It’s time to stop kicking sand in the face of single-payer health care. It may be the strongest solution around to insure every American at a lower cost.
After decades of industry campaigns against this model -- dubbed by its critics as “socialized” medicine -- it’s important to stop whining and evaluate the many economic benefits. Health care is a fundamental human right.
If President Barack Obama wants real change in American health care, he will have to get over the fear of even mentioning single-payer concepts. At his health-care summit last week, only the threat of a demonstration garnered late invitations for Oliver Fein and Congressman John Conyers, two leading proponents of the single-payer plan.
And keep yellin' and passin' the word. The insurance industry and Big Pharma are countin' on us givin' up!
And here is her back-at-ya:
thanks for the info
i feel a bit relieved
signed whatever i could
Are you feeling the same frustrations? Do you share the concerns of so many others that single-payer is unfairly gettin' the short shrift by the Obama White House? Then take a couple of moments out of your busy day to click on those links and sign some petitions that will make a difference. It may be your signature that elevates single-payer to the stature of entree, instead of it being a last-minute hors d'oeuvre that arrives too late and so goes uneaten, even when it may be the best food item presented at the party!
And then pass along this message to your friends, family members, and co-workers (if you still have a job). We are gettin' this job done, brick-by-brick!
... Dr. Oliver Fein, president of Physicians for a National Health Program, has been invited to participate in [Thursday's] White House summit on health care. He will therefore be joining Rep. John Conyers in the meeting as a strong advocate for a single-payer national health program ...
... While it remains true that the number of single-payer advocates in the summit will be few in number, we feel we have won an important victory...
Please continue to urge [Woolsey, Feinstein, Boxer] and President Obama to support single-payer national health insurance, the only fundamental solution to our health care crisis.
Scheduled single-payer demonstrations outside the White House Thursday are cancelled!
Watch the video of the health-care reform joint forum organized by the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care, held in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 25th. This is a 1 1/2-hour video. We are not aware of a shortened version, or of a written summary of this forum. If you are, please let us know so we can pass those along to members.
Speakers include:
David Himmelstein, MD, Cambridge Hospital Physician, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School
Sandy Eaton, RN, Massachusetts Nurses Association
Jamie Eldridge, Massachusetts State Senator
Mary Ford, former Mayor of Northampton and Human Services Manager
Peter Knowlton Presentation, Vice President of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America
Arthur MacEwan, PhD, Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts Boston
CPR is running TV, radio, and web ads that attempt to stoke irrational fears of "a central national board" in charge of medical decision-making, asking Americans to envision a world where "bureaucrats decide the treatments you receive, the drugs you take, even the doctors you see." Of course, that vision has nothing to do with the president's health care plan, but the truth shouldn't be an impediment to CPR's dream of killing health care reform.
After all, the group has hired Creative Response Concepts, the same PR firm that represented the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth during the 2004 presidential race. The "media relations" contact number listed on CPR's website, (703) 683-5004, is the same phone number as Creative Response Concepts, as one liberal organization discovered when researching the new health care group.
Creative Response's past clients also include the Christian Coalition, the right-leaning National Taxpayers Union, and USANext, the front group that led George W. Bush's failed push to privatize Social Security. Hilariously, Politico could only bring itself to observe that CPR has hired "veteran Republican consultants" for its new anti-Obama effort.
In Obama's speech last night, he did a terrifically intelligent job of framing some key policy positions in ways that can be embraced by all Americans, and not just by progressives.
Because I have taken up the single-payer cause, I took the liberty of outlining the points he made around health-care reform, adding some of my thoughts about how we progressives might speak to health-care reform skeptics in the wake of his speech.
I hope this outline proves helpful to many of us in the upcoming months, and I also hope that others in P4C will do for energy and education what I have done here for health-care. If you do, send it along to me and I'll post it under your byline.
-- Linda Carpenter Sexauer community organizer, P4C
will potentially "cause 1.5 million Americans to lose their homes" ... "by the end of" 2009
health insurance "premiums have grown four times faster than wages" ... over "the last eight years"
"one million ... Americans have lost their health insurance" every year over "the last eight years"
a main causality of problem of small businesses going under
a main causality of problem of corporations outsourcing US jobs
"one of the largest and fastest-growing parts of our budget"
Therefore, current health-care system is bad for household budgets, is bad for federal budget, is bad for US business, is bad for US workers, and is unsustainable.
Immediate reaction to problem:
Delaying health-care reform is not an option, due to the seriousness of the problems (see above points) created by our current health-care system. Talking about this problem for another year while 1.5 million more Americans lose their homes due to medical debts is unacceptable.
Obama administration health-care accomplishments in last 30 days:
Health insurance for 11 million American kids with parents who work full-time.
Three main points included in Obama's economic recovery package that address current health-care problem:
investment in electronic health records & other new technology
Why is this a good investment?
reduction in medical errors
reduction in medical costs
assurance of personal privacy around medical histories/diagnoses
reduction in loss of human life
larger investment in biomedical research and cancer research/treatment
Why is this a good investment?
reduction in loss of life
largest historic investment in preventive care
Why is this a good investment?
reduction in illness
reduction in loss of life
reduction in medical costs
Framing of Obama administration's solution:
historic commitment to comprehensive health-care reform
"quality affordable health care for every American"
Note: These ideas have nothing to do with the predictable "It's socialism!" argument that'll be coming out of the right-wing media shills in the days ahead. When they run around like a bunch of Chicken Littles screaming, "It's socialism!", we say, "It's in the best interests of our nation for all of us to make a firm commitment to comprehensive health-care reform, so that all Americans have access to "quality affordable care." Don't be lured into their shark-infested "It's socialism!" waters.
