‘Sicko’ subject to speak on health care reform

ITHACA — Donna Smith, who appeared in “Sicko,” the Michael Moore documentary film on the U.S. health care system, is expected to give a talk in Ithaca next week.

Smith and her husband, Larry, were forced to declare bankruptcy and lost their home because of medical care costs. She is part of the Healthcare Road Show, a traveling group and program calling for creation of a national single-payer health insurance system.

Smith is scheduled to tell her story and discuss the issue three times in two days:

* 7-9 p.m. Monday, Sept. 8 in Room 103 of Textor Hall at Ithaca College;  Read more 

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 

9/6 MON: non-profit & single-payer healthcare leafleting

Please join the Coalition Against Privatization at the Labor Day Parade, Saturday September 6, 2008 at 9:30am.

CAP members will be using the Labor Day Parade as an outreach opportunity to distribute leaflets to marchers and on-lookers about the for-profit conversion of GHI and HIP, as well as healthcare as a human right and single-payer bill HR 676. Join us for the festivities!

To help with this action, join CAP at 9:30am at the corner of 44th St. and 5th Ave. Parade begins at 10:00 am.

If you are able to go to this, please post about your experience.

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 

California Health Bills Heading to Governor’s Desk Need Your Help

Getting The Word Out About Single Payer

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 

Real Clear Politics has a “HealthCare Index” with much linky goodness and badness, most of which I haven’t yet checked out.

I’ve recently made daily visits to RCP, and as far as I can recall, this is a new feature. This is further evidence that we can win the battle for the political agenda; the issue of universal health care keeps getting more and more play in the media all the time. I wonder what could be done to get single payer into their index!

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.

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 

Will the Gropinator sign it?

A universal health care plan is headed for the governor’s desk again.

The bill by state Sen. Sheila Kuehl, a Santa Monica Democrat, would create a state-financed Medicare-for-all style system to cover all Californians. It cleared the state Assembly on Friday by a 43-31 vote.

The plan would be funded through state and federal appropriations, patient premiums and co-payments limited annually to $250 per person or $500 per family.

How much do you pay in health care premiums? Readers?  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 

Campaign case report: What Obama and McCain pledge to do about the health system

McCain would end the employee tax exclusion for soundness security against loss spending, instead offering refundable tax credits to help people buy health insurance.

I can’t say it enough, the fate of health care will be determined by the down ballot races.

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.