Does your Senator sit on the Finance Committee? Call tomorrow--May 1--to get single payer on the agenda

The Senate Finance Committee has begun to hold "roundtables" on health care. The first was held last week, there will be another on Tuesday, May 5, with the final roundtable covering health care financing on Thursday, May 14. Since single payer is the most economical way to finance an accessible health care system doesn't it make sense to have a single payer expert witness on the roundtable panel?

If your senator sits on this committee, please give him or her a call and ask that a single payer expert be invited to participate. Single payer groups in Florida are already organizing call-ins to Senator Bill Nelson, and New Yorkers are pushing Sen. Schumer. Join them! Physicians for a National Health Program’s Dr. David Himmelstein recently addressed the House Ways and Means Committee’s subcommittee hearing on health care reform, after call-ins targeted Rep. Charles Rangel—these calls get results!

Finance Committee members and a phone script at the "Read More" link!
Here's the committee members:

• Bill Nelson, Florida
• Max Baucus, Montana
• John D. Rockefeller IV, West Virginia
• Kent Conrad, North Dakota
• Jeff Bingaman, New Mexico
• John F. Kerry, Massachusetts
• Blanche L. Lincoln, Arkansas
• Arron Wyden, Oregon
• Charles E. Schumer, New York
• Debbie Stabenow, Michigan
• Maria Cantwell, Washington
• Robert Menendez, New Jersey
• and Thomas Carper, Delaware

Fax and phone info is available at www.senate.gov

Here's a script suggested by Floridians for Health Care:

President Obama has declared that in the effort to reform our health care system, “every voice has to be heard. Every idea must be considered. Every option must be on the table. There should be no sacred cows.”

For the upcoming May 14 Finance Committee roundtable on health care financing, I am calling to urge (your senator) to use his/her influence as a Committee Member to insure that an expert witness on the benefits of a Single Payer (Medicare-for-all) financing system be included on the agenda. Every study on the issue of health care financing has shown that a single payer system would be the most cost effective and efficient method of insuring universal health care to all Americans. I recommend such experts as Dr. David Himmelstein, Cambridge, Mass., or Dr. Marcia Angell, Harvard Medical School.

Whatever system is ultimately adopted, Congress owes it to the American people to follow President Obama’s mandate to consider all options - single payer should not be off the table.

Post a comment if you make a call--we want to hear what feedback you got, and remember, your actions can encourage others to act too!

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"It's about guts!"

Sen. Bernie Sanders says single payer has the people's support; Ed Schultz on MSNBC's The Ed Show agrees, but Bernie says don't forget the power of industry money--we need a strong grassroots movement for health care if we're going to see anything like what we need. Good talk, and a nice break in the single payer media blackout.



You can send Ed a thumbs-up in the comment box on his MSNBC site, here.

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California's Fair Elections Act draws SFV chapter support

San Fernando Valley chapter members are working to support the California Fair Elections Act, doing outreach to state Democratic clubs, and tabling at farmers’ markets, the Los Angeles Times book fair, and, next month, LA’s World Fest, a solar-powered Earth Day festival featuring music, environmental education and advocacy, family events, and food. World Fest will take place Saturday, May 16, from 10 a.m. t0 7:30 p.m. at Woodley Park, on Woodley Avenue between Victory and Burbank. Stop by and find out what you can do for clean elections—and what clean elections can do for the planet!

The California Fair Elections Act comes to the ballot in June, 2010. For more info, email chapter coordinator Robin Gilbert at rxdiet1@verizon.net.

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Friday, May 1: Mainers Cry "May Day"

Single payer advocates in Maine are working to turn out supporters for a health-care caravan from Biddeford to Bangor, visiting their senators' district offices along the way. They're pushing for a big turnout in Portland, where they plan to rally at Senator Olympia Snowe's office, at 10:30 am, at 3 Canal Plaza (corner of Market and Spring Streets), and then walk together to Senator Susan Collins' office just around the corner.

E-mail Ali at ali@mainepeoplesalliance.org to join or for more information.

