Today we’re talking moral injury and how it’s impacting our doctors and the healthcare we get from them. What’s moral injury? Well, you may not have heard the term before, but trust us, if you’ve been watching The Pitt, you’ve already gotten a taste! Moral injury is the trauma that happens when someone knows the right thing to do but is prevented from doing it on a regular basis thanks to factors beyond their control. Researchers coined the term to describe combat veterans experiencing PTSD because they had been forced to do things in war that ran contrary to their sense of morality, but more and more, the folks who study this phenomenon are seeing it show up in unexpected groups of people — including the folks who provide your healthcare! In this episode we talk with Dr. Diljeet Singh of Physicians for a National Health Program about their new report on how working in an unjust healthcare systems is hurting doctors, and what that tells us about why we need Medicare for All!

Plus, as always, we’ve got the latest healthcare news!

In addition to being a badass lady, Dr. Diljeet Singh is a physician, an advocate, and the president of Physicians for a National Health Program, the national organization bringing together doctors to fight for change in our healthcare system! You can read the PNHP report on moral injury among doctors 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! Chip in here to support our work!

This episode, we’re live at the Texas Democratic Party Convention, where Gillian is battling heat stroke while talking with folks about why we need Medicare for All and how we’re using grassroots organizing to build the power to win it!

In the past, Medicare for All might have been a tough sell in Texas, but things are very different these days, as the Lone Star state turns from red to a distinctly bluish purple and Texas voters grow sick and tired of having some of the worst healthcare in the country. And yes, it is just that bad — Texas has the highest rate of uninsured people in the nation, as well as the highest rate of people who go without healthcare because of cost. The only upside is that this situation has given rise to a wave of energy to take on our healthcare system and make real change. Tables will be flipped!

In addition to updates from the Texas State Democratic convention, Gillian talks with Austin-based table-flipper and organizer Aija Nemer-Aanerud about the Big Insurance scam to exploit Medicaid for profit, how people across the country are fighting back, and what Texas has to teach us about the importance of defending public healthcare.

Aija Nemer-Aanerud might have been a guitar instructor at some point, and is definitely the Healthcare for All Campaign Director for People’s Action, where they’re organizing with groups across the country to get insurance companies out of our Medicaid system! If you think the tax dollars we pay into Medicaid should be paying for actual healthcare — not an extra yacht for an insurance company CEO — you can find out more about their work here.

Our friends at Physicians for a National Health Program have gotten together all the nitty gritty details of exactly how the Medicaid privatization scheme works, how much taxpayer money Big Insurance is sucking out of the system while denying care, and how the state you live in could easily eliminate a whole lot of waste, fraud, and abuse just by taking them out of the Medicaid business. We’re talking billions of dollars that could be saving the lives of the people we love. Read their “Removing the Middle-Man from Medicaid report here!

If it sounds too good to be true, Connecticut has the receipts — they’ve saved over 4 billion dollars since they gave private insurance companies the boot from their Medicaid system. We did a deep dive into that story in our Medicaid Privatization Smackdown episode, where we interviewed Sheldon Toubman, one of the architects of the campaign that made it happen.

Next time someone tells you that Medicare for All is “too radical” for folks in the red states, remember how the crowd reacted when Bernie Sanders called for Medicare for All in a room of 3,000 Texas democrats at the state convention!

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!

As we record this, the New York Knicks just might be poised to make history and win their first NBA championship since 1973 (Go Knicks!), but we’re here today to talk about a potential win that could be even bigger for New York than the Knicks taking it all… the passage of The New York Health Act! The New York Health Act, currently working its way through the NY state legislature, would guarantee high-quality, comprehensive healthcare to every single New Yorker, and – it turns out – save families, counties, cities, schools, and taxpayers billions of dollars! We’ve got two of the leaders of the Campaign for New York Health to bring us up to speed on the bill and tell us more about how they’re working to make universal healthcare a reality in the Empire State!

Our guests for this episode are Campaign for New York Health Executive Director Melanie D’Arrigo and Managing Director for Results for Development Dr. Cheryl Cashin. You can read the NY Health=NY Wealth report that details how passing the New York Health Act would guarantee healthcare for every New Yorker AND save billions of dollars for individuals, families, and entire counties, cities, and towns on their website.

Those new Medicaid work requirements are about to cause millions of Americans to lose their healthcare. This is a policy that was disastrous for Medicare in the 1990s and disastrous in all the states where it’s been tried for Medicaid so far. You have until July 30, 2026 to submit a public comment and let Chuck Grassley know how you feel about his ghoulish enthusiasm for making the lives of poor people shorter and more difficult.

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!