AfD's Single Payer Home Page

Single Payer

We won't give up the fight for Single Payer!

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• Justice Rising's issue on the healthcare crisis is available online here.
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What are you doing--locally, at the state level, nationally--to fix our healthcare system? Let us know at afd@thealliancefordemocracy.org!

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"Dollars & Sense", Whole Foods, health care, and where the well-heeled omnivore is eating

There's a nice point-by-point rebuttal to the John Mackey op-ed that sparked the Whole Foods boycott on the Dollars & Sense blog, here. The author's Joel A. Harrison, who has previously written for the magazine on privatization of profit and socialization of cost in US health care delivery.

As an aside, Michael Pollan has come out against the boycott, as both Dollars & Sense and boycott organizers Single Payer Action note. In a note on the conservative New Majority (really?) site, he posits Whole Foods as part of "an alternative food system," based on support for farmers and better-quality food more sustainably grown, and adds that when, thanks to health care reform, insurers can no longer cherrypick the healthiest individuals they will have a stake in changing the food system to emphasize "prevention, which is to say, in changing the way America feeds itself." Why this hasn't happened already, given that even if you can legally snag the healthiest customers and shed the sickest, you should also have a stake in keeping the fit fit, Pollan doesn't say.

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So how are the boycotts going?

As far as Fox News goes, most major sponsors have pulled ads from Glenn Beck's show, says the LA Times, while his viewership is up. Color of Change, an African American political advocacy group, started the boycott last month, and a variety of progressive groups and on-line media have supported it through email blasts and updates on websites. At least 36 companies, including Wal-Mart (!), have moved ads to other Fox shows or pulled them altogether, leaving few blue-chip sponsors outside of the Wall Street Journal and Bank of America. Meanwhile, anti- types and teabaggers are apparently mobilizing to "buycott" Whole Foods.

The Washington Post's Short Stack book blog has an interesting guest post about the history and efficacy of boycotts

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Boycotts updated

Mixed news on the Fox News boycott, with retailers pulling ads from Glenn Beck but most simply moving them to other less controversial shows. Meanwhile, sales are apparently not down short term at Whole Foods--perhaps because most progressives already avoid the place in favor of farmers' markets, CSAs, co-ops, buying clubs, unionized supermarkets and locally owned health food stores. None the less, the boycott's Facebook group has some 15,000 members and a website: wholeboycott.com. The website has a list of links for people who are stuck for an alternative market, and a list of brands owned by Whole Foods. Meanwhile, CEO John Mackey has attempted an explanation on this blog post.

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Single Payer Action calls for Whole Foods boycott

SinglePayerAction.org is asking that you stay out of Whole Foods supermarkets. In an editorial on CommonDreams, Russell Mokhiber, editor of Corporate Crime Reporter and founder of the group, notes that the corp's libertarian CEO, John Mackey, has added "stop single payer" to his to-do list, as evidenced by his recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, Sargento Cheese, Geico Insurance, and Men's Warehouse have pulled ads from Glenn Beck, although not off Fox News altogether. See FoxNewsBoycott.com for more.

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Fox News boycott focuses on Beck's advertisers

A grassroots initiative to get companies to pull ads from Fox News is gaining traction, with Geico insurance the latest corporation to withdraw support of Glenn Beck's show. Geico joins a small but growing list of corporations.

For a list of companies to boycott with phone contacts, see wikoogle's diary on Daily Kos (this is the most recent post relating to the boycott, so check for updates if you are reading this a few days late). For background on the boycott, visit www.FoxNewsBoycott.com and ColorOfChange.org, and for a link to an email blast to all entities still bankrolling paleoconservative "infotainment," check out Democrats.com.

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