Go to our Strategy Conference page to register.

You can download the agenda here (.pdf).

Registration ends on January 21st and you must reserve your hotel room by January 13th to be guaranteed the discounted room rate.

Join single-payer activists from around the country in Houston, TX on January 28th and 29th to help plan our strategy to win guaranteed single-payer national health insurance. The movement needs your input!

We will be discussing how to advance the single-payer agenda in the current political and social environments–in an election year, when Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are under attack, and in the age of Occupy Wall Street, amongst other topics. Download the full agenda.

We hope to see you at the conference!

Vanessa, before becoming our Director of Organizing, joined Healthcare-NOW! in 2005. “Suffering from a chronic illness,” says Vanessa, “I tried hard to find health insurance in the public and private markets, but was always turned down. Meanwhile, I got sicker. I was very angry, and I wanted to find a solution for myself and people like me. I was relieved and heartened when I discovered single-payer healthcare and Healthcare-NOW!–an organization fighting for people like me.”

Vanessa, and many others, have joined the fight for single-payer healthcare, despite passage of health reform, because they know that half-measures will continue to leave out millions like them.

History proves the power of grassroots movements funded by people like you is the only way to win against corporate greed. We need you to continue to support Healthcare-NOW! until we end this injustice.

Make your tax-deductible donation today. Donations of of $20 will receive a Healthcare-NOW! pin and bumper sticker. $50 or more will receive a DVD of The Healthcare Movie or a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. poster with his famous healthcare quote. And the first 99 people to donate $99 will receive a Single Payer Now t-shirt.

You can make a tax-deductible donation online, or mail a check (made out to IFCO/Healthcare-NOW!) to Healthcare-NOW!, 1315 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107.

Recent actions show we make an impact.

In the fall, thousands of you made phone calls and sent emails to the Super Committee, demanding that they NOT cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. The Super Committee ultimately failed to make recommendations to cut or privatize these important programs because of the pressure we put on them.

In October and November, hundreds of single-payer activists took part in Occupy Wall Street actions all over the country.

In July, we helped organize more than 45 actions in 21 states for Medicare’s 46th anniversary.

This year, we helped form five new affiliate single-payer groups in four states that previously had none.

Now we’re planning our National Strategy Conference in Houston where our advocates will develop campaigns to challenge corporate power and build the movement for single-payer, national healthcare.

Become a recurring donor. Just $5 or $10 a month will help sustain Healthcare-NOW!’s work through the year. Donate online or call us at 800-453-1305.

Many of our members are facing bankruptcy, homelessness, and financial crisis due to medical debt. Please give what you can and help to support their activism in this renewed period of movement building.

With your support the grassroots movement to end the healthcare crisis in the United States will continue to grow and win.

We are not surprised.

We didn’t need a Super Committee to tell us how to solve the United States’ ballooning national debt: we already know that universal single-payer healthcare would give people–regardless of age, race, pre-existing condition or socioeconomic status–the medical care they need while reducing annual healthcare costs by $400 billion.

However, the fight’s not over yet. As part of the original agreement that spawned the formation of the Super Committee, its members’ failure to propose a $1.2 trillion reduction to the deficit will cause that amount to be automatically cut from both domestic and defense spending–including $123 billion in cuts to Medicare between 2013 and 2021, the bulk of which would be reductions in physician reimbursement rates.

Politicians are trying to tout this as a protection for Medicare beneficiaries, but slashing the amount the federal government reimburses healthcare providers who care for Medicare enrollees will make it more difficult for senior citizens and people with disabilities to find doctors who will care for them.

We at Healthcare-NOW! see this as another attack on our society’s most vulnerable populations. When Medicare was implemented nearly 50 years ago, our government acknowledged healthcare as a human right for people 65 and older in the United States.

Now it is time to make healthcare a human right for all.

Instead of cutting Medicare funds, we should be improving and expanding Medicare-for-all. Here’s how you can help:

- Join us at our annual National Strategy Conference on January 28th and 29th in Houston, Texas to help develop our action plan for 2012. We will be discussing how to organize for single-payer Medicare-for-all in an election year, and how to protect Medicare from being cut any further.

- Join a local single-payer group near you (check out our local contacts page for more info).

- Organize a single-payer group if there isn’t one in your area (we have some great organizing resources on our website).

- Become a monthly donor to Healthcare-NOW!.

We can’t count on Congress or the President to insert single-payer into the national debate, but we know we can count on you.

For questions, comments, or ideas about next steps, email vanessa@healthcare-now.org.

We will discuss how to push the single-payer agenda forward in an election year, as well as at a time when Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are on the chopping block.

With the Super Committee’s refusal to protect Medicare, now is the time to strategize and organize. Please join us in Houston on January 28th and 29th and share your ideas and insights.

If you are unable to attend, please consider making a contribution to our scholarship fund to help another activist attend. These are dire economic times, and we want to make sure that financial barriers never impede our members’ ability to participate in the single-payer movement.

There are many single-payer activists who want to attend the conference, but who are unable to cover the expenses. A $50 donation will pay for a scholarship for one activist to attend the Healthcare-NOW! Strategy Conference, but any size donation helps.

Will you sponsor an activist now?

