The COVID-19 pandemic has made the case for Medicare for All in the US more than ever before. 27 million people have now lost their employer sponsored health insurance in addition to the 29 million people already uninsured prior to the pandemic.

Meanwhile, the brutal police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor have sparked uprisings for racial justice in cities across the country. And COVID-19 has hit communities of color especially hard: Black and Latinx people are dying from COVID-19 at three to four times the rates as white people. These disparities highlight the racism of a profit-driven health care system, as well as many decades of racial disparities in health care, and structural racism in employment and other social and economic factors.

This moment is an unprecedented opportunity to talk to our friends and family about how things could be better.

In our Medicare for All campaign we use a tool called the Response Cycle when we have conversations. We ask people about their experience with health care, we share ours, and then we use that shared, common experience of our broken health care system to let them know that Medicare for All is the solution. Since most people connect with politics on an emotional and personal basis, sharing stories is typically more powerful than reciting facts and statistics.