Ady Barkan, the progressive organizer, was diagnosed with ALS three years ago, and struggled to get the care and medications he needed to survive. He has become perhaps the most tireless campaigner for a single-payer Medicare for All system in America, throwing himself into a fight greater than his own circumstances during his dying days. Despite being confined to a wheelchair and able to communicate only through a computer program that tracks his eyeball movements, he has continued the battle, testifying at the first Medicare for All hearing in Congress.
Barkan conducted one-on-one conversations with nearly all the leading presidential candidates this year, and finally endorsed Elizabeth Warren in November, on the heels of her Medicare for All rollout. Progressives have criticized Warren’s plan for setting a long transition in place on an issue that Democratic voters consistently rank as their top priority. But Barkan told the Prospect and The Young Turks before Thursday’s presidential debate in Los Angeles that Warren’s plan “strengthens and expands Medicare as much as possible as quickly as possible, and then sets us up to complete Medicare for All by the end of her first term.”
Barkan went into detail about Warren’s health care plan, why he supports it, why it would be “administratively effective and politically feasible,” and why it would present enough progress to show the public that government participation in health care can work. He also contrasted it with Pete Buttigieg’s Medicare for All Who Want It plan, which he said is “designed to fail.”
Here’s the full interview:
