About Us

What Is Our Purpose?

We are building a movement for a National Health Insurance system in this country. How do we do that? By developing an empowered leadership at the grassroots who understand the issue and engage in a variety of tactics to make it happen. No one tactic or strategy will move something this big. No one organization can do it. Top down efforts have never worked and that is why, for at least a dozen years, people have believed that we cannot get real universal health care in this country. Every other advanced nation has it, but many people are still negative about the prospect of getting it here because the media and the politicians have deemed it impossible.

Our work is to convince everybody -- the business community, the press, the groups in the chronic disease organizations, the ethnic communities, the white middle class, the poor and destitute, the veterans, our teenagers, our clergy, our union leaders, AND our members of Congress that we can afford healthcare for everybody. In fact, we cannot afford not to have it. Moreover a national single-payer healthcare system would be the best thing to happen to our economy in decades, by some estimates, a savings of 1.1 trillion dollars over the next 15 years.

Physicians For A National Health Program reports that under a single payer plan, we could save over $286 billion dollars a year in total health care costs.

Under HR 676, a family of three making $40,000 per year would spend approximately $1600 per year or about $133 per month for healthcare coverage. Everybody would pay something into the national healthcare fund -- on a sliding scale -- depending on their income.

The USNHI would allow the United States to reduce its almost $2 trillion health care expenditure each year while covering all of the uninsured and all of us for more benefits than we are getting under their current insurance company plans.

In 2005, without reform, the average employer who offers coverage will contribute $2,600 to health care per employee ( for much skimpier benefits). Under HR 676, the average costs to employers for an employee making $30,000 per year will be reduced to $1,155 per year, less than $100 per month.

We will all get extra money in our pockets almost immediately when we win a single payer system -- publicly financed but privately administered by doctors for the patients who choose them. No one will be mandated to have a particular plan or doctor or regime. Everybody, businesses and individuals, will pay a sliding scale premium based on their income. No insurance company profits will be needed and drug company profits will be limited to a reasonable amount by mass purchasing. Everyone will be able to choose their doctor without coercion, with no doctor or hospital bills , co-pays, deductibles or denials of care. And these small premiums would pay for doctors, hospitals, surgeries, prescription drugs, dental and optical, drug treatment, mental health and long term care. These would all be included in a single payer system. Summary of the Legislation

We do have a strategy for how to do this, but you have to help. We have provided a list of actions that you can take including simply donating to the cause. Please read on to find out what the problem is, and how we can fix it.

 

Send checks to Healthcare-NOW, 339 Lafayette Street New York , NY 10012 .  For tax deduction, mark them to (IFCO). 

"We're going to run a complete battery of tests starting with your credit rating." By Barbara Smaller