The state caravan schedule is as follows:

9 a.m: Snowe's Biddeford Office, 227 Main Street

10:30 a.m. Snowe's Portland Office, 3 Canal Plaza, 

followed by walk to Collins' Portland office

12 noon: Snowes' Auburn Office, 2 Great Falls Plaza

2 p.m.: Collins' Augusta Office, 68 Sewall Street

4 p.m.: Collins Bangor Office, 202 Harlow Street

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State legislators launch effort to push HR 676--ask yours to sign on too!

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.

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 legislators, in their letter, cite the growing “economic crisis” and “badly strained” state budgets as reasons for passage of HR676.

Co-conveners of the campaign are State Senator Jim Ferlo of Pittsburgh and Assemblyman Richard Gottfried of New York. Senators and representatives from Colorado, Georgia, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin also signed the letter.

The Alliance for Democracy is joining with other groups in urging you contact your state legislators and asking them to sign on to this Appeal. If you don't know who represents you at the state level you can find out here.

The ‘Dear Colleague” letter, the ‘Appeal’ and other materials can be found here.

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New group--Montanans for Single-Payer!

Good News! A new advocacy group, Montanans for Single-Payer, has just formed!

From their website:

HOW WILL WE ACHIEVE SINGLE-PAYER UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE?
Montanans for Single-Payer is reaching out to Montanans and across the nation to provide information on why only a single-payer approach can bring real change to American health care. We are active in all 56 counties and can notify 14,000 Montanans of developments in health care reform. We recognize that Montanans have a unique opportunity to help shape the future of health care in America because U.S. Senator Max Baucus is a key player in that effort. Montanans for Single-Payer believes he will listen to the voices of Montanans so Montanans must make clear that we want a single-payer health care system. Utilizing our email campaign, we plan to activate a network of Montanans whenever there is a decision on health care reform coming up in Washington, D.C. urging citizens to contact Senators Baucus and Tester, Representative Denny Rehberg, and President Barack Obama.

As you know, Senator Max Baucus has blocked even the consideration of single-payer reform from the table. Hopefully, Montanans for Single-Payer can help. Montanans, you can help them by:

1. Visiting the Montanans for Single Payer website, especially the “What Can I Do?” section. It has a great list of contacts and resources.
   
2. Joining! You can sign up for their email list at the website. You can also email for more information at infor@montanansforsinglepayer.org
   

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Single payer advocate speaks at House Ways and Means hearing!

Thank you for your calls to Rep. Charles Rangel!

A few days ago we asked you to call Rep. Rangel's office and ask him to invite an expert on single payer to testify before Wednesday's House Subcommittee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions hearing on health care cost and accessibility. Alliance for Democracy, along with more than 80 organizations in the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care, and the members of more than 500 unions, believe that single payer health care is our best bet for delivering the most care to the most people in the most equitable manner and at the best cost. And the majority of health care professionals and Americans agree!

Thanks to the outpouring of calls, Dr. David Himmelstein, of Physicians for a National Health Program, was invited to speak to the committee. Here's his testimony--what he says is not new to those of us who have been studying--or experiencing--the deficiencies in our country's health care system. But what is new is that slowly and surely, our advocacy is opening a space in DC for the truth to be told. Let's keep it up!

Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee. My name is David Himmelstein. I am a primary care doctor in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and associate professor of medicine at Harvard. I also serve as national spokesperson for Physicians for a National Health Program. Our 16,000 physician members support nonprofit, single-payer national health insurance because of overwhelming evidence that lesser reforms will fail.

Health reform must address the cost crisis for insured as well as uninsured Americans. My research group found that illness and medical bills contributed to about half of all personal bankruptcies in 2001, and even more than that in 2007. Strikingly, three-quarters of the medically bankrupt were insured. But their coverage was too skimpy to protect them from financial collapse.

