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For Immediate Release
November, 01 2019, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
Lia Weintraub, lweintraub@populardemocracy.org, 202-618-2482
CPD Action Reacts to Warren Medicare for All Payment Plan
"Greedy corporate actors have polluted our health care system—and it's time they pay the price."
WASHINGTON
Today, Senator Elizabeth Warren released her campaign plan for how she would pay for Medicare for All. Jennifer Epps-Addison, network president and co-executive director of CPD Action, released the following statement in response:
"Everyday in America, far too many people are forced to make the impossible choice between seeing a doctor when sick and keeping their lights on, between filling their prescriptions and putting food on the table. Until we abolish the profit motive, our families will never have the health care we deserve. Thankfully, Senator Warren has a plan for that. Her Medicare for All payment plan is proof that we can provide quality health care for everyone while building an economic system that truly works for us all. Rather than raising middle-class taxes, Senator Warren's plan ensures that the corporations responsible for indiscriminately increasing drug prices, monopolizing hospitals, closing care facilities in rural areas, and jacking up insurance prices for the sickest people are the ones who pay up for our single-payer system. Greedy corporate actors have polluted our health care system -- and it's time they pay the price. We celebrate Senator Warren's inclusion of a financial transaction tax in her plan to ensure that the financial sector -- and those most responsible for thrusting the bulk of the cost of care onto the sickest people in this country -- are the ones who pay for it."
Center for Popular Democracy Action promotes equity, opportunity, and a dynamic democracy in partnership with innovative base-building organizations, organizing networks and alliances, and progressive unions across the country. CPD Action builds the strength and capacity of democratic organizations to envision and advance a pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial justice agenda.
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The five presidential memos Trump signed cite his executive powers under the Cold War-era Defense Production Act, which gives the president the ability to expand and accelerate production of key supplies. Critics accused Trump of abusing his emergency authority, once again, to give handouts to an industry profiting massively from the Iran war, which the president launched without congressional authorization.
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"Action to expand the domestic petroleum production, refining, and logistics capacity is necessary to avert an industrial resource or critical technology item shortfall that would severely impair national defense capability," the memos state.
Trump signed the directives hours after he publicly disagreed with his own energy secretary's assessment of when Americans can expect to see relief at the gas pump, where they're paying over $4 per gallon on average nationwide. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Americans might not see significantly lower gas prices until next year; Trump claimed that assessment was "totally wrong, even as economists warned of lasting impacts to US and global energy markets stemming from the Iran war.
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Trump's memos came days after a group of Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate introduced legislation aimed at shielding fossil fuel companies from legal action to hold them accountable for their central role in the climate emergency.
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As NOTUS reported Monday:
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Responding to the resignation on social media, the Democratic Party highlighted Bondi and Noem's ousters, and declared, "This administration is imploding."
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