During the last year there have been endless back-room negotiations within the Senate Democratic Caucus on Build Back Better, President Biden’s enormously popular legislation which addresses the long-neglected needs of America’s working families. But, amazingly, there have been no votes. The result: the Republican Party is able to escape responsibility for their reactionary positions and is now laughing all the way to likely political success in the 2022 elections.

Here’s a radical idea for the Senate, “the world’s greatest deliberative body.” Let’s vote. Let’s have every Republican and Democrat take a position on some of the most important issues facing the working families of this country. Let’s vote on whether, at a time of massive income and wealth inequality, the wealthiest people in our society should start paying their fair share of taxes so that we can improve life for the average American.

Eighty-three percent of the American people support empowering the federal government to negotiate with the pharmaceutical industry to lower prescription drug prices.

What do the Republicans think? Are they prepared to stand up to the greed of the pharmaceutical industry which charges us the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs? Will Republicans vote to have Medicare negotiate prescription drug prices in the same way that the VA does, which would lower the cost of prescription drugs by 50 percent.

https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/591544-its-time-for-the-senate-to-vote-americans-have-a-right-to-know

SACRAMENTO — California would enact a sweeping, first-in-the-nation universal healthcare plan under a proposal unveiled Thursday by a group of state Democratic lawmakers, providing health services to every resident and financed by a broad array of new taxes on individuals and businesses.

Though some of the policy details of the ambitious plan were laid out last year, the way to fund it had not been determined. The proposal, now laid out in separate pieces of legislation, faces significant hurdles in the coming months — first at the state Capitol, with opposition from groups representing doctors and insurance companies, and then possibly at the ballot box, as voters would have to approve the taxes in an amendment to the California Constitution.

“There are countless studies that tell us a single-payer healthcare system is the fiscally sound thing to do, the smarter healthcare policy to follow, and a moral imperative if we care about human life,” Assemblyman Ash Kalra (D-San Jose), the proposal’s author, said Thursday.

Efforts to create a single-payer healthcare system, in which medical expenses for all residents are covered by a government-run fund, have been widely discussed in California for years. Supporters say the cost of providing care to the state’s residents would go down without the administrative expenses of private insurance plans.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-01-06/democrats-propose-california-universal-healthcare-funded-by-new-income-and-business-taxes