A single-payer reform would make care affordable through vast savings on bureaucracy and profits. As my colleagues and I have shown in research published in the New England Journal of Medicine, administration consumes 31 percent of health spending in the United States, nearly double what Canada spends. In other words, if we cut our bureaucratic costs to Canadian levels, we’d save nearly $400 billion annually — more than enough to cover the uninsured and to eliminate co-payments and deductibles for all Americans.

By simplifying its payment system, Canada has cut insurance overhead to 1 percent of premiums — one-twentieth of Aetna’s overhead — and eliminated mounds of expensive paperwork for doctors and hospitals. In fact, while cutting insurance overhead could save us $131 billion annually, our insurers waste much more than that because of the useless paperwork they inflict on doctors and hospitals.

A Canadian hospital gets paid like a fire department does in the U.S. It negotiates a global budget with the single insurance plan in its province, and gets one check each month that covers virtually all costs. They don’t have to bill for each Band-Aid and aspirin tablet. At my hospital, we know our budget on January 1, but we collect it piecemeal in fights with hundreds of insurers over thousands of bills each day. The result is that hundreds of people work for Mass General’s billing department, while Toronto General employs only a handful — mostly to send bills to Americans who wander across the border. Altogether, U.S. hospitals could save about $120 billion annually on bureaucracy under a single payer system.

And doctors in the U.S. waste about $95 billion each year fighting with insurance companies and filling out useless paperwork.

Significantly, these massive potential savings on bureaucracy can only be achieved through a single payer reform. A health reform plan that includes a “public plan option” might realize some savings on insurance overhead. However, as long as multiple private plans coexist with the public plan, hospitals and doctors would have to maintain their costly billing and internal cost tracking apparatus. Indeed, my colleagues and I estimate that even if half of all privately insured Americans switched to a public plan with overhead at Medicare’s level, the administrative savings would amount to only 9 percent of the savings under single payer.

While administrative savings from a reform that includes a Medicare-like public plan option are modest, at least they’re real. In contrast, other widely touted cost control measures are completely illusory. A raft of studies shows that prevention saves lives, but usually costs money. The recently completed Medicare demonstration project found no cost savings from chronic disease management programs. And the claim that computers will save money is based on pure conjecture. Indeed, in a study of 3,000 U.S. hospitals that my colleagues and I have recently completed, the most computerized hospitals had, if anything, slightly higher costs.

My home state of Massachusetts recent experience with health reform illustrates the dangers of believing overly optimistic cost control claims. Before its passage, the reform’s backers made many of the same claims for savings that we’re hearing today in Washington. Prevention, disease management, computers, and a health insurance exchange were supposed to make reform affordable. Instead, costs have skyrocketed, rising 23 percent between 2005 and 2007, and the insurance exchange adds 4 percent for its own administrative costs on top of the already high overhead charged by private insurers. As a result, 1 in 5 Massachusetts residents went without care last year because they couldn’t afford it. Hundreds of thousands remain uninsured, and the state has drained money from safety-net hospitals and clinics to keep the reform afloat.

In sum, a single-payer reform would make universal, comprehensive coverage affordable by diverting hundreds of billions of dollars from bureaucracy to patient care. Lesser reforms — even those that include a public plan option — cannot realize such savings. While reforms that maintain a major role for private insurers may seem politically expedient, they are economically and medically nonsensical.

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A fair hearing for single payer? It can be done, if you speak out now!

House Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel (D-NY) has announced that the Committee will hold another hearing in a series on reforming the health insurance market.

The hearing will take place at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, April 22, and will focus on ensuring greater accessibility and affordability.

It's imperative that single payer get a fair hearing on Wednesday.

AfD as part of the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care stands behind single payer as the only option. Please note that MoveOn, Howard Dean's Democracy for America, and Healthcare for America NOW (HCAN) talk about a "public option," but they do not mean single payer. They are advocating for reform that only includes the CHOICE of a public option while keeping in place the private for-profit plans.

The only reform that will provide the reasonable affordable health care for all that we must have and deliver the cost savings for now and over the decades is the single payer plan.

Please call Chairman Rangel's office now (toll free at 866-338-1015) to request the Committee invite expert single-payer witnesses to testify. If you can't make a call, email his office through through Change.org here.

