare, whether it's Medicare for All or some other system.
So, everyone here who lives in the United States and is a citizen of this country has exactly one member of the House of Representatives and two Senators representing them in Congress. That's it. Those people are the ones who will be responsible for getting single-payer healthcare enacted.
How do your three think about single-payer? Do you know? What party do they represent? If they don't want single-payer or they're Republicans, there's work to do that will help single-payer happen. Each of us needs to work as hard as we possibly can to get people elected to the House and Senate who will support single-payer.
If we can get a two-thirds Democratic majority of both congressional bodies, we can have single-payer healthcare. Any sitting Democrat as President will sign such a bill. That's the secret.
Impossible? No, not really. It's impossible in 2016. It's probably impossible in 2020. But, in each of those years, we can make progress toward that goal if we commit ourselves to doing that. There will be another census in 2020. In the two years after that, there will be redistricting for congressional districts. The same hard work will help your state have a Democratic state legislature which will fight the gerrymandering the Republicans have done in the past.
Hard work? You bet it will be hard work. It will require getting the high turnouts Democrats usually provide in presidential election years, but in every election. Can we do it? Of course we can, but we'll have to work together, not fight each other. Will we do it? History says we won't. We can remake history, though.
Let's do this. Let's make it our goal for 2024 to have those two-thirds majorities in both houses of Congress.
What do you say? Are you in?
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