Funding of solution:
Funded in part by addressing/eliminating inefficiencies in current health care delivery system. (Not in 2.24 speech, but subsequently revealed in Obama's 10-year budget outline): Proposed cost savings in Medicare, Medicaid and other health programs, savings that are predicted in part to be a result of investment in electronic health records & other new technology.
(Not in 2.24 speech, but subsequently revealed in Obama's 10-year budget outline): Proposed reductions in Bush tax cuts on households with incomes over $250,000/year; would reimpose previous tax liabilities on corporations and America's richest taxpayers. Specifically, would more strictly limit itemized deductions of taxpayers in the 35 percent bracket, who now get a bigger tax break than middle-income people. This proposed Bush-era tax cut reduction for the wealthy would result in high-income people getting the same tax break as middle-income people for claiming the same deductions or making the same charitable contributions.
(Not in 2.24 speech, but subsequently revealed in Obama's 10-year budget outline): Proposed requirement for drug companies to give bigger discounts to Medicaid. Currently, drugmakers provide a discount to Medicaid of a minimum 15.1 percent of the average manufacturer price for a brand-name product. Obama's proposal would increase Medicaid's minimum discount by drugmakers to 22.1 percent.
(Not in 2.24 speech, but subsequently revealed in Obama's 10-year budget outline): Proposed cut in Medicare payments to health insurance companies that receive private premium payments from Medicare beneficiaries for private coverage outside of Medicare. In other words, Obama wants to disallow health insurance companies from being able to receive full Medicare payments for their private premium-paying Medicare beneficiaries.
Note: The costly inefficiencies in our current health-care system have become increasingly worse despite their being increasingly controlled by free market forces over the past 40 years. The increasing control over our health-care costs by private industry is the result of deregulation of the health-care industry beginning with Nixon in the 1970s. While it would not be fair to blame all health-care cost increases on private industry, it is absolutely fair to hold them accountable for the increasing control over these costs.
Other desirable consequence of comprehensive health care-reform:
reduction in federal deficit
What fiscal conservative wouldn't like this consequence of Obama's plan for health-care reform?!
Who will participate in the decision-making process for health-care reform?
This training is for people who want to become informed activists for real healthcare change. It is also for people who are already activists but who want to help recruit and train more people. $5 donation but no one turned away.
When: Friday March 6th from 7:00 to 9:30 pm and Saturday March 7th from 10:00 am to 4 pm. Where: Hillside Community Church, 1422 Navellier St., El Cerrito, CA 94530, Between Potrero Av. and Moeser Lane. RSVP: 510-526-0972
Watch live the joint hearing in Washington, D.C. on the Massachusetts model for health-care.
This will be a rare opportunity to watch and listen to testimony from physicians, nurses, patients, labor leaders, insurance brokers, and state legislators on the failures of "Individual Mandate" policy features adopted by the Massachusetts plan, flawed features that are now being included in current discussions to overhaul our national health-care policy.
FYI, the current national health-care policy discussions are being held secretly in a Senate hearing room, and are being limited to participation by pharmaceutical and industry lobbyists, big labor unions, and other special interests.
Today, Thu. Feb. 12th, is the third National Call-In Day to support single-payer health-care, HR676. This event is organized by Healthcare-Now!, not to be confused with Health Care for America Now, an organization which supports incremental reform that would leave insurance companies in control of the system.
Thank-you to the 94 people who co-signed the single-payer health-care letter written by five members of P4C: Linda Sexauer, Bonnie Allen, Janice Kearns, Connie Madden, and Sarah Gibson! I submitted our letter in two stages, due to the trickling in of signatures. Today, I will send in the third stage.
And thank-you to everyone who also submitted their personal health-care stories to the Daschle team, while it's in the process of formulating our new national health-care policy.
This is going to be a big struggle, getting single-payer to pass through the US Congress. It won't happen overnight. There are just too many powerful and influential interests invested in our profit-driven system. I predict that this change process will be an incremental one. We are still building the national organization of citizens who will participate in this struggle. By agreeing to be a co-signer, you became part of that national organization.
If you haven't already, please join Community Organize. It started out as a California statewide organizing forum for all of us who volunteered our time, spent money to travel to and work in battleground states, and used our cell phone minutes to speak with voters all across the country to build the campaign that got Obama/Biden elected to the White House. It has grown and is now attracting members from all over the country, and the world, providing us with an on-line presence that is resulting in citizen teams that will all work together in the years to come to bring about this whole "change" thing. Our strength lies in our sheer numbers, and Community Organize is a vehicle to capitalize on that strength.
The White House team is paying very close attention to what is happening and being said on Community Organize. For those of us "political/social change junkies" who are following this site very closely, we are noticing that many of the communications, both written and video-taped, coming out of the White House, reflect strongly what we are saying to each other in the forums and blog posts on Community Organize. I believe that Community Organize is one of the epicenters of change right now.
So please consider joining this forum. Right now, it is mostly communications between all of us, within our geographical groups and nationwide, with the site managers creating new congressional district groups based on new members signing up. But very soon, this forum will become a hub where we will all, once again, become "bundles of energy" working together for a common purpose, just as we did in the months leading up to the election.
Thanks so much! Linda Carpenter Sexauer community organizer, P4C
Watch this video of the Health Care Community Discussion which took place on Dec. 29th at the Petaluma Community Center:
For a copy of Doug Roffmann's report of this meeting, which he submitted to the Obama-Biden Transition Project, please contact me. I'm happy to send it as an attachment to your e-mail address.
We are a local grassroots community and organizing forum, founded by a diverse group of volunteers who contributed significantly to the Obama campaign and who are now committed to continuing that participatory spirit by staying connected, sharing information, and taking action on the many critical issues we face today.
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