Happy Monday! It's time once again to call your Senators again and ask them to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act; H.R. 3, the Lower Drug Costs Now Act; H.R. 4, the Voting Rights Advancement Act; H.R. 5, the Equality Act; H.R. 6, the American Dream and Promise Act; H.R. 7, the Paycheck Fairness Act; H.R. 397, the Butch Lewis Act; H.R. 535, the PFAS Action Act; H.R. 582, the Raise the Wage Act; H.R. 986, the Protecting Americans with Pre-Existing Conditions Act; H.R. 1146, the Arctic Cultural and Coastal Plain Protection Act; H.R. 1373, the Grand Canyon Centennial Act; H.R. 1644, the Save the Internet Act; H.R. 2474, the PRO Act; H.R. 2513, the Corporate Transparency Act; H.R. 2722, the SAFE Act; H.R. 5035, the Television Viewer Protection Act; and H.J. Res. 79, which would remove the expiration date from the original Equal Rights Amendment. The House has passed a lot of good legislation that would protect voting rights, internet freedom, consumer safety, and working family wages (among many other things!), and the fact that Senate Republicans hate all of that should be immaterial. But it'll only be immaterial if we act.
Meanwhile, if this pandemic has taught us anything, it's taught us that our health care system -- which covers fewer people while still spending more money than just about any other developed nation -- needs an overhaul, and in poll after poll after poll most Americans support overhauling it by expanding Medicare to include all Americans. Now the haters love to tell you that this support falls after folks "realize they'll have to pay more in taxes for it," but that's rubbish from supposition to conclusion, since even right-wing think tanks tell us we'll save money under a Medicare-for-All system, and Sen. Warren's plan for funding Medicare-for-All would literally capture all that money we're currently spending on health care and use it to fund Medicare. And get more bang for our buck, frankly! Hence Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass Medicare-for-All legislation. After all, if unemployment goes up to 30%, and most folks get their health insurance through their employer, well, you can see the problem, I trust.
Finally, speaking of that problem, we can, in the short term, reopen Affordable Care Act enrollment to handle all the applications we're going to get anyway, but of course our President has already said he's not doing no way no how, since TEH OBAMACAREZ MUSTZ BE DESTROYEDZ AT ANYZ OF TEH COSTZ!!!!!! I'm pretty sure I have described the level of reasoning behind his decision fairly precisely. 17 million unemployment claims in three weeks is a literally unprecedented event, and that means up to 17 million more uninsured. Yes, the law already allows you to apply for health insurance via the ACA exchanges outside the regular enrollment window if you lose your job, but maybe our government would do better to have a Special Enrollment period, given the sheer number of applications they're about to get? Unless, of course, this Administration wants to fuck everything up. Even if they do, their "will" matter less than ours, and duty is duty, so Daily Kos helps you tell our government to reopen ACA enrollment to handle the coming onslaught of applications.
Comments