Yes vote on the Medicare For All

Written by East Bay DSA member K. Khan

I support a Yes vote on the Medicare For All proposal. Healthcare is a faultline in US capitalism and as socialists, we must press on with this issue until the big hospitals and clinics, pharma, medical device, and biotech organizations are under the democratic control of our class. 

My thinking on the issue, to be straightforward, is that not having the campaign tied to a specific bill actually creates more space to discuss Socialists politics while canvassing. To connect this nascent demand for single payer with a challenge to private property. 

That being said, I wanted to raise three points:

1. We will not win this battle without addressing our relationship with the Democratic party. Along with many other comrades, both locally and nationally, I do not believe this is merely a question of ballot line. The Democratic Party is not a party, this is correct, but it is not merely fund and endorsement machine. It is a political machine and its operators have agency. This question may seem settled in the last vote, but it will come up again and again until we resolve it by creating a Mass Socialist Party based on Unions.
2. I do not believe it was necessary to include language that declares "Medicare for All, or a single-payer healthcare system, is a non-reformist reform" in the proposal. I, along with several others locally and many others across the country, do not agree with the Andre Gorz theory that a section of the local leadership is putting forward.
3. Since the term “non-reformist reform” is being used, leadership should call for a local wide discussion on Andre Gorz’s theory. Comrades should be allowed to decide for themselves whether they support this concept, or whether they believe a more transitional method should be applied in anticipation of changes in class consciousness and militancy.