Why Is Teachers Union President Randi Weingarten Attacking Medicare for All?
Medicare for All would be a huge boon for American workers, both unionized and nonunion. So why has American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten — whose own union endorsed single-payer last year — spent the week arguing against Medicare for All?
President of American Federation of Teachers Randi Weingarten speaks during a “Lights for Liberty: A Nationwide Vigil to End Human Detention Camps” event at Lafayette Square July 12, 2019 in Washington, DC. (Alex Wong / Getty Images)
Like many American Federation of Teachers (AFT) members, I was upset and disappointed by my union president Randi Weingarten’s Politico column on Monday, “The false choice over ‘Medicare for All.’”
It wasn’t entirely surprising to see Weingarten stake out a conservative position on health care. She told ThinkProgress in July she supports “various plans,” including the embarrassing half-measure proposed by Beto O’Rourke called “Medicare for America,” a public option that preserves premiums and deductibles and leaves the private insurance market basically untouched. She also presided over our union’s early Hillary Clinton endorsement, without a membership vote, in 2016 (and, in one of the leaked John Podesta emails, called National Nurses United “sanctimonious” for endorsing Bernie over Hillary). There have been brighter moments, too: when H.R. 1384 was introduced in February, Weingarten gave an impassioned speech in favor, saying, “We need living wages, and we need health care as a right, and that is why the AFT is strongly supporting this effort for Medicare for All.”
But her column this week gives the lie to any claim of “strong support” for Medicare for All. And it certainly doesn’t “educate and mobilize members” behind “a single-payer system modeled after the federal Medicare system,” as a resolution passed at the 2018 AFT Convention dictates.
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