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The Time for Democrats to Get Serious About Medicare for All is NOW

The Left Place
8 min readDec 29, 2024

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Photo by Vijesh Datt on Unsplash

The millions of Americans who lost their lives unnecessarily due to for-profit health insurance companies’ avarice so far hasn’t moved the needle. History has repeatedly demonstrated that some of society’s most pervasive issues do not get the attention they deserve until an authority figure, someone on the higher rungs of the social ladder, or of some notoriety, dies.

Unfortunately, it has come to this: the murder of a health insurance executive re-igniting discussions about the exploitative and dysfunctional American healthcare system.

UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s death in front of the midtown Manhattan Hilton earlier this month has precipitated messages of “good riddance” toward Thompson as a symbol of “a universally despised system run by ‘heartless vampires’ who routinely refuse care in exchange for bloody profit.

As Abby Zimet wrote in Common Dreams:

The pitiless response by tens of millions of their victims: Wanted posters, judging the shooter “too hot to convict” and grimly declaring, “Thoughts and prayers are out of network.”

Senator Elizabeth Warren explained, “Violence is never the answer, but people can only be pushed so far.”

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The Left Place
The Left Place

Written by The Left Place

Ted Millar is a teacher, poet, and political writer for The Left Place. See also and subscribe to the Substack newsletter: https://theleftplace.substack.com/. t

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