Health-care-reform advocates rally for HR 676

“I appeared in Michael Moore’s movie not because our story was unique, but because it was not unique,” she said.

Smith’s experiences encouraged her to found American Patients for Universal Health Care, and she urged those in attendance at the Rochester rally not to be led astray by people who refer to single-payer health-care systems as “leftist” or “communist.”  Read more 

Americans Who Have Insurance —But Still No Access To Care, Part I:

A friend who lives in Boston complained, not long ago, about not being able to find a physician. In Boston? “Come on,” I said. “This is like claiming you couldn’t find a liquor store.”

“They’re all oncologists and cardiologists,” he grumbled. “Last week I cut my hand badly enough that it needed stitches. I have good insurance. But I couldn’t get an appointment with my family doctor—or any of my friends’ doctors. I didn’t want to spend hours in the ER. So I wound up going to my sister’s house. She sewed it up at her kitchen table.”

So what did he pay the insurance company all that money for, then?  Read more 

Doctors support single-payer plan

American health care is now largely delivered via a government-subsidized private health insurance industry operating parallel to and within Medicare. A recent nationwide poll of physicians published in the Annals of Internal Medicine utilizing the AMA physician database demonstrated that 60 percent of doctors support a single-payer national health plan based on the most efficient and effective Medicare system.  Read more 

C4O Spotlight: Let’s get Debbie Cook (CA-46) on the air!

Today, the C4O All Stars spotlight shines on Debbie Cook, mayor of Huntington Beach, California and candidate for California’s 46th Congressional District.  Read more 

A feasible health care plan

Mr. Margolis implies that the nation can’t afford a Medicare-like system that would cover all Americans, yet the facts would argue otherwise. If one were to add up all the public monies currently spent on health care in the U.S. and applied it across our entire population, on a per capita basis, we already spend more than many industrialized countries do to cover all their citizens.

Praise to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for a pretty powerful policy piece.

Why aren’t business leaders pushing for universal, single-payer health-insurance coverage?

Memo to cost-conscious businessmen: You should be backing efforts to have a universal health-care system as a way to level the economic playing field with competitors abroad and at home.  Read more 

Health care options debated at labor picnic

“What that means is you take Medicare and you expand and improve it in order to make it a national system,” said Doug Bullock, an Albany County legislator and one of the organizers for the event. “We would keep the same doctors, but we would lose all of the insurance companies who have been wrongly making our medical decisions for us.”

Congressional candidate Paul Tonko spent the afternoon with his constituents to show his support for their hard work and for the idea of single-payer health care.  Read more 

Daily Herald Briefs

Want to know the status of the new county jail and sheriff’s office? Kane County Sheriff Pat Perez will present an update at the Dundee Township Democratic Party monthly meeting at 7:30 p.m., Thursday at the West Dundee Public Safety Center II at the corner of Sleepy Hollow Road and Route 72. James Rhodes of the Chicago Single-Payer Action Network will also discuss health care for the single-payer. The meeting is open to the public.

Your intrepid reporter spent the morning in downtown Pittsburgh working the Labor Day parade on behalf of HR 676, along with other members of the Western PA Coalition for Single Payer Healthcare. The local letter carriers had kindly allowed us to march with them; as they were at the tail end of the parade, we had plenty of time to leaflet before hand, and we handed out the last of what we had as we marched. It was kind of fun playing carnival barker, calling out “Single payer, single payer, universal health care, everybody in, nobody out!” and shoving leaflets at people.  Read more 

Support move to universal health care

That’s because we have an enormous parasite on the U.S. health care system: The health insurance industry. Health insurance companies gobble up about 31 cents of every health care dollar. They contribute not one aspirin and not one Band-Aid to anyone’s medical care. They collect premiums and they control who gets care and who does not. I hold them directly responsible for those 18,000 deaths.  Read more 

There are several letters to the editor concerning health care, but I like the first one the best:
Here’s a universal care proposal

Re: “Texans without coverage top U.S. – Nearly 1 in 4 lack policies; some say statistics misleading,” Wednesday news story.

