We usually stick to the healthcare news here, but this time, we’re covering a story happening right in our own backyard that could have huge public health consequences. Corpus Christi, Texas is about to be the first American city to run out of water, which threatens the health and wellbeing of the entire city, and especially the folks who are already in precarious health situations. Today we’re talking to local activist Isabel Araiza about what’s happening in Corpus, why we let big businesses put a price tag on our public goods, and why this isn’t just a Texas problem. PLUS, the latest healthcare news!

Isabel Araiza was born and raised in Corpus Christi. She earned her PhD in Sociology from Boston College and returned to Corpus to teach. She’s currently an Associate Professor of Social Sciences at Del Mar Community College.

For the Greater Good Coastal Bend, the grassroots group Isabel co-founded has been advocating for quality of life issues in the Coastal Bend since 2016. You can find out more about their work here.

For a Perfect Union has produced an excellent video about the Corpus Christi water crisis featuring Isabel and other local activists. Please watch and share to help spread the word!

Don’t forget to like this episode and subscribe to The Medicare for All Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or your favorite podcast platform!

This show is a project of the Healthcare-NOW Education Fund! Chip in here to support our work!

Content Warning: This episode is somehow even swearier than usual.

War is hell. Mostly because it kills people indiscriminately and disrupts the lives of huge groups of people, but also because it costs so much money that could be spent on saving lives. Now, after a year of hearing that our country is so hard up for money that we need to make massive cuts to Medicaid and other public health programs, we’re at war in the middle east AGAIN, racking up unnecessary deaths and a massive tab. Linda Bilmes at the Kennedy School said that the cost of the war would definitely reach a trillion dollars, even if it ended tomorrow – and she said that a couple weeks ago. In this episode, we’ve got Alex Lawson and Eagan Kemp here to talk about why the US is spending money on missiles but can’t afford Medicare for All.

PLUS, here at the pod, we’re trying out a new format to be able to bring you more up-to-date updates about what’s happening in healthcare politics in this country and the movement to change healthcare politics in this country for good! There’s so much going on right now in America’s war on our health, and between the insurance companies and congress and the MAHA crowd, it’s so hard to keep up. We, as always, want to help out with the unpleasant work of sorting through the noise and amplifying the really important stuff, so from now on, we’ll be starting out each episode with a healthcare news roundup of some of the top stories you need to know. Of course, accurate but irreverent commentary and analysis will be provided!

Let us know what you think!

Alex Lawson is the Executive Director of Social Security Works, the convening member of the Strengthen Social Security Coalition— a coalition made up of over 340 national and state organizations representing over 50 million Americans.

Eagan Kemp is an expert in health care policy, including single-payer systems, private health insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the Veterans Health Administration, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, social determinants of health, mental health and drug shortages. He has served as senior policy analyst at the U.S. Government Accountability Office (Does that still exist?), but right now he’s the Health Policy Advocate for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division.

Thanks to political science professor Dr. Misty Parker for joining us for the news!

Don’t forget to like this episode and subscribe to The Medicare for All Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or your favorite podcast platform! This show is a project of the Healthcare NOW Education Fund!

This show is a project of the Healthcare-NOW Education Fund! Chip in here to support our work!

It’s primary season, y’all! Today I’m joined by Abdul El Sayed — doctor, public health expert, and candidate for the Democratic party nomination in Michigan to talk about healthcare in this election and on the campaign trail!

To read more about Abdul and the race for US Senate in Michigan, you can check out his campaign page. You can find more information about his book, Medicare for All: A Citizen’s Guide here on Goodreads!

Don’t forget to like this episode and subscribe to The Medicare for All Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or your favorite podcast platform! This show is a project of the Healthcare NOW Education Fund!

This show is a project of the Healthcare-NOW Education Fund! Chip in here to support our work!

Friends, I’ve got a question for you: how are you doing these days, mental-health-wise? Sometimes on the Medicare for All podcast we can get so busy edutaining about healthcare inequity that we forget to take a pause to check in and make sure we’re all OK. What’s that you say? You too are feeling a little… unwell these days? Us too! It’s an objectively terrible moment in history, we’re entering life under fascism, and all the cool people and things we care about are getting disappeared or DOGEd. When we win Medicare for All, we’re all going to be able to get the mental health support we need, but in the meantime, for this special fan service episode, we’ve gotten us all some help. Our guest today is a licensed counsellor who has agreed to give us all some advice on how to keep fighting the man AND avoid crashing out in 2026!

Tristyn Ariyan is a Licensed Professional Counselor based in San Antonio, TX. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Criminal Justice from the University of Massachusetts, followed by a Master’s in Clinical Mental Health from Bradley University. Tristyn is a National Board Certified Counselor, Certified Clinical Trauma Professional, and an active member of both the American Counseling Association and the Texas Counseling Association. Tristyn founded her private practice, Luna Therapy Solutions, LLC, in early 2022.

