Stand Up! Take Action! Vote!
By David Swanson
May 12, 2009
Dr. Margaret Flowers, who was arrested along with seven others at the first Senate Finance Committee hearing on healthcare, just phoned me from the second one. As Chairman Max Baucus called the hearing to order, about 20 members of the California Nurses Association (CNA) stood and turned their backs on the committee. Pasted on their backs were signs reading: “Nurses Say: Patients First,” “Stop AHIP,” (referring to health insurance lobbyists), “Pass Single Payer.”
Want single payer universal healthcare? Don’t try to bring it up in the Senate.
Health care activists disrupted a Senate Finance Committee hearing Tuesday, standing up one after the other as Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) tried to restore order.
As soon as police escorted one protester out of the room, another would stand up, criticizing the committee for convening a panel of 15 experts and excluding witnesses who support creating a Medicare system for all Americans. About eight were led out of the hearing.
Baucus’ response? “We need more police.”
A video of the protest appears below.
Hearing on “Expanding Health Care Coverage”
Senate Committee on Finance
May 5, 2009
This hearing represents the the framework of reform that is being crafted behind closed doors. The tragedy is that any bill that results from this process will delay further the reform that we desperately need. In the meantime, tens of millions or more will face unnecessary physical suffering and financial hardship, and many will die.
The epitaph: BUT MY VIEWS WERE RESPECTED
April 29, 2009
Kay Tillow, Coordinator of the All Unions Committee for Single Payer Health Care—HR 676, welcomed the effort by these state legislators and urged everyone to contact their own state senator and representative and ask them to sign the Appeal.
A group of state legislators has initiated a nationwide effort to publish an Appeal to President Obama and members of the 111th Congress to support HR 676, single payer healthcare legislation introduced in Congress by Representative John Conyers, Jr. and 75 co-sponsors.
Twenty four state legislators, from 16 states, have sent a copy of the appeal to all 7,500 state legislators in the United States asking them to add their names to the appeal which will be published in Roll Call, a widely read Capitol Hill publication.
The type of health care reform we see coming out of Washington will be determined by those who have a seat at the table. Right now the major players are health insurance industry lobbyists, pharmaceutical lobbyists and business. They are pushing for more of the same policies that have brought our health quality down, excluded millions of people and brought millions more into medical bankruptcy. If our reform is left up to these players, we will be mandated to purchase insurance without guarantee that insurance will be affordable or actually pay for needed health care. If our reform is left up to these players, insurance companies will continue to rake in enormous profits at the expense of patients’ lives.
Read the Rest Here
(includes video from recent rally. Pssst … Your Ass is Not Covered)
By Russell Mokhiber, CommonDreams.org
April 8, 2009
Last week, I wrote an article – Something is Rotten at PBS – about a slanted PBS Frontline documentary – “Sick Around America.”
Frontline hired former Washington Post reporter T.R. Reid to put together the documentary.
Reid did the reporting.
He turned over his interviews to the Frontline producers.
And they came back with a documentary Reid couldn’t agree with.
Frontline tried to get Reid to narrate the film anyway – whether he agreed with it or not.
Reid refused.
Mike Farrel on Medicare for All
IMPORTANT CORRECTION REGARDING Monday’s LA Rally
Single Payer Reform is NOT Dr. Dean’s “Public Option”.
No Way. No How.
Regrettably, my email to you yesterday incorrectly and inappropriately linked the new Howard Dean “Public Option” initiative with our 14-year single payer cause and with Monday’s 9:00AM Rally in LA and its sponsors.
Some single payer advocates, including me, have been confused by the “Line in the Sand” petition campaign. Clearly I should not have included it in our Rally email nor sent it to you before reviewing it with our HCA leadership!
Any “public option” proposal (including Dean’s) is not a form of single-payer. In fact, a number of the single-payer sponsors regard “public option” plans as mandate programs expanding for-profit insurance industry and containing no guarantees of affordable, comprehensive, quality healthcare made accessible to all.
Those who signed and forwarded to friends the “public option” petition believing it to be in some way a message of support for single-payer may want to email or call representatives to retract their names from the petition and indicate support for national single-payer bill HR 676 and California’s single-payer bill SB 810 (Leno). It’s important that your representatives hear the message you intended to send!
For more, read this from Physicians for A National Health Program.
Please accept my apology for the error.
Thank you for your continued support.
