AFL-CIO endorses single payer. Unanimously
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The campaign for the most comprehensive healthcare reform of all, single payer, won a huge boost Tuesday as the AFL-CIO voted unanimously at its national convention in Pittsburgh to endorse the enactment of single-payer, universal healthcare.
The vote came shortly after the convention was addressed by President Obama who repeated his call for comprehensive healthcare reform, and will accompany another AFL-CIO resolution supporting other Congressional efforts to pass comprehensive reform.
It marked the first time in some two decades that the AFL-CIO, the leading voice of the American labor movement, which includes 56 unions and more than 10 million members, has been formally on record in support of single-payer, which would essentially expand and improve Medicare to cover all Americans.
So, it couldn't be more clear, could it? If you're a progressive who wants to strengthen the unions -- and what progressive doesn't want to do that? -- support single payer.
And not the pissant public option!
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I was moved by this.....
The obscenity of our health care system!
Does this mean we can get the unions on our side in the
state-by-state fight for single-payer? They could put some real muscle behind the effort in Pennsylvania.
Hard to know
I think the rank and file is a lot more reality-based than the leadership, as usual.
Well, that is already the case for the CNA...
They helped pass single payer in CA(vetoed by the gov., twice).
California gubernatorial election, 2010
Well, let's hope that changes in 2010 with the governor's race in California. So far, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and former Governor/present Attorney General Jerry Brown are the Democratic contenders. (Former President Bill Clinton just endorsed Gavin Newsom.)
Gavin Newsom is supportive of single payer and I would suppose Jerry Brown is also.
Watch it lambert....
with statements like this (And not the pissant public option!) you're merely encouraging more sarcastic posts from the Bowers and Hamshers of the health care deform movement!
Does that mean I won't make it onto the teebee?
Wow. I'd been counting on that.
Seriously, at some point I've got to circle back to those two ridiculous posts and straighten the record out. But I figure they speak for themselves.
Incidentally, I've noticed "pissant" beginning to propagate. The blog that everybody hates and nobody reads strikes again...
newsom and single payer
i don't have links for this, but apparently SF offers single payer care to residents, and the program is working nicely. i believe that happened on his watch. he could likely go a long way in CA, assuming he has a solid track record of that program to campaign with, as well as the big dog's endorsement.
Yes...
... Well, it's one option among many, so SF does get the coverage and people do like it.
What SF doesn't get is the savings. Nor health care as a right. And the insurance companies are still in the loop. So expect it to go the way of RomneyCare or Dirigo (in ME) in a couple of years.
Newsom is losing badly
Gavin Newsom is pretty unlikely to win the nomination.
He is not well liked in the bay area (last poll had him down in double digits against Brown in San Francisco), and nobody knows who he is in the Southland.
He's gone through at least one iteration of campaign staff and the folks who worked for him in his mayoral campaigns don't want to have much to do with him.
He's kind of running as the empty-suit "change" candidate on a thin exaggerated resume.
Brown has raised much more money than Newsom, and Brown hasn't even formally announced he's a candidate.