Hello everyone. Here at long last is my third Healthcare Action Bulletin.
Action is the watchword this time! The healthcare debate in Washington has reached the point where action is needed. Polite letters, emails, and discussions have not worked. Congressional leaders and President Obama himself have declared that single-payer is off the table and its advocates will not be allowed to make their case before congressional committees. The major obstacle is Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT, chair of the Senate Finance Committee) and the power of corporate health care--the insurance industry, for-profit hospital corporations, and the big pharmaceutical companies--with the massive contributions they make to Baucus's and other politicians' campaign coffers.
In the past two weeks, thirteen people--mostly doctors and nurses--have been arrested at meetings of the Finance Committee for demanding a place at the table for single payer. While the political leaders consider corporate healthcare an essential part of the "healthcare community" that will decide the fate of healthcare in this country, doctors, nurses, and activists are considered beyond the pale. Even more outrageous: while the political leaders are anguishing over how to pay for healthcare reform, they are refusing to consider the one plan that could actually save the US hundreds of billions of dollars. Single payer is in fact the most "fiscally conservative" of all the healthcare reform proposals.
Activist groups across the country will be responding to this stonewalling with a National Day of Action at the end of May. Over 30 actions are being planned (to see them all, go to http://www.healthcare-now.org/). Here in San Francisco there will be a rally on May 29 at the Federal Building, calling on Representative Nancy Pelosi to "put single-payer on the table." It is sponsored by Senior Action Network, the California Alliance for Retired Americans, San Francisco Gray Panthers, and Single Payer Now. For more information, call 415-695-7891 or email dbechler@value.net
To help build the rally and the National Day of Action, and to gather support for single payer, we are putting together a coalition to table at the Ferry Plaza this Saturday, May 23. We will be there between 9:30 AM and 2:00 PM. Please join us! We will have materials relevant to people from all parts of the US. You can sign up here by replying to this message.
___ I will volunteer to table at the Ferry Plaza on Saturday, May 23, 2009.
I can come
___ 9:30--11 AM
___11AM-12:30 PM
___ 12:30-2 PM
___Other
Thanks,
Jim Cowan
San Francisco for Democracy Health Care Task Force
Contact us at:
or 415-563-5089
No comments:
Post a Comment