Here's a script:
I am calling as a part of a nationwide effort with the Alliance for Democracy, one of the members of the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care, to urge Chairman Rangel and the Ways and Means Committee to contact Physicians for a National Health Program to request an expert witness for the upcoming hearing on health care on April 22nd. PNHP's national office number is 312-782-6006.

Please note: While oral testimony at this hearing will be from invited witnesses only, any individual or organization can submit a written statement for consideration by the Committee and for inclusion in the printed record of the hearing. Details on how to do this can be found here. Facts to include can be found in our health care issue of Justice Rising and our "Truths and Myths" brochure on single payer and the failures of the current system.

Don't forget: Progressive Democrats for America are organizing pro-single payer events nationwide this week--click here to see if there's one near you. Also, Healthcare-NOW, in cooperation with the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care, is organizing a day of action on May 30, with events in more than 20 cities so far.

Thanks for speaking out!

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Californians--support AB 1242, the Human Right to Water Bill

Californians, letters are due by Tuesday, April 21 to support your state's bill, AB 1242 the "Human Right to Water" bill.

The Alliance for Democracy has signed-on as a co-sponsor of AB 1242 to amend the State Water Code to read: "every human being has the right to clean and accessible water on an equitable basis…."

AB 1242 also requires that state agencies conform their policies and practices to do so. In practical terms, this bill will ensure that agencies prioritize the provision of potable water in their grant programs and regulations.

AB 1242 will not only affect Californians, but will also build the movement for the human right to water in the United States and internationally.

Please, to show your support of AfD as co-sponsor, consider sending without delay - a letter of support for AB 1242 (Ruskin-Jones) the "Human Right to Water" bill. Please add your local California address along with your signature, and fax your letter to the following numbers:

• Chairman Jared Huffman, Water, Parks and Wildlife: (916) 319-2196. The bill will be heard in this committee on April 28.
• Assembly Member Ruskin: (916) 319-2121, so that, as author of the bill, he knows how much support this bill is receiving.

Please also email a copy to Nancy Price at nancytprice@juno.com. If you have questions, call Nancy at: 530-758-0726.

And don't forget to look at our new website: www.defendingwaterincalifornia.org

Amended bill text:

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:

SECTION. 1. Section 106.3 is added to the Water Code, to read:
106.3. (a) It is hereby declared to be the established policy of the state that every human being has the right to clean and accessible water on an equitable basis, that is adequate for the health and well-being of the individual and family, and that no one shall be deprived of that access or quality of water due to individual economic circumstances.
(b) Relevant state agencies, including the department, the state board, and the State Department of Public Health, shall employ all feasible means to implement this state policy. Those state agencies shall revise, adopt, or establish policies, regulations, and grant criteria to further this state policy.
(c) This section shall apply to water supplies for individuals and not for new development.
(d) The implementation of this section shall not infringe on the rights or responsibilities of any local or regional water agency or municipality.

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Maine Single Payer advocates on the air

Dr. Philip Caper and Maine single payer activist Jerry Call were guests on Maine WERU-FM radio's "Common Health" show today. Host Jim Fisher featured a discussion entitled "Letters to the President: Paying for a Healthy Environment and Healthy People."

Topics include HR 676 and an upcoming May 30 rally in Augusta for single payer health care. You can listen to the archived show here.

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Portland (OR) panel discussion on healthcare

Several Portland-area groups will bring a panel together on Thursday, April 16, to discuss the state of health care reform. The event takes place from 6 to 8 p.m. at the First Unitarian Church, 1011 SW 12th Avenue, in Portland.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-3rd) will start off the discussion by speaking about what's happening in Congress, and State Senator Alan Bates will describe what's happening at the state level. Dr. Mike Huntington of Physicans for a National Health Program will discuss single-payer options.

The event is co-sponsored by the Economic Justice Action Group of First UU Church, Mid-valley Healthcare Advocates, Health Care for All Oregon, Health Care for America Now, Alliance for Democracy, Physicians for a National Health Program, The Archimedes Mvoement, and MACG.

