News

‘Medicare-For-All’ Gets Buzzy In Unexpected Locales

Published

7 years ago

March 15, 2019

Shefali Luthra, Kaiser Health News

It was a sleepy South Carolina Saturday in mid-February. But Virginia Sanders was speaking, and the audience was rapt.

“One might not have the power. But a thousand has the power,” she said. “Don’t let anybody fool you that you don’t.”

Sanders, 76, has been an organizer and activist all her life. She marched in the civil rights movement. She protested against the Vietnam War. During the 2016 primary, friends recall, this petite Black woman marched up to men in Ku Klux Klan robes to distribute flyers about then-candidate Bernie Sanders — no relation. (They took the papers, she said.)

Now, she is focused on a different battle, one that has captured liberals’ imagination across the country: “Medicare-for-all.”

Outside Washington, Sanders is among the ranks of activists readying for a fight, even in states where, backers acknowledge, this approach often isn’t considered mainstream.

Organizers working with National Nurses United, the largest union and professional association for registered nurses in the U.S., have launched a grassroots campaign, championing a sweeping Medicare-for-all bill introduced in Congress late last month by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.).

In states including Texas, Arizona, Louisiana, Idaho and Missouri, a series of events have been held to harness energy on the ground and to showcase enthusiasm — even in unlikely places — for the Medicare-for-all idea.

And that enthusiasm is sizable.

Sanders was speaking at what activists call a “barnstorm.” The event was meant to turn the roughly three dozen people in this gray hotel conference room into foot soldiers in what’s at best a sharply uphill health care fight.

Winning Medicare-for-all wouldn’t be easy, Sanders told her audience of would-be activists, but she is still a believer.

“When I say South Carolina is a red state, it’s a blood-red state,” Sanders said after the event. “[But] if we can just educate people who live at or below the poverty level to vote with their best interest, we can change South Carolina.”

The battle over health care reform is playing out in heated rhetoric on the national stage. Polling shows the concept has general support. But that backing wanes if respondents are told about potential consequences, such as eliminating private insurance or raising taxes.

Democrats seeking the party’s 2020 presidential nomination are for the most part adopting the Medicare-for-all slogan head-on, though often hedging on specifics. Health industry interests are lining up in opposition. And Republicans decry it as “socialized medicine.”

At this barnstorm in South Carolina’s capital, about 36 people showed up to munch sandwiches and potato chips at what was effectively a two-hour organizing lesson in an off-election year — and on the same day as a visit here from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat running for president.

In Columbia, S.C., local activists meet to brainstorm advocacy strategies for “Medicare-for-all,” a slogan that has captured the imagination of liberals nationwide.

The following afternoon, in Fayetteville, W.Va., about 30 came to a similar event, this one hosted above a local sandwich shop and bar. Activists sipped beers, swapped health care stories and planned phone banks and canvassing events to spread the word.

It’s an unusual kind of energy around a policy that, before 2016, had been relegated to a progressive pipe dream.

“There is an incredible amount of activism among liberal communities, which also exist in conservative states,” said Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy and political analysis at Harvard University. That activism, he added, could shape the Democratic primary and, by proxy, the 2020 presidential contest.

The coalition pushing Medicare-for-all is widening — with what started as a signature proposal for Sen. Sanders’ presidential campaign taking on broader appeal.In Fayetteville, local Democrats who had fiercely supported Sanders or Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primary came together to learn about Medicare-for-all, said Chris Pennington, a 36-year-old substitute teacher and Bernie Sanders delegate in 2016.

Columbia’s event certainly drew a familiar crew, said Lucero Mesa, 61, who organized it and co-chairs the local chapter of Our Revolution, a political action group with ties to Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign. But then her eyes widened as more attendees filed in: “I’m starting to see faces I don’t recognize!”

Chad Pennington served as a Bernie Sanders delegate in the 2016 Democratic primary. But in his town of Fayetteville, he says, enthusiasm for “Medicare-for-all” isn’t a partisan issue.

On a national level, Medicare-for-all earns ire from Republican lawmakers. But “it’s not a partisan issue” in a place like West Virginia, Pennington said. Indeed, polling from the Kaiser Family Foundation suggests that as many as a third of Republicans support the idea.

Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the foundation.

Shefali Luthra, Kaiser Health News

Posts by Shefali Luthra, Kaiser Health News

Up Next

Trade War Cost $7.8 Billion, New Paper Finds

Don't Miss

Rep. Bennie Thompson Wins Efforts to Make Medgar Evers Home National Monument

Shefali Luthra, Kaiser Health News

Click to comment

#NNPA BlackPress

Poll Shows Support for Policies That Help Families Afford Child Care

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

Published

1 day ago

March 2, 2026

Oakland Post

By First Five Years Fund

New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

The national survey was conducted by UpOne Insight on behalf of the First Five Years Fund from January 13–18, 2026.

