Dean of the U.S. House of Representatives John Conyers, Jr. &
2017 Democratic Presidential Candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders
DETROIT – On Tuesday, August 22, 2017 at 7:00 pm, Representative John Conyers, Jr. (MI-13) will host a town hall meeting to discuss jobs, healthcare and building a better future for Michigan’s 13th Congressional District.
Rep. Conyers has invited U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to join in on the discussion. Topics will include healthcare, creating good paying jobs, raising wages and building an economy that gives every American the tools to succeed in the 21st century. This event is open to the public.
Conyers and Sanders also just introduced companion youth jobs bills in the House and Senate to tackle unemployment. According to some estimates, Detroit has one of the highest youth unemployment rates -- 30 percent -- amongst the 25 largest U.S. metro areas.
On Wednesday, May 24th at 9:45AM, Members of Congress held a press conference at the House Triangle to provide a new update on legislation to expand Medicare to a national, single payer system. Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), the sponsor of H.R. 676, The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, will be joined by Members of Congress, along with representatives from Physicians for a National Health Plan and National Nurses United.
In attendance were:
Congressman John Conyers, Jr., Dean of the U.S. House of Representatives
Congressman Keith Ellison, Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chair
Congressman Ro Khanna
Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee
Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman
Congressman Jamie Raskin
Congressman Adriano Espaillat
Congressman Peter Welch
Dr. Philip Verhoef, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics, ICU physician, University of Chicago
Jean Ross, RN., Co-President, National Nurses United
Dean of the U.S. House of Representatives John Conyers, Jr.
I’m as happy as anyone with the way the Republicans’ plan to wreck our healthcare system crashed and burned. And President Donald Trump is right: Republicans lost because Democrats beat them. We beat them because we were organized, we were unified and we were backed by unprecedented grassroots energy. Members of the U.S. Congress hosted dozens of rallies, advocacy organizations hosted hundreds more and constituents showed up in overwhelming numbers at town halls across this country to make their voices heard.
And what exactly was their message? One of the most poignant moments came at a town hall hosted by U.S. Rep. Diane Black, Republican of Tennessee, where a constituent explained her opposition to the GOP bill using faith. As a Christian, she said, her faith was rooted in helping the unfortunate, not cutting taxes on the rich, so why not expand Medicaid and allow everyone to have insurance? And she’s not alone. Last week, a Quinnipiac survey found that voters overwhelmingly oppose cuts to Medicaid -- 74% of them -- including 54% among Republicans.
Given the record high support for publicly funded healthcare, economists, policy experts and commentators everywhere have called on the Democratic party to build on our momentum by supporting a single payer system. But perhaps the most convincing case I heard came from Jessi Bohan, the teacher from Cookeville, Tennessee who spoke at Rep. Black’s town hall.
The week after her question went viral she wrote to the Washington Post that she was troubled to see her comments used as a "defense of Obamacare" instead of what they were: an indictment of any healthcare policy that leaves anyone out. As Bohan so eloquently put it, "it is immoral for health care to be a for-profit enterprise" that allows insurance companies to make "enormous sums of money off the sick while people are struggling to pay their medical bills." If she had it to do over again, she wrote, she would have explained to Black "the Christian case for universal, single-payer health insurance, which would protect all Americans."
While her message was targeted at Republicans, it is one that many of my colleagues in the Democratic Party need to hear as well. For two weeks, I’ve watched Democrats point to theCongressional Budget Office’s analysis of the Paul Ryan bill and express righteous outrage that it would lead to 24 million Americans losing their insurance. But that same CBO score says that 28 million Americans will still be without insurance even under the Affordable Care Act. I’m impressed that the ACA has expanded Medicaid eligibility in states that have adopted it and more than 20 million previously uninsured now have insurance, but universal healthcare it is not.
Time and time again I’ve heard Democrats dodge questions about their support for universal healthcare by saying they’re focused right now on defending the ACA. Now that we have repelled Paul Ryan’s attack and Donald Trump has signaled that Republicans will move on, the time for those excuses has passed.
For years, I’ve also watched as Democrats, including our presidential nominee last year, have avoided putting their name behind single payer by saying they’re focused on politically achievable short-term goals.
Single payer is politically achievable.
Gallup, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and other polling organizations have found that there is majority support for Medicare for All in America today. But more important, elected officials are not supposed to move to the political center, we are supposed to stake out the moral center and convince others to join us there.
