PODCAST · news
Medicare for All
by Benjamin Day and Gillian Mason - Healthcare-NOW
Benjamin Day and Gillian Mason of Healthcare-NOW break down everything you need to know about the social movement to make healthcare a right in the United States. Medicare for All!
Episodes
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SOS for Health & the Latest Healthcare News
A wise healthcare policy expert once articulated a sentiment many of us have felt when confronted with the failures of the American healthcare system: “S-O-S, please, someone help me. It’s not healthy for me to feel this. Y-O-U are making this hard. I can’t take it. See, it don’t feel right.”…
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The Oregon Trail to the Doctor’s Office: Medicare for All in the Beaver State & the Latest Healthcare News
Over the past month, we’ve been covering the story of Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, who recently came out in support of Medicare for All. This was a surprise for one big reason — 20 years ago, when folks were talking about the next big healthcare reform, he was the guy who suggested we privatize...
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Trump on Drugs & the Latest Healthcare News
Trump has been really feeling himself lately when it comes to one of the key pillars in his “affordability agenda” – prescription drug prices. At a press conference recently, he informed us that prescription drug prices were at their lowest point in 60 years, saying “ We went from the highest…
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Abdul Redux & the Latest Healthcare News
Listeners, the Medicare for All Podcast has reached an important milestone that all political content creators dream of – we got clipped in an attack ad against one of our favorite people! As we’ve been covering for the last few months, candidates all around the country are campaigning on…
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The Other Michigan Medicare for All Fight: MIcare, the 50 State M4A Strategy, & the Latest Healthcare News
The national political media has been in a frenzy this week about friend-of-the-pod Abdul El-Sayed’s Senate primary victory in Michigan! Sayed made Medicare for All the centerpiece of his campaign, and at the polls, over 700,000 Michiganders got behind that vision of healthcare justice. But…
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What We Do In the Shadows: The Medicare for All Shadow Hearing & the Latest Healthcare News
When the U.S. Congress wants to get together, they don’t just check the shared Google calendar for a time when nobody’s using the House floor. Scheduling when or if a bill will ever get discussed or voted on is entirely up to the majority party. These days, that means that lawmakers outside the...
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When It Hurts to Heal: Moral Injury, Doctors, & the Latest Healthcare News
Today we’re talking moral injury and how it’s impacting our doctors and the healthcare we get from them. What’s moral injury? Well, you may not have heard the term before, but trust us, if you’ve been watching The Pitt, you’ve already gotten a taste! Moral injury is the trauma that happens when...
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Don’t Mess With Texans: Saving Medicaid & the Latest Live Updates from the Texas Democratic Convention
This episode, we’re live at the Texas Democratic Party Convention, where Gillian is battling heat stroke while talking with folks about why we need Medicare for All and how we’re using grassroots organizing to build the power to win it! In the past, Medicare for All might have been a tough sell…
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Empire State of Health: The Campaign for New York Health & the Latest Healthcare News
As we record this, the New York Knicks just might be poised to make history and win their first NBA championship since 1973 (Go Knicks!), but we’re here today to talk about a potential win that could be even bigger for New York than the Knicks taking it all… the passage of The New York Health…
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No Surrender Summer: Cleve Jones, Seven Days in June, & the Latest Healthcare News
The fight for our health is heating up this summer! Across the country, folks are getting ready for a summer of action to demand real justice in our healthcare system. At Healthcare NOW, we’re calling it No Surrender Summer, and it’s all kicking off with Seven Days in June, a national week of...