Visit the Portland Alliance chapter webpage to download a flier.

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"Tax Day" Call-in to Congress for HR 676--where do you want your federal health care dollars to go?

On April 15th, the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care will hold its monthly call-in day for single-payer national health care. Members of the Alliance for Democracy will be joining with members of more than 70 Leadership Conference allied organizations to tell our legislators "Tax payer dollars should go to people, not profits. Support single-payer national health care now."

Other reform proposals put our taxes to work subsidizing insurance company profits, not paying for real care. We need a system that controls for-profit interests and skyrocketing costs, and addresses the appalling inequities that come from a system that puts investor return before patient welfare. The answer is single payer health care.

What about the "public option" plan that Howard Dean, Democracy for America and MoveOn are promoting? Despite what you might have heard, this will likely not be "medicare for everyone," but simply some degree of regulation brought to bear on private insurers so that individuals will be able to purchase some kind of insurance, with some degree of subsidy for those with low or moderate incomes. This is halfway reform at best, and timed more to help the insurance industry than the people. Consider the following:

• Private insurance giants are struggling, losing up to 30,000 customers daily due to job losses and the resulting loss of benefits for the unemployed.
• Mandating the purchase of insurance from private industry is a bailout. Our tax dollars subsidize CEO salaries and company profits.
• Those of us who buy "public option" policies will have insurance, but will we have health care? How good will these plans be allowed to be if they're in "competition" with private industry?
• A "public option" leaves our current health care system, with its expensive administrative overhead, intact.

We join with Physicians for a National Health Program, the California Nurses Association, Healthcare-Now, and more than 500 labor unions in saying no to partial reform and drawing our line in the sand for single payer health care.

So on April 15th, 2009, we ask that you join with thousands of others to call Congress, to support single-payer legislation in both the House (HR 676) and the Senate (S703). If you don't know your Congresspersons, or want a script, all of the information you need is on Healthcare Now's National Call-In Day page.

Call the Capitol Switchboard at 866-338-1015. Ask to be connected to your senators and representatives, and then ask them to support HR 676 in the House or S703 in the Senate. If your rep is already one of the 74 HR 676 co-sponsors, thank him or her. Note that the Senate version of the bill has no co-sponsors yet.

Don't pass up another opportunity to speak out! Remember, your call might be the one that convinces your legislator to get behind the people on single payer health care!

And here's a heads-up for May:

National Lobby Day and Rally for Single-Payer in Washington DC--Wednesday, May 13

The California Nurses Association will be bringing 500 nurses to rally for single payer and lobby on the Hill. Mark your calendars and if at all possible, get to DC for this important event. Join the rally at 12 noon, at Upper Senate Park near the Union Station Metro Stop, and join a delegation meeting with your representative. Delegations are being organized now. To take part, contact Katie Robbins at Health Care Now asap--email info@healthcare-now.org or call 1-800-453-1305. Katie also has some travel information.

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Portland (OR) Alliance for Democracy sponsors films and speakers on nuclear cleanup and tar sands oil

by David Delk, Alliance for Democracy Portland chapter president

With an inceasing focus on the environment, the AfD Portland chapter sponsored two events at the end of March.

The first event was a screening of the video Arid Lands about the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. In additon to the screening, we hosted Gerry Pollet, executive director of Heart of America Northwest, the chief organization based in Seattle which has worked for 3 decades to ensure the clean-up of Hanford. Hanford, in eastern Washington state, was the site of the development of the materials used in the bombs dropped on Japan in the last days of WWII. The waste from that activity as well as all that occurred since then is still on site. Almost none of it has been cleaned up.

In spite of that, the US Department of Energy is promoting a plan (Global Nuclear Energy Partnership) to double the use of nuclear energy in the US with Hanford being the most likely place where new waste will be bought for "recycling."

We collected names and contact info of attendee and have established a Google group for possible future action. If you want to be involved, please join the group at http://groups.google.com/group/nuclearfreeoregon.