November’s election results showed that we can’t just say "the other side is awful," however true that may be, and expect Americans to flock to us. To win again, we must be a party of principles and present bold ideas and a vision for the future.
It is true that single-payer healthcare has been implemented in virtually every other advanced democracy on Earth. It is also true that in those countries, people live longer andhealthcare is dramatically less expensive than it is here. And finally, it is true that Medicare for All is the direction Americans overwhelmingly want us to go. Nevertheless, I want my colleagues to join me in supporting single-payer not to save money or to win elections, but because it is the moral and just thing to do. If, like me, you believe healthcare is a right to everyone and not a privilege to those who can afford it, let’s be organized and let’s be unified in our support for Medicare for All.
The office of the Democratic representative from Michigan tells the New Republic that his Medicare for All bill now has 78 co-sponsors, with today’s addition of Rep. Kathy Castor of Florida.
“I have been introducing the Medicare For All bill every session of Congress since 2003, and I’m the longest serving member of Congress. I have never seen more enthusiasm and energy behind this issue than what I’m seeing today,” Conyers said in a statement. “I will keep introducing this bill as long as it takes because access to health care—not just health insurance, but quality, affordable care—is a universal right, not a privilege for those who can afford it.”
Conyers has introduced the bill yearly in the House since 2003, to varying degrees of support from fellow Democrats. Seventy-eight co-sponsors is the most it’s had since 2009, and though it’s DOA in a Republican-controlled government, its renewed popularity is a source of optimism for single-payer backers on the Hill. It comes at an auspicious time, as Democrats move from their tentative victory in keeping Obamacare alive to a new health care reform message for 2018 and beyond.
A congressional aide with knowledge of the situation tells the New Republic that single-payer is “a winning message.”
“The will is there at the grassroots. The will is there among progressives which are the Democratic base. The will is there among the constituents of more moderate and centrist Democrats,” he said.
“It’s just a question of if the party wants to decide to do something smart for a change.”
He added, “I hope that the [Democratic] caucus decides to make it a campaign issue because I think it would work a lot better than some of the things we’ve been trying.”
Washington, DC - Today, Congressman John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) reintroduced H.R. 676, “The Expanded And Improved Medicare For All Act.” This bill would establish a privately-delivered, publicly-financed universal health care system, where patients, their physicians, and non-profit health care providers would be in charge of medical decisions -- not insurance companies. H.R. 676 would expand and improve the highly popular Medicare program and provide universal access to care to all Americans. The program would be primarily funded by a modest payroll tax on employers and employees, a financial transaction tax, and higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans.
Congressman Conyers issued the following statement on the reintroduction of the bill:
Dean of the U.S. House of Representatives John Conyers, Jr.
“It’s my pleasure to once again reintroduce H.R. 676, ‘The Expanded And Improved Medicare For All Act,’ in the 115th Congress. I have introduced the bill in each Congress since 2003 and I will continue to do so until the bill is passed.
“Passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was a step in the right direction. It has provided health insurance to millions of our nation’s uninsured and eliminated many of the worst practices of the private health insurance industry. Rather than repealing it and taking a step back, we should build on that progress by expanding Medicare to All.
“The data is clear that simply expanding Medicare to all Americans to create a single-payer system would be far more efficient. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the U.S. spends more than 17% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on healthcare, while countries with single-payer systems like France, Germany, Canada, the UK, and Australia spend 9-11% of GDP. In addition to paying a fraction of what we do for healthcare, those countries enjoy better outcomes and higher satisfaction than in the United States.
“Single-payer isn’t just the moral thing to do or a good government issue, it’s what Americans want. Many leading health care practitioners and experts share my belief and that of most Americans that establishing a non-profit universal health care system would be the best way to effectively contain health care costs and provide quality care for all Americans. I look forward to my colleagues joining me in supporting a universal, single-payer health care system.”
H.R.676 has been introduced in Congress since 2003, and has a broad base of support among universal health care activists, organized labor, physicians, nurses, and social justice organizations across the nation. The bill has been endorsed by 20 international unions, Physicians For A National Health Program, two former editors of the New England Journal of Medicine, National Nurses United, the American Medical Students Association, Progressive Democrats of America, Public Citizen, and the NAACP. Last year, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll found 67 percent of Americans support “Medicare for All.”
