Launch of ‘Business for Medicare for All’

July 19, 2019

Topics: Quote of the Day

We are business owners who believe our health insurance costs should not increase every year by double digits. Our payments to profiteering health insurers have swelled as our employees have been offered worse health care coverage. At our companies, rising costs paired with declining performance is unacceptable. So why should we accept this exploitation of our companies from health insurers?

We believe a new system that guarantees health care coverage for Americans regardless of where they work is critically important to maintain our profits, grow wages for working families, spur entrepreneurship and compete globally. It is time to cut the middle man — health insurance companies — out of our health care system and pass those savings on to employers of all sizes and their workers.

There is a better way.

These are the core principles we believe in at Business for Medicare for All. All of our members have signed on to support these underlying principles guiding any reform to how we pay for health care:

• We believe Medicare-for-All must be the top policy priority of American business.
• We believe the current profit-driven health insurance system poses an existential threat to American business.
• We believe the current system lowers employee wages and business profits.
• We believe the current system threatens American innovation and competitiveness.
• We believe health care guaranteed, regardless of where someone works, is the only business-friendly, economically sustainable way to achieve universal health care in America.

President

Wendell Potter

Business Advisors

Richard Master, CEO and Chairman, MCS Industries
Ben Cohen, Founder, Ben and Jerry’s
Jerry Greenfield, Founder, Ben and Jerry’s
Joe Sanberg, Founder, Working Hero Action
Jen Kimmich, CEO and Co-Founder, Alchemist Beer
Bruce Waldman, Owner, A & H Sportswear
Dan Wolf, CEO, Cape Air
Bastian Lehmann, CEO, Postmates
David Steil, CEO and Owner Micro Trap Corporation
Joe Scott, CEO and President, Easton Coach

Health Care Advisors

Donald Berwick, Co-founder of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI)
Gerald Friedman, Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
Dr. Carol Paris, Psychiatrist and immediate past President of PNHP
Dr. Ed Weisbart, Missouri Chair of PNHP, and past CMO of Express Scripts
Gabriel Levitt, Co-founder of PharmacyChecker.com

http://www.businessformedicareforall.org

To sign up:
http://www.businessformedicareforall.org…

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Comment:

By Don McCanne, M.D.

Many have said that if only we could get the business community behind the Medicare for All movement then we would have it made. Well, some of our friends and colleagues are launching “Business for Medicare for All.” Let’s see how much interest we can help generate.

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