Why doesn’t Texas implement universal health care or state Medicare for all of its residents?

Q&A: Karen Hartley-Nagle

2. What steps should the government take to improve the health of its citizens, and make health-care more affordable?

Pass H.R. 676, Single Payer Universal Health Care now.  Read more 

John Geyman has an excellent post examining all the front groups opposing Medicare for All. Highly recommended.

Who knew (I certainly didn’t) that there was a reception at the convention on Tuesday for co-sponsors of HR676, the House bill for single payer health care?

Dr. Claudia Fegan spoke at the reception. It is a very eloquent piece of advocacy and well worth reading. Here is the last bit:

It is time to demand what we deserve. It is time to demand universal health care. We won’t get there by urging the insurance industry to play nice with others. We will get there by demanding a singlepayer national health insurance; Medicare for all.  Read more 

AHIP Launches New Long-Term Care Education Campaign

The centerpiece of this campaign is a new consumer-friendly website, http://www.MyLifeMyFamily.com, to provide consumers with basic information about long-term care insurance. The website provides videos that feature real-life stories from current policyholders, an interactive online quiz, and additional resources on long-term care insurance.  Read more 

New Orleans health neglect system post-Katrina.

Skylanda  Read more 

In the unlikely event that you don’t have enough to do, here are some single-payer healthcare events for your amusement:

Labor Day parades turn out to be a big venue for promoting single payer healthcare. You may want to check out your local event. Here in Pittsburgh we’ll be handing out leaflets, as well as marching with the letter carriers. If any of you Pittsburghers want to come, look for us at “Freedom Corner” (Center and Crawford) or at the City-County Building before the parade. Most of us will be wearing red or orange shirts.  Read more 

Democrats’ platform shift on health care

Yet, at the national Platform Drafting Committee meeting in Cleveland at the start of August, the official reception was a bit frosty. When I arrived there early one morning and renewed a longstanding request for a minute or two to make a verbal presentation on behalf of the statement for guaranteed health care, the party’s national platform director informed me candidly: “It’s not going to happen.”

But grassroots organizing continued.  Read more 

JOE BIDEN’S “REALITY” BASED HEALTHCARE

To make the plan less prone to attack from those who fear “socialized” medicine, Biden said, “I don’t want a whole new bureaucracy.”

This is why it is necessary to ALWAYS refer to it as Medicare for All. Because it would require no new bureaucracy to administer, we would just use the present Medicare system. It is Medicare, what we have now, the only difference is that it includes everyone.

The CV Bugle has a good article on the Democratic primary for the first CD in Arizona. The good news is that all but one of the candidates supports Medicare for All.

Private health care system is failing

Being recently unemployed, with a heart condition, I feel that the lack of guaranteed health care, is keeping me from pursuing a business of my own, switching jobs or careers and/or seeking consulting work, simply because I must have health coverage and with my pre-conditions, I am not eligible to obtain it on my own.

Our healthcare neglect system is a powerful incentive for age discrimination.

Have you written a letter to the editor in support of Medicare for All? Remember, it’s not socialized medicine, it’s Medicare for All!

[UPDATE Initial reports were wrong. Tubbs-Jones is in critical condition. —lambert]

[UPDATE 7:22PM EDT Breaking on CNN: She’s gone. What a damn shame. —lambert]

Via Atrios we learn that Cleveland, OH - Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs- Jones has reportedly had a massive aneurysm and remains on life support Wednesday morning at Huron Road Hospital.

This is doubly sad because Tubbs Jones is a supporter of Medicare for All.

Democrats fund Maffei in race with Sweetland for 25th District

Maffei’s strong showing has won support from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has pledged to spend $2.7 million on television advertisements in three of the four districts that extend into Monroe County — the 25th, 26th and 29th, all of which are now represented by Republicans. The committee is sending Maffei’s campaign money through its Red to Blue program.

Fifteen days of blogging for health care reform: Unfunded mandates

“You know about EMTALA, right?”  Read more