Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to support Medicare-for-All health insurance. The news hook, of course, is the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus, and you may have heard about the fellow in Miami who got slammed with a surprise $3,000-plus medical bill after getting tested to ensure he didn't have it. Since Medicare-for-All would cover everyone, and since even right-wing think tanks say it'll cost substantially less than our current health insurance system, I feel pretty confident in saying that surprise medical bills would be a thing of the past under Medicare-for-All. We live in a nation where we can watch pretty much any TV show we like pretty much any time we like but almost half of us still can't afford even a $400 emergency; I put that first part in there to give today's more libertarian-minded observers some pause. I'm sure in the '40s they were arguing that no social justice movements were necessary because every house has a refrigerator now! But that doesn't help folks who are six feet under because they couldn't pay for health care.
Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your House Reps to pass H.R. 2694, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, then the National Women's Law Center still helps you do that. Some folks no doubt wonder why discriminating against pregnant workers isn't already illegal, but actually, it is already illegal -- and when you make something illegal, you then have to deal with all the ways big corporations try to get around the law in order to punish workers for getting pregnant. It's sad, but it's true -- as Noam Chomsky said long ago, the corporation is fundamentally anti-family, because caring for families not only doesn't help a corporation make money, it makes the worker "less reliable" as a cog in the corporate machine, since, you know, family members get sick and need to be cared for. So when you're up against corporations, you don't just need laws telling them they can't discriminate; you need laws telling them they can't discriminate in all the ways they've gotten away with since they were told they can't discriminate. But this is our duty.
Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2214/S. 1123, the NO BAN Act, then Daily Kos still helps you do that. Our President issued his Muslim travel ban over three years ago, has lately added six more countries to his ban, and has even mooted using the coronavirus to extend that ban to even more countries -- though even our Supreme Court, which blessed his Muslim ban without evaluating his own statements that he aimed to discriminate against Muslims, might not bless that last extension. See? Give an Executive an inch and he takes a mile! I guess his votaries would squeal NO TERRURIZTZ ATTACKZ SINCEZ TEH GREATESTZ PRESNITZ EVAHZ TOOKZ OFFICEZ!!!!!, but then these are the same folks who blindly supported the Republican President who did allow a major terrorist attack on American soil. And anyway, denying people entry into this country because they're Muslims is profoundly un-American. I try not to use that word "un-American," but some folks leave me no choice.
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