About Us
What Is Our Purpose?
We are building, supporting, encouraging a movement for a Guaranteed National Health Insurance System in this country, quality healthcare for every human being.
How do we get healthcare for everybody?
One person at a time, one organization, union, church, synagogue,
mosque, community center, neighborhood at a time... Here's
how we do it: 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 been led to believe that
we cannot get real universal health care in this country.
People have tried over and over to get national healthcare from the top
down -- but it won't work. We are the ones that must make it
happen. 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.
We invite you to be a part of this effort. 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, not only less expensive for all of us, it would be the best thing
to happen to our economy in decades, estimated by economists to be
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. But
they would no longer receive healthcare bills. They would no
longer pay co-pays and deductibles; they would no longer be denied
prevention, a doctor of their choice, and care when they need it.
The United States National Health Insurance Act 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).
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