Single Payer phone tree callers needed to build Jan 11 Sacramento rally.

Phone to Fill the Buses

Rally For Single Payer Healthcare

Monday, Jan. 11 in Sacramento

Support Medical Students Lobby Day

Congressman Massa speaks at Single Payer Now Potluck and Senator Sanders speaks in DC.

( plus great op ed piece on DC legislation vs. single payer and statement by Labor Campaign for Single Payer ) 

 

Dear Single Payer Phone Tree Specialist

 

We need your help calling our phone tree for the Jan 11 Single Payer Rally inSacramento.  We will be asking people to ride the bus with from SF, Berkeley, orSan Jose. 

The  Jan 11  rally takes on tremendous importance in the wake of Washington's failure to produce a healthcare plan that works.

Hundreds of community and union activists will join with hundreds of medical students to lobby for single payer healthcare. 

A noon rally is planned on the capitol steps.   We will arrive early to deliver single payer postcards to legislators. 

SB 810 will be voted out of the Senate Appropriations Committee by January 31. Help us insure a yes vote in the State Senate.   SB 810 will then be heard in the State Assembly.  . 

 

Please let us know if you can help make calls or if you want to take the bus.  For buses leaving from Berkeley or San Jose, please call Jodi Reid at 415- 515-2156

 

Congressman Eric Massa spoke at our Dec. 19 potluck in SF.  Thanks to Lisa Rose, you can hear his remarks at http://bit.ly/6PatZJ

 

Last week, US Senator Bernie Sanders spoke for single payer healthcare in the USSenator.  His remarks can be seen at  http://www.c-spanvideo.org/congress/?q=node/77531&id=9083042

 

Please let us know if you can rally in Sacramento.

 

___ I can help call our phone tree.  I will send you a suggested script          and local numbers.

___ I plan to rally in Sacramento on Jan 11

___ I want to take the bus leaving from SF at 8am.

___ I want to take the bus from Berkeley or San Jose.

___ I have forwarded this alert.

 

Thank you.

Don Bechler

Chair – Single Payer Now

www.SinglePayerNow.org

415-810-5826

 

Good article by Dr Andrew Coates

http://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/news/opinion/2009/12/COMMENT-Health-care-overhaul-The-devils-in-the-details/

Health care 'overhaul'? The devil's in the details
on December 29, 2009

by Andrew Coates

As health insurance reform inches towards the president's desk, the 
airwaves and editorial pages fill with spin. "Health-care overhaul," 
the headlines say. "Still a government takeover of health care," the 
Republicans in Congress say. "The culmination of a struggle begun by 
Theodore Roosevelt," Vice President Biden says.

Against so much political posturing, Representative Eric Massa has 
proven himself unique in Congress: someone who sticks to the facts. 
Last month when he courageously voted against the House bill, he said 
it would strengthen, not weaken, the hand of the private insurers. The 
insurance industry is the problem, not the solution, he explained. As 
the legislation nears final reconciliation, Massa's analysis remains 
solid.

The crux of the legislation in Congress is compulsory private 
insurance. Under the "individual mandate," a long-held wish of the 
insurance companies, the government will coerce people to become and 
remain their paying customers.

If you're uninsured and you don't buy health insurance, the Senate 
bill allows a fine of up to 2 percent of your income, assessed by the 
IRS. (It's 2.5 percent in the House bill.) Pay the fine and you're 
free to remain uninsured.

If you simply can't afford a policy, according to the Senate bill, you 
can avoid paying the fine by applying for a "hardship waiver." Get the 
waiver and you're free to remain uninsured.

Since the legislation does nothing to make insurance affordable, tax 
money will subsidize private insurance premiums for those who earn up 
to 400 percent of the federal poverty level. But those earning up to 
400 percent of the poverty level would still have to pay up to 9.8 
percent of their income for insurance (under the Senate bill). This 
taxpayer gift to insurance companies will amount to as much as $476 
billion - half a trillion dollars - over a decade.

The Senate formula also pushes the onus of health costs onto 
individual families by imposing a 40 percent tax on high-cost health 
plans, an incentive to reduce coverage. This will especially impact 
residents of states with high insurance costs, like our own state; 
union members with comprehensive benefits; companies that employ women 
(whose group insurance costs are higher), and plans that cover older 
employees (whose insurance costs are higher).

The Senate bill also encourages skimpy coverage by allowing the most 
basic plans to cover only 60 percent of actual health costs on top of 
growing of out-of-pocket expenses. Prescription drug costs have gone 
up 9 percent this year. Meanwhile, the insurance industry itself has 
estimated premium hikes of 79 to 111 percent over the coming decade.

