Tag Archives: Bernie Sanders

‘Why We Need Medicare for All’: Boeing Revokes Health Benefits for Striking Workers

“Like other wealthy countries we must guarantee healthcare to every man, woman, and child as a human right, not a job benefit. Whether you’re on strike or not, everyone is entitled to healthcare,” said Bernie Sanders.

By Edward Carver. Published 10-1-2024 by Common Dreams

Photo: @grrrrbs/X

Boeing revoked the company-sponsored healthcare benefits of about 33,000 striking workers starting Tuesday, drawing condemnation from progressives, who said it showed the need for a universal healthcare system in the United States.

The workers, who are mostly in Washington state and are represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), went on strike on September 13, and the corporation announced on its website that their healthcare benefits would expire at the end of the day on September 30.

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FTC Sues Big Pharma Middlemen for Inflating Insulin Prices

“Caremark, ESI, and Optum—as medication gatekeepers—have extracted millions of dollars off the backs of patients who need lifesaving medications,” said one agency leader.

By Jessica Corbett. Publishe 9-21-2024 by Common Dreams

Photo: Alan Levine/flickr/Public domain

The Federal Trade Commission on Friday initiated a legal process against middlemen that collectively administer about 80% of all prescriptions in the United States, accusing them of artificially inflating the list price of insulin drugs and blocking patients from accessing cheaper products.

The FTC action targets the “Big Three” pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs): CVS Health’s Caremark Rx, Cigna’s Express Scripts (ESI), and UnitedHealth Group’s OptumRx. It also involves their affiliated group purchasing organizations (GPOs): Zinc Health Services, Ascent Health Services, and Emisar Pharma Services.

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After Weekend Walkouts, Hotel Worker Strikes Grow on Labor Day

“We refuse to accept wages that can’t support our families. It’s insulting. And it ends now.”

By Jessica Corbett. Published 9-2-2024 by Common Dreams

Workers from over two dozen hotels across the United States are on strike as of September 2, 2024, which is Labor Day. Photo: UNITE HERE! Local 30/X

After approximately 10,000 hotel workers across the United States walked off the job over the weekend ahead of Labor Day, the strikes not only continued but grew on Monday, with employees of the Hilton Baltimore Inner Harbor taking to the streets.

In Maryland’s biggest city, workers with UNITE HERE Local 7 carried signs that said, “Respect our work,” “One job should be enough,” and “Make them pay.”

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How Crypto Giants Are ‘Exploiting’ Citizens United to Buy 2024 Elections

A new analysis and call for a constitutional amendment comes as reporting sheds light on Sen. JD Vance’s ties to a right-wing group backed by tech and digital currency investors.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 8-21-2024 by Common Dreams

Image: QuoteInspector.com

report out Wednesday takes aim at how giants of the cryptocurrency industry are using the 2010 Citizens United ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, which opened the floodgates for dark money in political campaigns, to make a massive deregulatory push ahead of this year’s pivotal election.

Based on Public Citizen research director Rick Claypool’s analysis of federal election data from OpenSecrets, the consumer advocacy group accused the crypto industry of “exploiting” the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling “to an unprecedented degree, dwarfing direct corporate spending by Big Oil and other corporate sectors in the 2024 elections.”

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US Medalist’s Experience of Free Healthcare in Olympic Village Bolsters Case for Medicare for All

“In the Olympic Village in Paris, everyone has free healthcare as a human right. In America, 1 in 4 cancer patients go bankrupt or lose their homes because of the outrageously high cost of care.”

By Edward Carver. Published 8-9-2024 by Common Dreams

Ariana Ramsey. Photo: Linkedin

U.S. Olympic rugby player Ariana Ramsey became a sensation on social media this week after documenting a series of free healthcare visits in the Olympic Village in Paris and becoming an advocate for universal care in her home country.

Ramsey’s initial TikTok video, published Saturday, went viral in France after she expressed disbelief about the free healthcare on offer, playing into the European idea that Americans—who live in the only high-income country in the world without universal care—don’t know what they are missing.

“I literally just got a pap smear—for free,” Ramsey, who won a bronze medal last week, said. “And I have a dentist appointment, and an eye exam next week. Like, what!?”

@ariana.ramsey And what about it?? Free healthcare in the olympic village, im there 😂😂 #olympicvillage #olympicvillagehealthcare ♬ original sound – I think you should leave shop

The Olympic Village polyclinic offers cardiology, orthopedics, physiotherapy, psychology, podiatry and sports medicine—all free of charge to athletes, according to Sports Illustrated. The tradition of free healthcare for athletes dates back nearly a century.

Ramsey, a 24-year-old from Pennsylvania who played rugby at Dartmouth College, said in a video that “there’s no reason why me, an American girl, should be so amazed by free healthcare.”

In a separate post on Monday, recording while sitting in a dentist’s chair, Ramsey said, “This is going to be my new fight for action, free healthcare in America. Period.”

She now describes herself as a “universal free healthcare advocate” in her TikTok bio.

@ariana.ramsey

♬ original sound – Ari Ramsey

Medicare for All advocates argued that everyone in the U.S. should have the same access to healthcare that athletes have at the Olympics.

“In the Olympic Village in Paris, everyone has free healthcare as a human right,” Warren Gunnels, a top aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and a staff director for the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, wrote on social media. “In America, 1 in 4 cancer patients go bankrupt or lose their homes because of the outrageously high cost of care and 68,000 die a year because they can’t afford healthcare. Yes. We need Medicare for All.”

Many Olympians have other jobs to pay the bills. Ramsey, for example, is a certified personal trainer. The U.S. is one of the only countries that doesn’t directly fund its Olympic athletes, according to Voice of America.