On March 31 we welcomed Canadian author Andrew Nikifourik to talk about his book Tar Sands, Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent. A small but energized group attended his presentation. Canada is now the largest foreign supplier of oil to the US and most of that oil is from the tar sand fields of Alberta which Andrew described as a classic petro-state with an entrenched government which responds to the needs of the large multi-national corporations exploiting the fields and the environment. Tar sand production uses 3 gallons of water for each gallon of oil produced and that water is so polluted in the process that it can never be used again and is stored in open leaky pits. It is so energy intensive to produce this oil that the vast natural gas resources will soon be depleted. Plans are now on the drawing boards for building more than a dozen nuclear energy plants in order to continue production. And the need to transport the resulting oil to the US fuels the develoment of Super-Nafta highway systems.

Please join us in our ongoing actions and activitives on environmental issues. Vist our website at www.afd-pdx.org and/or contact David Delk at davidafd@msn.com.

Here's the trailer for Arid Lands:

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Thank you to the two latest HR 676 co-sponsors!

Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, from California's 34th district, and Rep. Edolphus Towns, from New York's 10th, are the latest HR 676 co-sponsors, bringing the total to 74!

If you're a constituent, give them a thank-you call!

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Rally this weekend to break up the banks

Tomorrow, Saturday April 1, A New Way Forward is sponsoring a nationwide day of action to demand that our leaders (1) nationalize (2) reorganize, and (3) decentralize the banks as a first step toward building a more just economy.

On Saturday, come to a rally near you for speeches, street theatre, petition gathering, and phonebanking to Congress. Check this list to see if there's an action in your area:

http://www.anewwayforward.org/rally-list.php

If you're not near a demonstration, or can't attend, make sure your Senators and Representative know you have taken a stand. Sign a petition at Democrats.com to "Break Up The Banks."

http://www.democrats.com/break-up-the-banks

No more bonuses for incompetent, short-sighted management. No more bailouts for the same institutions that drove us into the hardest times we've seen since the Depression. Join a march and demand an economy that serves and sustains all of us, and protects our homes, jobs, health and environment.

Want to know more about what a people-centered economy might look like--and how to organize to build it? Check out the Winter 2009 issue of Justice Rising, Money for People, Not Corporate Plunder, available here.

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Mike Farrell PSA for single payer

Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care steering committee member Clark Newhall, physician and lawyer from Salt lake City, has launched the first of five public service announcements starring actor and activist Mike Farrell (best known as BJ Hunnicutt on "M*A*S*H). The link below allows you to access to this terrific PSA and also links you to Clark’s great single-payer action website tools. Share with friends!

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Democracy School!

A nine-minute overview of Democracy School, where it came from, how it works and the results in Barnstead, where their self-governance ordinance stripped personhood rights from corporations. Thanks to Ainsof18! If this inspires you to learn more, visit the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund website. If you're in the Tucson area, AfD'ers are planning a school this fall.

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10,000 march on Wall Street

Led by long-time civil rights activist Rev. James Lawson, as well as veterans, military family members, and peace activists, more than 10,000 marched on Wall Street Saturday, April 4, to demand an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and an economic stimulus plan directed at people in need. The march and peace fair that followed were organized by United for Peace with Justice and its coalition groups.

Lawson spoke on behalf of the 90 million Americans living in poverty, toward whom economic policies must be directed if this country intends a real recovery. He emphasized the connection between peace abroad and justice here; "I say if we want peace to blossom, we must eradicate poverty, racism, sexism, violence, and greed in the U.S. Peace cannot come by crying peace. Peace can only begin to emerge when justice does.'

The marchers passed the Federal Reserve building, surrounded the New York Stock Exchange, and ended in Battery Park for a Peace and Justice Fair. Photos by UFPJ Steering Committee member, Mike Hearington are here.

You can donate to United for Peace here. They have several actions planned; you can read more on their website.

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Alert, April 6: Tell Rep. Charles Rangel "We won't go uncovered!"

Call in today!

Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY) is chair of the House Ways and Means Committee with jurisdiction over health care reform, including the authority to hold hearings on policy and proposed legislation. He's publicly proclaimed support for single-payer health care, but hasn't joined the 74 representatives who've co-sponsored HR 676.

Please call Rep. Rangel's district office today. Ask him to hold hearings on HR 676, stop accepting exorbitant campaign contributions from the insurance industry, and sign on to HR 676. The office number is 212-663-3900, or toll free at 1-866-338-1015.

Today, while the final White House Regional Forum on Health Reform is held in Los Angeles, protesters will be demonstrating outside Rep. Rangel's New York office. They are organized by the Private Health Insurance Must Go! Coalition, a New York City-based coalition fighting for HR676 and single payer health care. They'll have on hospital gowns, with the message that "private insurance is a lot like a hospital gown...chances are you aren't covered!" And this is a situation that more and more of us face, as our jobs disappear, and with them, our insurance.

Support the coalition's action--and the work of all single payer advocates--by calling Rep. Rangel today!

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CJR weighs in on "Sick Around America"

Trudy Leiberman, writing in the Columbia Journalism review, pans "Sick Around America," which "demagogued the insurance industry and then sent valentines their way" while rehashing what we know, accepting inaccuracies as fact, and failing to ask meaningful questions about policy.

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"Sick Around America" was enough to make you, well, sick!

As part of our last e-news and in one of the alerts on this blog we asked folks to hold screening house parties this week to watch Frontline's "Sick Around America." If you watched the show expecting to hear some personal stories of hellacious experiences within the for-profit health care system, you were probably not disappointed. If you expected to hear about our nation's options for solving this mess, or looked forward to the players having to answer to some hard questions, you probably sat on your sofa wondering why you had bothered to tune in.

Russell Mokhiber, writing at Counterpunch, points out probably the most gawdawful part of the piece:

"During that segment, about halfway through Sick Around America, the moderator introduces Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans, the lead health insurance lobby in the United States.

Moderator: Other developed countries guarantee coverage for everyone. We asked Karen Ignagni why it can't work here.

Karen Ignagni: Well, it would work if we did what other countries do, which is have a mandate that everybody participate. And if everybody is in, it's quite reasonable to ask our industry to do guarantee issue, to get everybody in. So, the answer to your question is we can, and the public here will have to agree to do what the public in other countries have done, which is a consensus that everybody should be in.

Moderator: That's what other developed countries do. They make insurers cover everyone, and they make all citizens buy insurance. And the poor are subsidized."

The problem, as Mokhiber points out, and as anyone who has been giving the health care debate more than a thimble's worth of attention over the last few years already knows, is that the moderator's gloss on what Ignagni said simply isn't true. Some countries have mandated private coverage, but the policies are held by non-profits, which are strictly regulated. Other countries simply treat health care like a right, funded by taxes, with everyone in regardless of income. Your "mandate" to participate is called "being born."

You can find out what TR Reid, correspondent (but not producer) for the piece has to say in Mokhiber's article. And if you saw "Sick Across America" and would like to say something to the producers, here's the email address: frontline@pbs.org. The PBS ombudsman is Michael Getler. His contact page is here.

For a really good look at health care in America, may we recommend "Health, Money and Fear", online at ourailinghealthcare.com, or available on dvd for houseparty screenings from the AfD office.

Update from an emailer: "Check out this webpage: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundamerica/talk/

"So many people wrote emails to Frontline admonishing them for not mentioning single-payer as a possible solution to our health care crisis that they printed a response trying to explain themselves. What I'd like to know is how Karen Ignagni, president and ceo of America's Health Insurance Plans, who is actively campaigning against the creation of a nationalized health care system in the U.S., got so much airtime, while single-payer advocates got no representation at all. The failures of our system, which were eloquently demonstrated in 'Sick Around America', are in large part a result of the greed of the profit-driven insurance industry and yet they got the pulpit in this piece."

Another update: The Columbia Journalism Review agrees--bad job!

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