George Savage
Co-Chair, OneCareNow Campaign Committee for SB 810. A project of Health Care for All—California
Urge your local representatives to support SB 840
PDA Healthcare Not Warfare Campaign Co-Chairs, Donna Smith and Norman Solomon join this Special PDA Healthcare for All IOT (Issue Organizing Team) conference call to update us on the very latest in the movement to get Single Payer on the table this year!
Find out what you can do to help!
Please join Single-Payer Advocates from all over California for a rally at the final scheduled White House Forum on Healthcare Reform in Los Angeles this Monday, April 6th to put Single-Payer and HR 676 on the table as the best option for healthcare reform.
PDA California has been part of the planning for this action to demonstrate that we the people demand a single-payer national healthcare system.
TONIGHT ON PBS
FRONTLINE INVESTIGATES THE FAILURES OF AMERICA’S HEALTH CARE SYSTEM
FRONTLINE Presents
SICK AROUND AMERICA
Tuesday, March 31, 2009, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS
This is a show you should not miss. You can go online and watch it later at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundamerica/ if you can not watch tonight.
What a week of Healthcare Not Warfare action!
Dear PDA,
With the passing of the sixth anniversary of the Iraq War this past week, making our desire to redirect wasteful military spending to meet human needs has been front and center. I began last Tuesday morning on a journey to join as many of you as possible in the trenches of our fight for single-payer—publicly funded and privately delivered—healthcare for all.
It has been an incredible week of positive activism and energy:
*The Burlington, Vermont, regional White House forum on healthcare reform where more than 400 activists chanted, “Everybody In and Nobody Out,” outside the Davis Center at the University of Vermont.
*The amazing forum held at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, on Wednesday night.
The following report from the March 5 White House Health Care Summit was received today from Dr. Oliver Fein, president of Physicians for a National Health Program.
The White House health care summit
By Oliver Fein, M.D.
Thanks to many grassroots activists and physicians who called the White House and threatened to demonstrate outside its gates, I was at the Health Care Summit at the White House on March 5 along with Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.). And it was good thing. It meant that the single-payer position was recognized as one pathway to health care reform. It also meant that one of our concerns was present: namely, that any health care reform that includes the for-profit, private health insurance companies will fail to provide universal coverage, will not be able to reduce heath care costs, and will increase the number of underinsured.
March 9, 2009
For immediate release:
For more information contact:
Laura Bonham, Communications Coordinator: Laura@pdamerica.org, (435) 336-2123
Tim Carpenter, National Director: Tim@pdamerica.org, (413)-320-2015
THE PEOPLE GIVE CONGRESS A TASTE OF MANAGED CARE’S BITTER MEDICINE
WASHINGTON, DC – Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) and allied organizations in support of HR 676, United States National Health Care Act or the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, today are giving Congress a dose of the reality millions face daily as they urge citizens to fax to Congress their health insurance bills or letters of denial of coverage.
“The injustice in our health care system must end, and Congress must act now for real health care reform,” said PDA National Director Tim Carpenter.
On March 10th, 2009, we will host a deluge of activity in support of HR 676.
We plan to flood phone and fax machines in Congress demanding support of HR 676. We ask that you join with thousands of others to call Congress and also fax your health insurance bill or letter of denial to Congress. Click here to take action.
We also urge you to contact the new Secretary-designate, Kathleen Sebelius; click here.
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3733
Media Advisory
FAIR Study: Media Blackout on Single-Payer Healthcare
Proponents of popular policy shut out of debate
3/6/09
Major newspaper, broadcast and cable stories mentioning healthcare reform in the week leading up to President Barack Obama’s March 5 healthcare summit rarely mentioned the idea of a single-payer national health insurance program, according to a new FAIR study. And advocates of such a system–two of whom participated in yesterday’s summit–were almost entirely shut out, FAIR found.
March 4, 2009, Washington, DC
WE DID IT—KEEP IT UP!
UPDATE: Dr. Oliver Fein, who currently heads Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), also received an invitation on Wednesday.
It appears grassroots action by Progressive Democrats of America, Physicians for a National Health Program, Unions for Single Payer Health Care and the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Healthcare has resulted in the extension of an invitation to Rep. John conyers to attend Pres. Obama’s healthcare reform meeting tomorrow, March 5.
