{"id":35316,"date":"2024-08-03T19:55:42","date_gmt":"2024-08-04T02:55:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=35316"},"modified":"2024-08-03T19:55:43","modified_gmt":"2024-08-04T02:55:43","slug":"how-harris-left-medicare-for-all-behind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2024\/08\/03\/how-harris-left-medicare-for-all-behind\/","title":{"rendered":"How Harris Left Medicare For All Behind"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Amos Barshad<\/em> (August 2, 2024)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>AP Photo\/Reed Saxon<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a chilly Monday night in January 2019, Kamala Harris was in Des Moines, Iowa for a CNN town hall. At the time, Harris was the junior senator from California and one of nearly 30 candidates vying to be the Democrats\u2019 2020 presidential nominee. A few minutes into the event, a self-employed local resident named Renee Welk asked<\/u><\/a> a pertinent, inevitable question: \u201cWhat is your solution to ensure that people have access to quality health care at an affordable price?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without hesitation, Harris answered<\/u><\/a>, \u201cWe need to have Medicare For All.\u201d Then, as the applause rang out, she riffed beautifully. \u201cTo live in a civil society, to be true to the ideals and the spirit of who we say we are as a country,\u201d Harris said, \u201cwe have to appreciate and understand that access to health care\u201d is not a \u201cprivilege\u201d but a \u201cright.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is inhumane,\u201d she continued, \u201cto make people go through a system where they cannot literally receive the benefit of what medical science can offer because some insurance company has decided it doesn’t meet their bottom line in terms of their profit motivation. That is inhumane<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This wasn\u2019t Harris\u2019s first time publicly backing universal government-sponsored health care: In 2017, she was one of the first co-sponsors<\/u><\/a> of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) sweeping Medicare For All bill<\/u><\/a>. But never before Des Moines had Harris spoken about the issue so forcefully, so passionately, and under such a bright spotlight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When CNN\u2019s moderator Jake Tapper pushed her on whether that meant she would \u201celiminate private insurance,\u201d Harris seemingly stayed resolute. She described the painful process of filing an insurance claim, of dealing with all of the required paperwork, of facing delays in coverage, and then said: \u201cLet’s eliminate all of that. Let’s move on.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Amos Barshad (August 2, 2024) AP Photo\/Reed Saxon On a chilly Monday night in January 2019, Kamala Harris was in Des Moines, Iowa for a CNN town hall. At the time, Harris was the junior senator from California and one of nearly 30 candidates vying to be the Democrats\u2019… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35316"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35316"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35319,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35316\/revisions\/35319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}