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Dry Hot American Summer: Water Wars, Health Impacts, & the Latest Healthcare News
We usually stick to the healthcare news here, but this time, we're covering a story happening right in our own backyard that could have huge public health consequences. Corpus Christi, Texas is about to be the first American city to run out of water, which threatens the health and wellbeing of…
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Healthcare Not Warfare (2026 Edition) & the Latest Healthcare News
Content Warning: This episode is somehow even swearier than usual. War is hell. Mostly because it kills people indiscriminately and disrupts the lives of huge groups of people, but also because it costs so much money that could be spent on saving lives. Now, after a year of hearing that our…
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Primary Care: Abdul El Sayed & Medicare for All on the Campaign Trail
It's primary season, y'all! Today I'm joined by Abdul El Sayed -- doctor, public health expert, and candidate for the Democratic party nomination in Michigan to talk about healthcare in this election and on the campaign trail! https://www.youtube.com/live/gYy53RAC8Zk?si=AtCEyUq8634waWlA To read...
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The One Where We All Get Professional Help
Friends, I've got a question for you: how are you doing these days, mental-health-wise? Sometimes on the Medicare for All podcast we can get so busy edutaining about healthcare inequity that we forget to take a pause to check in and make sure we're all OK. What's that you say? You too are feeling…
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Florida (Wo)Man Needs Healthcare: An Invitation to Our Conference!
At Healthcare NOW, we’re used to getting push-back from folks who don’t believe in Medicare for All, and we always expect to hear from those folks – but this episode is about something different. When we announced our annual national Medicare for All Strategy Conference is happening this…
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Bots, Trolls, & Haters
Anyone who’s been on the internet and wants to preserve their sanity knows one, eternal truth: Don’t read the comments section. The comments, as we all know, are where our better angels go to die – where we forget our humanity and type out the ugliest, scariest stuff we were apparently thinking…
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Health Crisis in Palestine!
:::CONTENT WARNING::: This episode contains graphic discussions of genocide. Here at the Medicare for All Podcast, we are usually focused on the US, but the fight for universal access to healthcare is one that stretches way beyond our borders. Today we take a global perspective and check in with…
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Medicaid — They Cut; We Bleed!
We’re talking about Medicaid folks, the public healthcare system meant to be our social safety net for anyone who can’t afford private insurance and doesn’t have access to healthcare from an employer. I’m sure most of you are aware of Medicaid — but what you might not know is just how many of our...
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Resistance 2.0!
Whether you are a party planner or a community organizer, you know that since the pandemic, it has been REALLY hard to get folks out of the house. It makes sense: the news is depressing, our screen-based scrolling culture is alienating, and our politics are polarizing to the point where a casual...
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Return to Oz
For this episode, we’re going back to a familiar villain from podcast-past because unfortunately, healthcare villains have a habit of staying relevant. This is a guy who made his fame by cozying up to Oprah while schilling diet pills, supplements, and medical conspiracy theories – it’s Doctor Oz,...
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20 Years of Healthcare NOW!
Listeners, what were you doing in 2004? Perhaps you were strolling down the street in low rise jeans, Uggs, and a Livestrong bracelet listening to Outkast’s “Hey Ya!” Or maybe you were sitting in a movie theater ready to have your mind blown by Ashton Kutcher’s tour de force performance in The...
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MAHA: Getting to Know RFK Jr.
Well, the voters have spoken, and despite all of our recommendations to the contrary, they seem to have voted for Trump. Yeah, we’re pretty sad/scared/pissed off/trying to cope by dissociating and stress eating as well. Regardless, once again, it’s Trump’s America and we’re just living (or dying)...
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Medicaid Privatization Smackdown in Connecticut!
We spend a lot of time griping about the insidious power of corporate health insurance in our healthcare system here. But you would expect that taxpayer funded public programs for our most vulnerable friends and neighbors are free from profiteering right? Sadly, no. Medicaid - the public program...
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Boo and Vote Local!
In case you’ve been asleep or under a rock for the past six months, we need to let you know two things: First, Kendrick won his beef with Drake, and second, there is a presidential election coming up. Like any presidential election year, everyone’s so focused on the big showdown at the top of the...
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Medical Debt in the I.O.U.SA
The United States is unique among industrialized nations. Lucky for us, we can accumulate medical debt! Most industrialized and some developing nations have national healthcare programs that guarantee care to their residents. But we in the richest nation in the world have the freedom to get...