While PDA has focused on electing a real single-payer healthcare advocate Tom Geoghegan to Congress, some “progressive” organizations have spent the week collecting signatures in order to defeat single-payer healthcare. “Progressive healthcare reformers need to decide which side they are on—with patients, doctors, and the majority of Americans, or with the healthcare corporations and their multi-millionaire CEOs.
For Immediate Release
March 3, 2009
Contact: Charles Idelson, 510-273-2246 or Shum Preston, 510-273-2276
Nation’s RNs on the Healthcare Summit:
Insurance-Based Reform Will Fail, and Undermine Public Trust,
Only Medicare for All Can Achieve Administration’s Goals
On the eve of President Obama’s healthcare summit Thursday, the nation’s largest organization of registered nurses said today that expanding and updating Medicare to cover everyone is the most cost-effective and comprehensive approach to achieving the goals and principles outlined by the president in his recent address to Congress and budget proposal.
WASHINGTON, DC — Sandy Eaton, RN, of the Massachusetts Nurses Association, addresses members of Congress and Congressional staff members assembled Wednesday to learn more about the Massachusetts model for reform and why people are still suffering and lacking healthcare under the plan.
58 members of Congress sent staff to learn more from the expert panel, and the briefing was hosted by the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care. Congressman Eric Massa of New York moderated the briefing, and several other members of Congress attended as well, including Rep. John Conyers, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, and Rep Lynn Woolsey.
This public forum on solving the U.S. healthcare crisis was held in Charlottesville, Va., on February 23, 2009. Do attempt this at home by inviting these and other great speakers:
MEMORANDUM
TO: Members of the House of Representatives and Health Staff
FROM: The Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care: The National Single Payer Alliance
(Conveners: Physicians for a National Health Program, Progressive Democrats of America,
Healthcare NOW!, and the California Nurses Association/NNOC).
RE: Forum: “National Lessons from State Health Reform: The Massachusetts Case Study”
February 25, 2009, 2pm – 4pm, 2226 Rayburn House Office Building
_________________________________________________________________________________________
We encourage you and your staff to attend an important Congressional joint forum organized by the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care. In the last two decades over a dozen state health reform acts have attempted to provide universal health care coverage. Critical analysis of these models is highly significant to the national reform debate. The February 25 forum will consider the most recent state health care overhaul this country has seen. What can we learn from Massachusetts and is it a model for national health policy?
The forum, “National Lessons from State Health Reform: The Massachusetts Case Study”, will be held on February 25, 2009, 2pm – 4pm, 2226 Rayburn House Office Building.
Witnesses will represent health centers, insurance brokers, physicians, nurses and patients.
TAKE ACTION THURSDAY
The Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Healthcare is encouraging everyone to participate in the next National Call-in Day for HR 676. Mark your calendars…
February 12, 2009: Call Congress, and the President
Congressional switchboard: 202-225-3121 (ask for your representative’s office)
If your member is a current co-sponsor (Rep. Lynn Woolsey), thank your rep. and ask him or her to stand firm for HR 676 and actively seek additional co-sponsors.
If your member was a co-sponsor in the last Congress, ask him or her to sign on immediately as a co-sponsor in this Congress.
If your member has yet to co-sponsor HR 676 (Rep. Mike Thompson), ask him or her to please become a co-sponsor, select one or two talking points here.
Health Care Forum
Saturday, February 21
3 – 4:30 PM
The Glaser Center
547 Mendocino Ave.
Santa Rosa, CA
Find out how to make your voice heard as the discussion begins in Washington about one of the most important decisions of our time.
By Mimi Kennedy, PDA Advisory Board Chair
February 3, 2009
Open Letter to Tom Daschle—and a Petition To Sign
Mr. Daschle, you are now exactly the wrong man for health care reform.
It is clear you will work for a solution that is a political compromise—and now, any compromise you might attain will be lethally vulnerable. From all sides, your compromise will be attacked as the work of a man unwilling to pay his fair share of burdens he willfully imposes on others, of a man who’s not even cognizant of his actions when he ducks those burdens.
We are an affiliated chapter of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA)
MOVIE NIGHT!
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
NOTE: Early start time for Wednesday’s meeting. Agenda to include brief updates on PDA & PDSonoma campaigns, actions and announcements, followed by our featured movie!
PDSonoma meets the 2nd Wednesday of every month except December.
New Members and Guests Always Welcome!
Refreshments can be ordered and enjoyed in our meeting room. Please arrive early if you wish to order refreshments.
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