Hi there,

The climate crisis, war, attacks on reproductive rights, book bans—these threats aren't looming. They are here now. If you think Democracy Now!'s reporting on these issues is essential, please sign up for a monthly gift of $10 or more. Right now, a generous donor will DOUBLE your gift, making your donation twice as valuable. We don't have a paywall or run ads, which means we’re not brought to you by the oil, gas, coal, or nuclear companies when we cover the climate catastrophe or by the weapons manufacturers when we cover war. Democracy Now! is funded by you and that’s why we need your help today. This is a challenging year for news organizations and nonprofits across the board, so please don’t close this window before making your gift. We're counting on you more than ever to sustain our reporting. Start your monthly donation of $10 or more right now and help Democracy Now! stay strong and independent all year round. Thank you so much.
-Amy Goodman

Non-commercial news needs your support.

We rely on contributions from you, our viewers and listeners to do our work. If you visit us daily or weekly or even just once a month, now is a great time to make your monthly contribution.

Please do your part today.

Donate

Ady Barkan, Activist Dying of ALS, Testifies to Congress in Favor of Medicare for All

HeadlineMay 01, 2019

On Capitol Hill, a 35-year-old lawyer and activist who’s dying of terminal ALS testified Tuesday at an historic, first-of-its-kind congressional hearing on Medicare for all. Ady Barkan spoke to the House Rules Committee using a computerized system that tracks his eye movements and turns them into spoken words. In his emotional testimony, Barkan described how, even with a comparatively good health insurance plan, he still pays about $9,000 a month for medical care.

Ady Barkan: “All of us need medical care. And yet, in this country, the wealthiest in the history of human civilization, we do not have an effective or fair or rational system for delivering that care. I will not belabor the point, because you and your constituents are well aware of the problems: high costs, bad outcomes, mind-boggling bureaucracy, racial disparities, bankruptcies, geographic inequities and obscene profiteering. The ugly truth is this: Healthcare is not treated as a human right in the United States of America. This fact is outrageous, and it is far past time that we change it. Saying it loud for the people in the back: Healthcare is a human right.”

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top