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Episode 102: Committable
Usually on the Medicare for All Podcast, we talk about people who want healthcare but can’t get it, but today we’re talking about people getting healthcare they have specifically refused: folks who have been involuntarily committed. For plenty of our listeners, the idea of being held against your...
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Project 2025 Will Kill Us All
If there’s one thing everyone is talking about these days, it’s JD Vance’s affinity for couches. But if there are two things everyone is talking about, it’s Vance’s couches and Project 2025. You may be wondering, what is this mysterious project, and what does it have to do with me? Well, it turns...
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“Hot Virus Summer”: The Next Pandemic
It’s our 100th episode folks, and we are celebrating the only way we know how – by sharing our predictions of the grim, apocalyptic future that surely awaits us if we fail to get our healthcare system together! That’s right, we’re talking about the next pandemic, and if experts are right, it’s...
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The View from Capitol Hill: A Very Special Conference Episode
It's the most wonderful time of the year! For activists in the movement to make Medicare for All a reality, this is the week when we gather to plot, scheme, and kvetch. Welcome to the 2024 Annual Medicare for All Strategy Conference, “Healthcare Beyond the Ballot Box,” organized by Healthcare…
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Dude, Where’s My Union Health Plan?
We are in the middle of a resurgence of organized labor in the US. From Amazon workers to auto workers and grad students to baristas at Starbucks, everyone is getting in on the action! One of the big reasons workers are so hot to get that union card is because of… you guessed it, healthcare!…
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Mental Health & For-Profit Insurance: A Deadly Combo
The U.S. is wrestling with a massive mental health crisis - impacting young people in particular. Half of young adults and one-third of all adults report that they always feel anxious or have often felt anxiety in the past year. One-third of respondents could not get the mental health services…
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Cyberattacks, Messaging Wars, and the Capitalist Hellscape
We hear it over and over again – the private sector just does it better. Whether we’re talking education or healthcare or our criminal justice system, the default Republican (and sometimes Democratic) talking point is that competition in the marketplace allows the best ideas and best people (Elon...
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The Battle of the Letters: Medicare Advantage
Occasional fistfights aside, most of our legislators make the choice to use their words when they’re angry, and a lot of those words go into public letters they write to presidents, officials, and even each other. Despite the fact that no one else in this country has written or read a letter in...
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Hospital Merger Mania!
Here at the Medicare for All Podcast, we love calling out all the bad actors in our healthcare system – greedy insurance companies, soul-less CEOs in Big Pharma,profit-hungry “non-profit hospitals”, and all our favorite villains. Mostly, we look at the ways those predators target sick people and...
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Racial Equity in Healthcare
Just this Monday, we celebrated Martin Luther King Day, a tribute to one of the great leaders of the movement for racial justice – but something that often gets forgotten in the flurry of MLK quotes that become memes this time of year is that equity in healthcare was a crucial part of King’s...
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Mailbag Episode: Super Fans Edition!
It’s that time again folks… time for a Mailbag Episode! We reached out to our whole audience and all our supporters to find the pressing questions on everyone’s mind. Or at least we would have if Gillian hadn’t been too busy eating turkey to email our list. So instead, Gillian reached out...
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What even *is* health insurance?
Open enrollment. Deductible. Coinsurance. HMO. Indemnity plan. If you’re listening this far, you probably have a migraine already. Understanding the language of the health insurance industry, let alone selecting a health insurance plan, can be confusing, frustrating, and disheartening. But never...
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How the Other Half Lives: Concierge Care
If you’ve ever had an experience with the American healthcare system, you’ve probably walked away thinking, “Why can’t we have nice things? Or even basic human things??” We get stuck on gurneys sitting in ER hallways, waiting hours for care; we skip other basic needs like food and housing to pay...
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The Price is Right (for Prescription Drugs)!
