4. Everybody In Nobody Out: What the Opposition Will Tell You

so this is what they're gonna tell you number one they're gonna say it costs too much they're gonna tell you that it's gonna cost thirty trillion dollars over the next ten years and they're going to be pretty much right health care is expensive and it's gonna cost that kind of money in order to provide decent health care for everybody in America what they won't tell you is that if we do nothing and continue this system it will cost 34 trillion dollars over the next ten years so by going to Medicare for all we save four trillion

dollars over ten years then they're going to talk about rationing and death panels they're going to say that the system will inevitably cause long lines and people will be choosing who lives and who dies well let me tell you that there's 30,000 Americans who die every year in this country waiting for health care that they will never get because they have no insurance or they have inadequate insurance more people die in this country from lack of health care than anywhere else in the industrialized

world they will then come up with some crazy story about somebody in Canada who had to wait six months for a hip replacement and they can't go through all of these things and maybe they came to the US and somebody heard about it through somebody who sought will hurt about it on Fox News and that will be the big story that everybody is going to pick up but I would ask that you ask the Canadian people what they feel about their health care system and find out how many Canadians would be willing to

trade what they have with its flaws for the American style of health care they also tell you that the government can't do anything right that it's going to be like the Motor Vehicles department with a massive bureaucracy on health care and this is I always smile when I hear this one because it's kind of like the pot going the kettle black I mean have you ever had to call for approval for a surgery or a medical procedure and talk to somebody who's not even a doctor maybe in a call center in the Philippines and they talk about bureaucracy I mean we

already live under one of the most bureaucratize health care system in the world the government does certain things right and that's the kind of things that we need them to do for our health care they're very good at collecting taxes which is what we need them to do to pay for our health care and they're very good at sending the checks out they've never missed a Social Security check in 75 years and that's what we need the government to do to collect the money fairly and to distribute it in an equitable fashion that's right up the government's competency level they're

gonna tell us about freeloaders they're going to talk about immigrants and drug addicts and people who don't have healthy lifestyles and eat too much red meat and all of these people that we're going to be asked to support on this health care system and we have to be prepared for that we know what divided and conquered mean when we're in our workplace and how the bosses try to divide us against each other in order to play one group off the other this is what's going to happen in these health care debates the system only works when everybody is in and nobody is out that's

what a public health care system does we got to be prepared for those divisive attacks they're going to tell us that you're going to lose what you have they're going to tell Medicare recipients your Medicare is going to be ruined by expanding it to everybody they're going to tell people they're going to lose their private insurance if they don't tell Medicare recipients that in fact their Medicare benefit will be improved it will no longer need supplemental coverage their drug coverage will be in full long-term care will be covered in full dental care

optical care all of the stuff that's not currently covered will be improved and they don't tell you that when you lose your private insurance you're trading it off for a system with no co-pays no deductibles no co-payments and no narrow networks and they're going to talk about the quality of care I would maintain that care will only improve in a system where we have continuity of care where you can go to the same doctor and have your illness treated by someone who knows knows your medical history for multiple years where the incentives are

to keep you healthy rather than to kick you off the health care plan if you are sick it will be a much more humane system of healthcare coverage and then they're going to say how do we trust the politicians to keep the system honest and to deliver us a health care of it politicians are untrustworthy and I get I tell them you have to absolutely have a point the only way we're going to be able to trust those politicians is to hold their feet to the fire the day we win this fight for national healthcare is the day that the other side is going to look to weaken the system that we

just won and we're going to have to stay active and stay mobilized in our unions and our communities in order to keep the system honest and to keep it running for the benefit of working people