Key findings include:

• Parents need help: 80% of voters say the ability of working parents to find and afford child care is either in a state of crisis or a major problem.

• This is an affordability issue: 82% believe federal child care funding will help lower costs for working families — including 69% of Republicans, 84% of Independents, and 94% of Democrats.

• And there continues to be strong support (62%) for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), a federal program that makes it possible for hundreds of thousands of families to afford safe, quality care for their children while parents work or go to school, including a majority of Republicans, 63% of Independents and 72% of Democrats.

• Support for funding child care programs remains strong: 75% believe child care funding should be increased or kept at current levels — including 75% of Republicans, 85% of Independents, and 97% of Democrats.

• 74% say funding for child care is an important and good use of tax dollars, including a majority of Republicans, three-quarters of Independents, and nine in ten Democrats.

FFYF Executive Director Sarah Rittling said, “Voters across the country are sending a clear message: federal child care and early learning programs work. These investments help parents stay in the workforce, strengthen families, and support healthy child development. They have also long had strong bipartisan support in Congress. At a time when affordability is top of mind for families, continued federal funding is essential to ensure child care remains accessible and within reach.”

First Five Years Fund works to protect, prioritize, and build bipartisan support for quality child care and early learning programs at the federal level. Reliable, affordable, and high-quality early learning and child care can be transformative, not only enhancing a child’s prospects for a brighter future but also bolstering working parents and fostering economic stability nationwide.

We work with Congress and the Administration to identify federal solutions that work for families with young children, as well as states and communities. We work with policymakers to identify ways to increase access to affordable, high-quality child care and early learning programs for children. And we collaborate with advocacy groups to help align best practices with the best possible policies. http://www.ffyf.org

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Activism

Oakland Post: Week of February 25 – March 3, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of – February 25 – March 3, 2026

Published

3 days ago

March 1, 2026

Oakland Post

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

#NNPA BlackPress

Trump’s MAGA Allies are Creating Executive Order Plan to Steal the 2026 Midterms

NNPA NEWSWIRE — The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

Published

4 days ago

February 27, 2026

Oakland Post

By Lauren Victoria Burke, NNPA Newswire Correspondent

A group of MAGA pro-Trump activists, who say they are working in coordination with the White House, are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that would claim without evidence that China interfered with the 2020 presidential election. Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential to President Joe Biden by over 7 million votes. Since Trump lost to Biden in 2020, he has repeatedly claimed that the election was “stolen” without evidence. The report of a group of “Trump allies” preparing an executive order to give Trump power over elections was first reported by The Washington Post.

The lies around the right-wing campaign that pushed falsehoods that the 2020 election was stolen was trafficked through right-wing media, particularly Fox News. Fox News was then sued for defamation for the claims by Dominion Voting Systems. Fox lost the case and had to settle for the largest defamation amount on record of $787.5 million in April 2023.

The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

The story in The Washington Post arrives as Trump increasingly signals that he may take actions that would alter the result of the 2026 midterms. The Republicans are widely expected to lose as their approval ratings plummet as a result of a failing economy under Trump. Over 50 members of Congress have announced they will retire this year and not return in 2027.

The Trump Department of Justice, which now has a large image of Trump on the side of it, “sued five new states Thursday [Feb. 26, 2026] demanding access to their unredacted voter rolls — escalating a campaign that has been rejected by multiple federal courts and faces resistance from Republican-led states as well,” according to Democracy Docket, a group that works to protect voting rights.

Trump claimed back in late 2020, the last year of his first term, that he had the authority to issue an executive order related to mail-in voting for the 2020 elections — which he would then lose. But the Constitution states that control of elections lies with the states. As the GOP works to place hurdles in front of voting, Democrats worked to make voting easier.

In March 2021, President Biden signed an executive order calling on federal agencies to expand voting access as part of the Biden Administration’s effort “to promote and defend the right to vote for all Americans who are legally entitled to participate in elections.”

Trump’s focus is clearly on altering the November 2026 midterm elections. Trump’s polling numbers and the elections and special elections that have taken place around the U.S. over the last year clearly indicate that Republicans are about to be hit by a blue wave of Democratic victories.

Lauren Victoria Burke is an independent investigative journalist and the founder of Black Virginia News. She is a political analyst who appears on #RolandMartinUnfiltered and hosts the show LAUREN LIVE on YouTube @LaurenVictoriaBurke. She can be contacted at LBurke007@gmail.com and on twitter at @LVBurke