Table of Contents
Introduction: How a Single-Payer Healthcare System Helped Stop COVID-19 1
Medicare for All-Why? 3
Medicare for All-How? 8
Part 1 How Bad Things Are in AMerica 13
How the Insurance Industry Bought Joe Lieberman and Killed the Public Option 14
Obamacare: Rube Goldberg Meets Health Insurance 16
Wendell Potter: A Good Man in a Bad Job 19
"Dollar Bill" McGuire and the Privatization of Medicare 25
The "Advantage" War against Medicare 28
You Are Locked-in to Medicare Advantage 34
Rick Scott Killed Charlene Dill 37
Work to Live, or Live to Work? 42
Part 2 The Origins of America's Sickness-for-Profit System 47
Germany Gets the World's First Single-Payer System in 1884 48
America, the Land of the Sick 53
Frederick Ludwig Hoffman Makes a Discovery 54
Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro 57
From Scientific Racism to Libertarianism 60
New York Shakes Up the Insurance Industry 63
From Scientific Racism to "No Compulsory Healthcare!" 65
Prudential Helps Kill America's First Healthcare-for-All Campaign 69
Part 3 The Modern Fight for a Human Right to Healthcare 75
Is Healthcare a Right or a Privilege? 76
Why Social Security Doesn't Already Include a Right to Healthcare 79
Healthcare to Defeat Fascism 84
The Beveridge Report: The British Plan for Defense and Welfare 88
How Canada Won a Right to Healthcare 92
LBJ Takes It to Reagan and the Doctors 97
Medicare: America's Most Successful Racial Integration Program 102
Medicare "Inspectors" Defeat Goldwater's Racists 104
Medicare Ends Segregation in America's Hospitals 106
Ted Kennedy's Fight for Expansion 109
Part 4 Saving Lives with a Real Healthcare System 113
Undoing Reaganomics and Reducing Inequality Would Save Lives 114
Buy the Insurance Companies! 119
Medicare for All: The Losers 122
The Impact of Medicare for All on Business 124
Want a Green New Deal? Get Medicare for All First 125
"It Takes a Crisis" 137
Notes 139
Acknowledgments 149
Index 151