In addition to millions of new customers for insurance companies, the 
legislation seeks an enormous expansion of Medicaid, with new 
enrollment of millions of people by expanding eligibility to those who 
earn up to 150 percent of the federal poverty level. But we know from 
bitter experience that having Medicaid is no guarantee of access to 
care, nor will it reduce disparities in care.

If private insurance will remain a defective product and Medicaid will 
remain a poor program for poor people and the legislation will not 
reign in costs - where is the reform?

But perhaps most startling is that the major features of the 
legislation would not begin until 2013, after the next presidential 
election, and then would take effect gradually over six years more. 
Such a proposal hardly seems worthy of the name "overhaul" when we 
remember that Medicare passed in 1964 and was up and running in 1965.

Last month when he voted against the House bill, Congressman Massa 
explained that he had studied the entire bill and that he understood 
the health care needs of his district. As the Congressional process 
lumbers forth, with the pending legislation ever more insurance- 
industry-friendly, Eric Massa has emerged as a portrait of leadership, 
courage, and honesty.

It's time to scrap this pro-insurance-company legislation and start 
over. A good starting point would be the improvement and expansion of 
Medicare to cover every person in the United States.

Andrew Coates practices medicine in Albany, where he is assistant 
professor of medicine and psychiatry atAlbanyMedicalCollege. He is a 
member of the board of directors of Physicians for a National Health 
Program.

 

Labor Campaign for Single-Payer Healthcare

Healthcare Is A Right -- Not A Privilege

www.laborforsinglepayer.org

 

SENATE HEALTHCARE BILL: A STEP IN THE WRONG DIRECTION

An analysis by the Labor Campaign for Single Payer

 

In a last minute flurry of pork barrel deals and capitulation to powerful corporate interests, the U. S. Senate finally passed its version of healthcare reform on December 24.  The final bill was roundly condemned by nearly every labor organization in the country.

 

"The health care bill being considered by the U. S. Senate is inadequate and too tilted toward the insurance industry," said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.  Karen Higgens, RN, Co-President of the 150,000 member National Nurses Union, concurred.  "Sadly, we have ended up with legislation that fails to meet the test of true healthcare reform...further locking into place a system that entrenches the chokehold of the profit-making insurance giants on our health."

 

The bill requires that all Americans under 65 with incomes greater than 133% of the federal poverty level must be covered by private insurance either through their employer or by purchasing it through a state-based purchasing pool.  It provides graduated tax credits to offset some of the costs of purchasing private insurance for those with incomes up to 400% of the federal poverty level.  It sets no effective cost controls or reasonable limits on co-pays and deductibles.  A family of 4 earning $54,000 per year, for example, could spend up to $9,000 in a year on insurance and medical expenses.

 

Despite an elaborate and complex system of subsidies and mandates, the bill's own sponsors concede that it will still leave 24 million people uninsured when it is fully effective in 2014.  These numbers will surely increase as employers utilize the bill as an excuse to end their employer-provided insurance benefits and costs of coverage continue to increase at two to three times the rate of increase in working people's incomes.

 

Pork and Gravy

 

The fine art of political extortion was on full display in the days leading up to the vote as several Senators extracted major pork barrel concessions in exchange for their support.  These included the "Louisiana Purchase" ($100 million in extra Medicaid funding requested by Senator Landrieu), the "Cornhusker Kickback" (a complete exemption from Nebraska's payments into enhanced Medicaid benefits won by Senator Ben Nelson) and the "Montana Handout" (whereby Senator Baucus, after closing the door to any expansion of Medicare access everywhere else in America, won automatic Medicare eligibility for the unfortunate, asbestos-exposed citizens of Libby, MT).

 

Senator Ben Nelson also led the charge to insert anti-abortion language into the final draft.  The language will allow individual states to prohibit abortion coverage in all plans which are offered through their insurance exchange.  This provision will ensure that the healthcare debate will be hijacked by the divisive abortion issue for years to come. 

 

Not satisfied with a deal that will require nearly every American under 65 to purchase their defective products, the for-profit insurance industry, working through corporate flacks like Montana's Max Baucus and Connecticut's Joe Lieberman, got a generous portion of last minute gravy.  They were able to remove every semblance of a public option, including a proposal that would have allowed some Americans over the age of 55 to buy into Medicare, from the final bill.  Insurance companies will also be allowed to continue to charge more based on age, rescind policies after they have been written, cherry-pick new customers and limit payments for catastrophic illness.  Nothing will stop them from refusing to allow policyholders to choose their own doctors or hospitals. 

 

The Senate rejected the House provision that would have made insurance companies subject to the same antitrust regulations that all other private corporations are held to and the bill gives them the right, for the first time, to sell policies across state lines.   This will surely set up a "race to the bottom" as cut-rate plans are offered from low-regulation states.