She also knows more than you might think about Insane Clown Posse.

Don’t forget to like this episode and subscribe to The Medicare for All Podcast on your favorite podcast platform! This show is a project of the Healthcare NOW Education Fund!

If you want to support our work, you can donate here!

At Healthcare NOW, we’re used to getting push-back from folks who don’t believe in Medicare for All, and we always expect to hear from those folks – but this episode is about something different. When we announced our annual national Medicare for All Strategy Conference is happening this November, we got some push-back – not about our fight for healthcare justice, but about our choice of venue. Some of our supporters were upset that we’re going to be gathering in a Red State – ok, arguably the king of the Red States: Florida. We’ve gotten emails from folks who won’t attend on principle because they refuse to go to (and this is a quote) the “Evil DeSantis State.” So today we’re joined by one of the leaders of Medicare for All Florida to dig into what’s happening in Florida, why we’re heading to the Sunshine State for our conference, and – most importantly – how you can join us this November 22&23rd to bring the fight to Red America.

Consider this your official invite to our National Medicare for All Strategy Conference:

Find out more and register here!

Want to learn more about how Medicare for All activists are fighting to move forward toward healthcare justice amid constant assaults on public healthcare from their state government? Check out the Medicare for All Florida website!

Don’t forget to like this episode and subscribe to The Medicare for All Podcast on your favorite podcast platform! This show is a project of the Healthcare NOW Education Fund!

If you want to support our work, you can donate here!

Anyone who’s been on the internet and wants to preserve their sanity knows one, eternal truth: Don’t read the comments section. The comments, as we all know, are where our better angels go to die – where we forget our humanity and type out the ugliest, scariest stuff we were apparently thinking all along? Well, today, against our better judgement, we are going to disregard best practice and dig in to what people are saying in the comments about healthcare. Because how are we ever going to win over the people if we don’t know what the people have to say? We tasked our researcher, Ashley Schultz — the most chronically online of our followers, with digging through the dregs of the internet, and she’s here to talk about what she found.

Don’t forget to like this episode and subscribe to The Medicare for All Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or your favorite podcast platform! This show is a project of the Healthcare NOW Education Fund!

This show is a project of the Healthcare-NOW Education Fund! If you want to support our work, you can donate at our website, healthcare-now.org.

:::CONTENT WARNING::: This episode contains graphic discussions of genocide.

Here at the Medicare for All Podcast, we are usually focused on the US, but the fight for universal access to healthcare is one that stretches way beyond our borders. Today we take a global perspective and check in with a group of doctors who are putting their lives on the line to address the serious devastation happening right now in Gaza and its impact on the health of Palestinians living through that devastation. We’re joined by the founders of Doctors Against Genocide to talk about how a political conflict turns into a public health crisis, and what kind of action we can take to stop it.

Our guests are Dr. Karameh Hawash-Kuemmerle, a pediatric neurologist in Boston, Massachusetts, and Dr. Nidal Jboor, an internist in Dearborn, Michigan, who together co-founded of Doctors Against Genocide (DAG), “a global coalition of healthcare workers dedicated to succeeding where global governments have failed in confronting Genocide.”

Want to support the incredible work of Doctors Against Genocide? Whether or not you’re a doctor, you can join DAG and/or donate here!

Don’t forget to like this episode and subscribe to The Medicare for All Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or your favorite podcast platform! This show is a project of the Healthcare NOW Education Fund!

This show is a project of the Healthcare-NOW Education Fund! If you want to support our work, you can donate at our website, healthcare-now.org.

We’re talking about Medicaid folks, the public healthcare system meant to be our social safety net for anyone who can’t afford private insurance and doesn’t have access to healthcare from an employer. I’m sure most of you are aware of Medicaid — but what you might not know is just how many of our friends and neighbors land in that safety net every year. Over 70 Million people in this country rely on the Medicaid program for basic healthcare. That’s 20% of Americans, or one out of every five people you meet. That means that even if you are not on Medicaid, the $880 Billion in cuts to the program proposed by congress will affect you or someone you love, and not in a good way. In fact, just today, researchers at Yale and UPenn released new research stating that the Trump cuts would cause over 51,000 additional Americans to die each year. For this episode, I’m joined by Jaron Benjamin, Deputy Chief of Campaigns from Popular Democracy to break down why we all need to care about stopping the cuts and act NOW, before it’s too late!

We need YOU to join the fight to save Medicaid! Find out more about what you can do here!

You can learn more about the great work happening at Popular Democracy here!

Don’t forget to like this episode and subscribe to The Medicare for All Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or your favorite podcast platform! This show is a project of the Healthcare NOW Education Fund!

This show is a project of the Healthcare-NOW Education Fund! If you want to support our work, you can donate at our website, healthcare-now.org.