Just over a month ago we lost Bob Barker, the man who taught us all about the brutal nature of capitalism one pricing game at a time. Now, thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, the federal government is going to be playing a role in determining the prices for some of our favorite products. No,...
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Transgender Healthcare Under Attack
With all the threats facing our country – climate change, a predatory economy, corporations buying our elections, and the overt move towards fascism among the far right – you would think that politicians would be laser-focused on the existential crises descending upon us. But instead, politicians...
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Not-So-Nice Ratio
Almost every patient in America has had a frustrating experience in a hospital setting where we feel like we’re on a medical conveyor belt that moves WAY too slowly. We sit for too long in a waiting room; then our nurses or doctors speak with us very briefly; we might feel more like we’re filling...
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The Office
Today we bring you behind the scenes into our office at Healthcare NOW. Just like the TV show The Office, we have our hijinks and wacky characters, including some very smart interns! They have prepped some of their burning questions for this episode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnG1C8DOZVY...
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Healthcare Goes to Hollywood
It’s summer, the sun is blazing, and we only have one thing on our minds - the upcoming thirtieth anniversary of the high-octane, expertly paced thriller The Fugitive, originally released August 6, 1993 starring Harrison Ford. Oh, and Medicare for All. We’re always thinking about Medicare for…
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But…there will be wait times!
As Tom Petty taught us all in the 1980s, Waiting is the Hardest Part. That’s even more true when you’re waiting to see a doctor for a problem that needs attention. Anyone who has ever tried to secure a doctor’s appointment in this country knows that a) it’s going to be harder than scoring Taylor...
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The Train Has Left the Station
Usually we spend our time on this podcast talking about our for-profit healthcare system and why we need to make healthcare a public good, but in this episode we’re taking a detour into another privatized American system that should be public: our railroads! Just like in US healthcare, private...
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American Hospitals – Healthcare Villains?
Virtually all Americans know that our healthcare system is broken and that it’s working against us. But who is the villain in this story? Who is responsible for maintaining this healthcare system, and using it to profit off of patients? If we had to round up the usual suspects in a lineup, we’d...
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Private Equity’s Path of Destruction in Health Care
If you missed our annual Single Payer Strategy Conference, it's your lucky day. Today we share a conference presentation all about the impact of Private Equity on healthcare (spoiler alert: it's not good.) Our guests are Eagan Kemp, Health Care Policy Advocate at Public Citizen; Rachel Madley,...
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50 Shades of “No”: How to Respond to Your Legislator’s Excuses and Evasions
When kids turn two or three years old, they learn to tell what is called a “primary lie,” which is lying without much sophistication or awareness of how the listener will perceive the lie (hint: you completely failed to fool your parents). But when we turn four, we learn to tell “secondary lies,”...
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Would You Rather: the Healthcare Edition
Back in 2008, the TV show Breaking Bad asked a question that is still on a lot of Americans’ minds: How far would you go to pay for medical care? In Breaking Bad, the main character ends up building a meth empire to pay for his cancer treatment, which is a solution we don’t necessarily endorse…
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10 Years of M4A
2013 was a big year -- we had just survived 2012 (the year the Mayans thought the world was going to end), we were all doing the Harlem Shake on Vine, and -- most importantly -- our regular co-host Ben Day became the Executive Director of Healthcare NOW, the nation's leading Medicare for All...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Benjamin Day and Gillian Mason of Healthcare-NOW break down everything you need to know about the social movement to make healthcare a right in the United States. Medicare for All!
HOSTED BY
Benjamin Day and Gillian Mason - Healthcare-NOW
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Medicare for All have?
Medicare for All currently has 100 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Medicare for All about?
Benjamin Day and Gillian Mason of Healthcare-NOW break down everything you need to know about the social movement to make healthcare a right in the United States. Medicare for All!
How often does Medicare for All release new episodes?
Medicare for All has 100 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Medicare for All?
You can listen to Medicare for All on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Medicare for All?
Medicare for All is created and hosted by Benjamin Day and Gillian Mason - Healthcare-NOW.
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