Episode 129 - Do No Harm

This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined by Dr. Adam Gaffney, instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a pulmonary and critical care doctor at the Cambridge Health Alliance as well as the President of the single-payer health care advocacy organization Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP). After sharing his obligatory origin story, Adam puts the unprecedented mainstream momentum behind Medicare for All in context by detailing the insufficiencies of the system today and how the increasing corporatization of health care in the neoliberal era has impacted people’s day-to-day decisions.

Adam describes the different versions of Medicare for All currently in Congress like the Senate bill introduced by Bernie Sanders and Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s House bill, highlighting where they differ and where they could go further. The gang also discusses the role of grassroots organizing in pushing the health care debate to the left over the last several years, and Adam touches on some of PNHP’s strategies for mobilizing doctors in the push for single-payer. Roqayah and Kumars also ask Adam about proposed alternatives to single-payer like the public option, as well as the best ways to counter common conservative arguments against Medicare for All, including the ones Adam successfully fended off in his viral guest appearance on Fox Business Network.

You can follow Adam on Twitter @awgaffney, and keep up with his work at theprogressivephysician.net.

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