 

Other segments of the for-profit healthcare industry also jumped on the gravy train.  The drug industry, for example, won 12 years of patent protection for certain classes of drugs (many of which were developed using public funds).  And the Senate rejected a proposal from Senator Lautenberg to allow the reimportation of prescription drugs from Canada.

 

Labor's Stake

 

This past September, the AFL-CIO unanimously passed a resolution in support of the "Social Insurance Model of Health Care Reform" at its Pittsburgh convention.  The resolution called for the implementation of a single-payer Medicare for All system that would establish healthcare as a birthright for all in America.

 

In addition, the resolution stated that, until we have achieved this goal, "Reform must not diminish the hard-fought benefits currently enjoyed by our members, their families and union retirees."

 

The Senate Bill fails to meet both of these standards.  It does nothing to remove healthcare from the bargaining table at a time when it is becoming nearly impossible to maintain adequate coverage for active and retired members and their families. In fact, many of the provisions of the Senate Bill will actually make it more difficult for unions to continue to negotiate healthcare benefits at the bargaining table.  These provisions include:

 

• The notorious 40% excise tax on "high value" plans which will affect up to20% of union-negotiated plans when implemented in 2014 and nearly 100% of the plans by 2025.  It will provide powerful incentives for employers to reduce benefits and shift costs on to workers' backs.
• A wholly inadequate employer mandate (a fee of $750 per year per employee only if lack of employer coverage triggers subsidies under the individual mandate) which will do little to level the playing field between union and non-union employers and will incent many employers to jettison their coverage altogether.
• The anti-abortion restrictions which will affect many union-negotiated plans and will limit unions' ability to negotiate reproductive health benefits for their members.
• The actuarial standards (requiring a minimum payment of 60% of healthcare costs per year) which will undermine the standards established by nearly all union-negotiated plans.

 

What Next?

 

The Senate Bill now goes to a reconciliation process with the House version passed in November.  It is expected that a final version will be voted on in both houses and signed by the President before the State of the Union address in late January. Many in the labor movement will stake their hopes that the Senate version will be radically improved in the conference committee.  But, it is important to point out that, while the House version does not tax medical benefits, contains a symbolic public option and omits the more egregious pork and corporate giveaways of the Senate Bill, both Bills are similar in basic outline and design.  Further, the Obama administration has already indicated that the President is prepared to sign a bill similar to the Senate version, thus undercutting the negotiating position of the House sponsors.

 

The debate will then center on whether the final bill is "better than nothing" or "does more harm than good".  Those in the first camp will argue that defeat of the Bill will set the cause of healthcare reform back many years and will undermine the entire legislative agenda of the Obama administration, especially hopes for labor law reform.  They have stated that, like social security, the original Bill is flawed and limited but that it will provide a structure that can be slowly improved upon over the future.

 

Those in the "more harm than good" camp are urging the defeat of the Senate Bill and an immediate consideration of an expanded and improved Medicare for All program.  Dr. David Himmelstein, co-founder of the Physicians for a National Health Program, rejects the comparisons to social security. Rather, he says, "It's more like Roosevelt agreeing to turn over the social security system to Goldman Sachs."

 

One thing is certain: whatever the final outcome of this legislative process, the fight to establish healthcare as a fundamental human right will still lay before us.  Senator Bernie Sanders, in his speech to the Senate after Republican obstructionism prompted the withdrawal of his single-payer amendment, spoke to the future of our movement:

 

"The day will come when the United States Congress will have the courage to stand up to the private insurance companies and the drug companies and the medical equipment suppliers and all of those who profit and make billions of dollars every year off of human sickness.  And on that day, the United States Congress will finally proclaim that healthcare is a right of all people, not just a privilege."

 

National Labor Conference

 

The Labor Campaign for Single Payer is inviting representatives of all labor organizations that support single-payer Medicare for All healthcare reform to a national labor meeting to be held at the National Labor Collegenear Washington, DC on March 5, 6 and 7, 2010.  The meeting will be an opportunity to sum up our experiences over the past year and to chart a course for the future of our movement.  We will discuss ways of fully implementing the AFL-CIO Resolution on the Social Insurance Model for Health Care Reform and to renew the historic mission of the labor movement to guarantee healthcare for all in America. We have accomplished much in the past year.  We must build upon these accomplishments to help ensure that the day in Senator Sanders' vision will surely come.

 

For more information on the March Conference, go to: www.laborforsinglepayer.org

 

 

Jessica Yarbrough

California Nurses Association

National Nurses Organizing Committee

888 16th St NW

Suite 640

Washington, DC 20006

(202)974-8300

Support Single-Payer Universal Healthcare