How might collective bargaining change if health care wasn't tethered to work? Democratic presidential candidates aren’t in agreement over how to solve the current health care crisis, where 1 in 2 sick Americans cannot afford health care.
On February 26, with a pro-corporate majority Supreme Court, a single case threatens to unravel the protections public sector nurses have fought so hard to secure for their patients over the years. “Janus v. AFSCME” is intended to weaken public sector unions by encouraging employees in unionized public sector workplaces to refuse to pay dues — while they enjoy the rights and benefits of a union contract and representation.
Puerto Rico has been hit by a triple disaster - Hurricane Maria; outrageous debt owed to vulture hedge funds; racist, colonial indifference by the Trump Administration. Puerto Ricans - on the island, and in the U.S. have called for the lifting of the Jones Act, as it applies to Puerto Rico; canceling the debt; and abolishing PROMESA. Yesterday a solidarity flight of medical and emergency organized by AFL-CIO unions brought needed supplies and aid workers to the island.
Ironically, healthcare reform efforts have sought to "improve and expand" every element of the present system, except the program that works best: Medicare. The Clintons tried to expand HMOs, Obama expanded private health insurance and Medicaid, the GOP tried to expand "individual purchase. Medicare—if improved and expanded to all—could confront the industry, contain prices and restore the values of caring and community to our healthcare system.
Bernie is building an infrastructure that will help encourage the growth of the political revolution. This will include a Sanders Institute to elevate issues and ideas, and two organization to recruit 100 candidates running for offices from Congress to school boards, as well as to help them campaign.
Platforms are,a statement of the accepted beliefs of the party assembled. For citizen movements, they are a measure of their progress in defining acceptable opinion. And ideas matter. A commitment to ending segregation or guaranteeing the right to vote. Equal rights for women. No first use of nuclear weapons. The DNC prevented Sanders from picking nurses leader RoseAnn DeMoro - the DNC had not wanted labor leaders on the platform drafting committee.
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