PHA-Exch> [Healthcare-now] We want Guaranteed Choice Single Payer Healthcare for All

Fri Nov 16 13:02:12 PST 2007

November 16, 2007: SPECIAL to the Healthcare MOVEMENT

To People all over the Country Demanding Healthcare for All:

Last week in Chicago, more than 100 Healthcare-NOW activists came together
to plan our strategy for quality single payer, guaranteed choice, national
healthcare during the coming year.   We also launched our first SiCKO-Cure
Road Show.

We agreed that our mission is to by-pass all of the incremental compromise
plans being proposed that allow the insurance companies to continue killing
people.  American Patients for Universal Health Care revealed statistics
that 282,600 U.S. patients have died since the beginning of the Iraq War as
a result of insurance denials.  

We all know that we are in a major healthcare crisis - that the crisis of
the "uninsured" is only the tip of the iceberg.  The truth is that people
who think they have good insurance are dying too since the insurance
companies cancel and reject and deny even people who have been buying their
product for decades.   And their salaries and profits continue to rise
because the more people they deny, the more money they make.  Most people
without insurance are people with jobs, striving to make ends meet.many of
them making good middle class salaries that don't stretch to cover health
insurance.  And many of these are young people who don't expect to ever have
a job that will cover their healthcare needs.

So, what are we getting from all of the major candidates in the Republican
and Democratic Parties?  The most promoted proposal, supported by both
former governor Mitt Romney, a leading Republican, and Senator Hillary
Clinton, a leading Democrat,  is the "individual mandate," a plan that would
force all of us to purchase health insurance from the insurance companies -
further enriching them and allowing them to continue controlling our system,
providing inadequate plans, raising premiums, charging co-pays and
deductibles,  and denying us healthcare.  

Why don't the candidates get it?  Why can't they see that we do not want the
insurance corporations and their rich lobbyists to continue controlling our
healthcare system?  We want a single payer system that WE control as a part
of a public responsibility.

In our Chicago meeting of healthcare leaders, our business coalition for
single payer noted that in meetings with insurance executives, they have
learned that these entrepreneurs are determined to stay in the game and
continue to haul away billions of our healthcare dollars (one third of the
whole healthcare budget goes into their pockets for administration and
profits) as long as they possibly can.  Even though they know that the
system in the United States is going to change because of our demand, they
plan to stay in control and rake in the dough as long as possible. 

We know they are powerful. They are able to resist every attempt to regulate
them or remove them.  They have more than one well-paid lobbyist for every
single Member of Congress.  

Unfortunately, none of the "media-chosen" front-runners is willing or able
to commit to removing the insurance companies so far.  Everyone on this
Healthcare-NOW mailing list should investigate these candidates.  Ask the
real questions.   Who are their contributors?  Where is their loyalty?
Bird-dog them.  Ask them to commit to a single payer system.  Ask them to
reject insurance and drug company financing.   Some of them expect us to
believe the promise that (when they are elected) they are going to heavily
regulate the insurance industry.  Give me a break!  They have never been
heavily regulated and they never will be.    They must be exposed and
ejected. 

How many more thousands have to die as a result of insurance denials and
rejections before we get the change we need?

Let's get a system that is not based on denying healthcare procedures to the
people who need them in order to increase profits.

What is your job and my job now?  Elect Progressive candidates to Congress -
Pro-single payer candidates throughout the nation!  That's what we need.
Candidates who care about what we think about healthcare and the health of
our country and our world.  NOW is the time to make it happen - not sometime
next year when you realize you don't have a viable candidate.  Find new
candidates if you don't have one in your district, Get ready to help elect
them and hold them accountable.

Our national Sicko-Cure Road Show is on the trail right now.  We are
visiting 22 Congressional Districts and 11 States.  Go to our website to
read the story. And get ready to join us on more Road Shows into other
Districts next year.    Who wants to go to New Hampshire in January?  Thanks
to support from our co-sponsors, the California Nurses Association and the
Physicians for a National Health Program, the Steelworkers and hundreds of
local groups, this strategy is working and building support for HR 676.

Next year, we will be joining with these groups and others to expose the
Massachusetts "individual mandates" requiring/forcing everybody to purchase
insurance from insurance companies or pay a hefty fine.  Maybe it will be a
Boston tea party.  We are discussing a Road Show down from Massachusetts to
Washington, D.C. culminating in a National Memorial for the 282,600 people
who have been killed by insurance company denials.   What do you think of
this idea? 

We need you to be a part of us at every step on this journey.  You've helped
to build a huge movement for a national healthcare system.  Now we must
redouble our efforts to challenge the privatizers and keep them from
sabotaging that movement.   Go to our website to learn more.  AND Join
Healthcare-NOW. www.healthcare-now.org <http://www.healthcare-now.org/>  

Marilyn Clement,

National Coordinator

Healthcare-NOW

www.healthcare-now.org

P.S. We have a brief analysis of the presidential candidates' healthcare
plans.  Let us know if you would like to have a copy.
info at healthcare-now.org  Also be in touch if you'd like to help organize for
this critical campaign for a national guaranteed single payer healthcare
system.  No one else can do it.  Like it or not,  "We are the leaders we
have been waiting for." 

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