“U.S. Olympians are using their trip to the Olympics to get the basic preventative healthcare they can’t afford to get in the U.S.,” Melanie D’Arrigo, the executive director of Campaign for New York Health, wrote on social media. “We should be embarrassed that we’re the only industrialized country without universal healthcare—all because lobbyists pay off our politicians.”

If Ramsey’s newfound role as a political campaigner comes as a surprise, it’s not the first for her in Paris: the U.S. women’s team had never before medaled in rugby, and the last U.S. men’s medal was 100 years ago.

The result came in stunning fashion. Down to Australia in the final seconds of the bronze medal match, Ramsey got the ball and threw it to teammate Alex Sedrick, who made a miraculous run the length of the field to tie the game just as time expired, and then converted a kick to win the game.

For Ramsey, the bronze medal likely means she’ll receive a bonus of $15,000 from the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee. She’s also tried to maximize the medical benefits of being an Olympian in Paris, visiting a gynecologist, dentist, and ophthalmologist.

Back home, medical services won’t be as accessible, at least not for many Americans. There were more than 25 million non-elderly uninsured people in the U.S. as of 2022, according to KFF, a health policy research nonprofit. Even a routine pap smear can cost $125 to $250 for an uninsured person. U.S. spending on health care exceeds any other high-income country and yet its health outcomes are consistently the worst among peer nations.

This work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

 

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‘Economic and Moral Failing’: It’s Been 15 Years Since Last Federal Minimum Wage Hike

“Voters understand that raising the minimum wage is the right thing to do, even if their elected officials in state legislatures and Washington, D.C. remain inactive.”

By Jake Johnson. Published 7-24-2024 by Common Dreams

Photo: Fibonacci Blue/flickr/CC

Former U.S. President Barack Obama had been in office for just over six months when the federal minimum wage was raised to a paltry $7.25 an hour—where it remains today, 15 years later.

Wednesday marked exactly a decade and a half since the federal wage floor was last lifted, an occasion that advocates used to tout state-level pay hikes and make the case for a long-overdue national increase, particularly as the nation’s billionaires and corporations do better than ever.

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Calls to Boycott Netanyahu Speech Grow as Israeli PM Heads to DC

A new coalition of advocacy groups—some of them Jewish-led—are urging lawmakers to “amplify the voices of those in Israel, Palestine, and around the world who reject Netanyahu’s failed leadership.”

By Brett Wilkins. Published 7-22-2024 by Common Dreams

Members of the peace group CodePink hold a demonstration calling for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, D.C. on July 22, 2024. (Photo: CodePink/X)

Pressure is mounting on U.S. lawmakers to skip Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s scheduled address to Congress later this week, as a newly formed coalition of civil society groups announced a protest against the far-right leader—whose policies and actions in Gaza are on trial for genocide at the World Court.

As Netanyahu “brings to Congress his message of extending and expanding the devastating war in Gaza, neglecting the safety of Israeli hostages, and ensuring impunity for the actions of his government, an alternative message must be heard,” the new coalition said in a statement Monday. “To amplify a message of safety, freedom, just peace, collective liberation, and human rights for ALL Palestinians and Israelis, nine diverse groups have come together to form the Peace and Justice Protest Bloc.”

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Lawmakers Move to Bar Foreign-Owned Corporations From Spending on US Elections

A new bill “closes a glaring loophole opened up by the Supreme’s Court disastrous Citizens United decision which allows U.S. companies primarily owned by foreign entities to funnel money into our elections,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin.

By Edward Carver. Published 7-11-2024 by Common Dreams

Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund owns stakes in several major U.S. companies including Uber. Such companies have been allowed to spend freely on elections since 2010, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizen United. Photo: Ivan Radic/flickr/CC

Democratic lawmakers on Thursday introduced bills to the U.S. Senate and House seeking to ban corporations that are at least 5% foreign-owned from federal elections spending, drawing praise from advocacy groups.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) introduced the Get Foreign Money Out of U.S. Elections Act to the Senate and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) reintroduced the same bill to the House, with each version gaining co-sponsorship by progressive lawmakers such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).

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Led by Left Coalition, French Election Shows ‘How You Defeat the Far Right’

France’s left-of-center parties held off a far-right advance in the country’s parliamentary elections by building a progressive platform and forming strategic alliances, their supporters say.

By Edward Carver. Published 7-8-2024 by Common Dreams

Supporters of La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) part of The Nouveau Front Populaire coalition, celebrate the election results. Screenshot: CNN

Political figures from across the world congratulated France’s left-of-center coalition following parliamentary elections on Sunday in which it gained the most seats of any group, outperforming the far-right party that many feared would take control of the National Assembly, in what The Washington Post called “one of the greatest political upsets in recent French history.”

In the second and final round of voting, the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) won roughly 180 out of the 577 seats in the assembly, far from a majority but more than President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition, which won about 160, or Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN), which won about 140 or 145.

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Fresh Calls to ‘Reject AIPAC’ After Analysis of GOP Money in Dem Primaries

“George Latimer in New York and Wesley Bell in Missouri are trying to become Democratic members of Congress off millions of dollars of money from rich right-wing Republicans,” said one group.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 6-9-2024 by Common Dreams

Photo: Ted Eytan /CC

Politico reported Sunday that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is “the biggest source of Republican money flowing into competitive Democratic primaries this year,” sparking new calls for candidates and voters nationwide to #RejectAIPAC.

“If you don’t want Republican megadonors to choose your next Democratic congressperson for you, then there’s only one option: #RejectAIPAC,” Naftali Ehrenkranz, digital director at Get Free, said on social media, pointing to the reporting.

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