Progressive Democrats Sonoma County

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

CLICK HERE TO VIEW VIDEO

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!

Click Here to Listen

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.

• Two special events in Northampton, Massachusetts on Thursday and Friday with John Nichols of The Nation and Rep. John Conyers. More than 800 people turned out on Friday evening in Massachusetts for our PDA forum on single payer health reform. Our panel energized local activists and many who are new in our ranks. The movement is growing not only in numbers but also in intensity and clarity of purpose.

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.

READ THE REST HERE

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.

Click Here to Read the Full Story

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.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL STORY

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.

Read the Full Story Here

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:

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/40206

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.

Read the Rest Here

January 27, 2009

Read the media advisory!

We are happy to announce the launch of the official Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care (LGGHC) website at www.guaranteedhealthcare4all.org! This website will help coordinate the LCGHC efforts and help us achieve several important things.

Excellent post at Daily Kos on the Single Payer Action Alert for today!

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/1/30/1155/20568/782/690796

— many good materials, resources — great information for future use.

The Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Healthcare—National Single Payer Coalition Steering Committee wishes to thank everyone who made the December 22nd call-in day a huge success. By 11:00 a.m. that day, Senator Kennedy’s office reported to have already received over 1000 phone calls! Many congressional offices across the country were flooded with the message to support HR 676 and stop Massachusetts style healthcare reform from being used as a national model. We will escalate our efforts for the call-in action on January 15 by targeting the Washington DC offices.

HR 676 has been reintroduced in the 111th Congress— with the same bill number, and there are 86 cosponsors of HR 676 from the 110th Congress who have been sworn into the 111th session. This number will quickly grow because of the extensive lobby efforts already in motion. Our goal is to effectively double the number of cosponsors in the House by making sure elected officials hear from their constituents to cosponsor HR 676 again, and help find new co-sponsors.

Please urge your Congress member to attend the HR 676 briefing on January 28th from 3-5:00 p.m. in the halls of Congress.

In addition, encourage your Senators to sponsor companion legislation to HR 676 in the Senate.

Please take this urgent and important action! Click here for details and talking points.

GIVE AMERICA A GIFT: One Nation. One Plan.

The Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Healthcare/National Single Payer Coalition Steering Committee has adopted an action plan that includes two national call-in days to Congressional members. PDA is a key member organization of the Leadership Conference on Guaranteed Healthcare with California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, Healthcare-NOW! , and Physicians for a National Health Plan. The call-in days will focus coalition organizations on asking their membership to call individual members of Congress to support HR676.

The first national call-in day is Monday, December 22nd. Activists are asked to target their representatives in their home districts.

READ THE REST HERE, including tips, resources and sample scripts