Single Payer Healthcare e-alert
Hi EJAGers, AfDers and friends,
Following is latest e-alert from the national Alliance for Democracy for Single Payer Healthcare. Note the picture from the Die-in at Rep. Blumenauer’s office to support single Payer healthcare. Note the single payer is not the same as the Obama/Baucas/Kennedy public option. If you make this call, be sure to be clear that you feel a public option is a public cop-out, that public option is destined to failure and that we should not be forced to buy insurance in order to have healthcare. Healthcare is a human right, not a profit generating opportunity.
Following that is Press Release from Single Payer Action for rally/protest at Rep. Blumenauer/Howard Dean healthcare town hall on Friday afternoon. Please make the call and show up on Friday.
David e. Delk, Alliance for Democracy – Portland Chapter 503 232 5495 www.afd-pdx.org
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We send this update and ask you to keep up the pressure and the calls.
We are making a difference–60% of Americans favor single payer non-profit universal health care. HR 676 now has the support of 78 House members, and it is endorsed by over 15,000 doctors, 40 state AFL-CIO organizations, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and the American Public Health Association.
The House of Representatives will be moving forward with health care reform legislation in the coming weeks. The draft bill is scheduled to be released the week of June 15. From there the bill will go to three House committees: Energy and Commerce, Education and Labor, and Ways and Means.
Please call the chairmen of these committees and say that “because the majority of Americans, doctors and nurses support a universal single payer health care system, we hope to see a robust debate on single payer health care–with single payer advocates as witnesses–at the hearings in the People’s House.”
Remind each of them that it is was disgraceful to see Senator Baucus arrest doctors and nurses at the Senate Finance Committee roundtables. These individuals were blocked from providing their expert analysis and information on health care reform. It would be outrageous for this to occur in the House of Representatives as well.
Here are the chairmen to call:
- Energy and Commerce Chairman: Rep. Henry Waxman (202) 225-2927
- Education and Labor Chairman: Rep. George Miller (202)-225-3725
- Ways and Means Chairman: Rep. Charles Rangel Phone: (202) 225-3625
In Mid-May, Representatives John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), and Donna Edwards (D-MD), along with Michael Lighty and Donna Smith from the California Nurses Association and Tim Carpenter of the Progressive Democrats of America, met with House Democratic Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer. Rep. Hoyer indicated that he was supportive of “robust, deep debate on single payer” in the House during the 111th Congress. Let’s hold him to it!
On June 3, Sen. Baucus finally met with single payer advocates, although he told them he would not be inviting their participation in reform discussions. Read about it here, as well as President Obama’s June 3 letter to Senators Baucus and Kennedy, in which he outlines his coverage and cost-cutting goals for health care reform.
AfD’s team for single payer thanks you for your calls to Congress. In the coming weeks, you–we all–can make a difference in the debate when the House takes up health care reform.
Nancy, Lou, Peter, Ruth W., David D., Rick, Ruth W. and Barbara
Photo by David Delk, AfD Portland demonstrating for Single Payer at Rep. Earl Blumenauer’s NE Portland district office
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For more information contact:
Philip Kauffman at 503.250.0327
Russell Mokhiber at 202.468.8868
Single Payer Action at www.singlepayeraction.org
Single Payer Advocates Hold Protest for Single Payer Healthcare at Howard Dean/Earl Blumenauer Town Hall
At 2:30, on Friday, June 5, 2009, advocates of a single payer healthcare system will hold a protest at the Town Hall on Healthcare, hosted by Howard Dean and Rep. Earl Blumenauer at PCC’s Cascade Campus (705 N. Killingsworth Street, Portland, Oregon.)
Participating in the protest will be advocates from Single Payer Action, Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), Healthcare-NOW!, the Portland Jobs With Justice Healthcare Committee, and members of local labor unions.
Rep. Blumenauer has said a Single Payer system is not politically feasible and Howard Dean has said it should not be “imposed on everybody.”
“We challenge Congressman Blumenauer and Howard Dean to tell us why an option that a majority of Americans and physicians favor is not politically feasible,” said Single Payer Action’s Philip Kauffman. “Congressman Blumenauer and Dean need to stand up to the insurance industry and not allow them to dictate the debate on healthcare. A single payer system will save tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars every year and is the only option that will cover all Americans.”
Proponents of a single payer option have recently been arrested and charged with “disruption of Congress” for asking that the Senate Finance Committee hear from single payer advocates.
That committee held three days of hearings on health care recently and called 41 witnesses — not one of which was a single payer advocate.
The Baucus 13, as they have become known, will begin arraigned in Washington, D.C. this week.
Single Payer activists in Oregon have recently held a “Die-In” Rally at Rep. Blumenauer and held a silent protest at Sen. Ron Wyden’s (D-OR) Forest Grove Town Hall.
“Our leaders will shrug these events off. They will say — ‘It’s democracy in action.’” said Kauffman, “But the real irony is that it is their very democratic inaction, their inability to put the people’s needs over the insurance industries profits, that leads us to these demonstrations.”
Filed under: Health Care