Your financial contribution will have a critical impact in empowering another activist to help strategize to win what we know is the solution to our fiscal crisis: single-payer improved Medicare-for-all.

The time couldn’t be more ripe to organize for healthcare free of corporate profit as people all across the country are standing up and joining the Occupy Wall Street movement to demand, among other things, profit out of healthcare. Please join us by attending the conference or sponsoring an activist today.

We need your help planning the strategy for the year ahead. Join single-payer activists and supporters from across the country in Houston, TX so we can build on the successes of the year past and develop concrete plans for the year ahead.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was not a step forward and even that is being dismantled piece-by-piece. We can almost be certain that Medicaid and Medicare will be gouged. The new number of deaths due to lack of access to healthcare is near 100,000 a year. Now more than ever, it is urgent for us to continue organizing for improved Medicare-for-all.

Come to the National Strategy Conference to share your ideas and opinions, brainstorm with friends you haven’t met yet, hear inspiring speakers, and participate in engaging, informative workshops.

When: Saturday, January 28 and Sunday, January 29, 2012
Where: Hilton Houston Hobby Airport, Houston, TX
Time: Sat, 4pm – 9pm, with pre-conference southern hospitality meet & greet 2pm-4pm
Sun, 9am – 5pm
Fee: $40 for members (anyone who has donated in 2011 and/or attended the 2010 Conference in Philadelphia) and $60 for non-members.

Please go here for more information and to register before January 21.

There are two airports in Houston, TX. Please be sure to book your flight to the William P. Hobby Airport in Houston.

On Thursday, November 3rd, the G20 group of Central Bank Governors and Finance Ministers–the 1%–are meeting in Paris. They are not on our side. They represent Wall Street and international banks. The richest 10% receive a higher share of our nation’s income than in any other time since the figures have been measured, while 20% of our nation’s children live below the poverty line. 50 million of us live with the grave risks associated with being underinsured.

National Nurses United have called for an action in Washington, D.C. on November 3rd (.pdf) to make Wall Street pay a Financial Transactions Tax (FTT). This will create $350 billion yearly in revenue, holding corporations responsible for some of the devastation they’ve caused us.

There will also be actions in Los Angeles and San Francisco:

Los Angeles: March from OccupyLA site, 11 a.m., First and Main, rally, plaza adjacent to U.S. Bank, W. 633 5th St.

San Francisco: March 11 a.m., from 101 Market, across from the Federal Reserve Bank, rally at 12 noon, Wells Fargo Bank headquarters, 464 California St.

Washington, DC: Rally, Lafayette Square, 11:30 a.m., followed by march to U.S. Treasury Department. Nurses head to Capitol Hill to lobby Congress at 3 p.m.

If you cannot make it to DC, LA, or SF, we are asking you and your group to attend an Occupation and/or contact your Representative and Senators by email, or in person outside their offices on Thursday, November 3rd. And lets make thousands of calls to the White House at 202-456-1111 with this message on November 3rd:

No cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, or Medicare!
Improve and extend Medicare to all!
Make Wall Street pay the Financial Transactions Tax!

Operating in secret with no public accountability while laden with ties to special interests, the Super Committee is tasked with identifying $1.2 trillion in cuts to federal spending by November 23rd.

Co-chair Senator Patty Murray (D-Washington) has said cuts to everything, including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, are on the table. This is unacceptable.

Donate now to help us stop the Super Committee from destroying our social safety net.

We must say, “No!” to the Super Committee. With one month left before they give their recommendations to Congress, we need to tell the members of the Super Committee that we will not let them gamble with our health and welfare.

We are calling for a national day of action on November 3rd for single-payer supporters to make calls, send emails, hold demonstrations at Congressional offices and/or Occupations, or join National Nurses United’s rally in DC in the final weeks leading up to the Super Committee’s proposal.

For every $10 you donate, we will be able to ship a package of signs and postcards to single-payer supporters in preparation for their actions on November 3.

Help us flood politicians’ offices with our simple message: we refuse to let you threaten the lives and livelihoods of millions of people for profit and greed.

We must hold the Super Committee accountable, but we need your help to do it. Please donate now–anyone who becomes a recurring donor at $10 or more a month will receive a free Martin Luther King Jr. poster.

Healthcare-NOW! endorses the occupation movement and urges all who can to join them, bringing the message of improved Medicare-for-all as a solution to the crisis of inequality in wealth and in health.

We’re being told by the Super Committee and other politicians that our already too modest safety-net is bankrupting us, but the reality is that Wall Street is bankrupting us. Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare are not the problem. Instead of being cut, they should be maintained and strengthened. Single-payer, improved Medicare for all, like H.R. 676, would save millions of lives and reduce healthcare spending by $400 billion per year.

We need to take the single-payer healthcare message to the occupations, as is happening already in many cities (New York City, Denver, Washington, DC, Philadelphia). We need to make sure that improved Medicare-for-all is on the lists of demands.

Email Vanessa@healthcare-now.org or call 800-453-1305 if you need literature, signs, postcards addressed to Congressmembers, or t-shirts. And we can send emails to Healthcare-NOW! members in your area to help get people out to your events. We’d also love to see your videos and hear news from your local occupations.

Healthcare-NOW! will be there to demand human needs over corporate greed, including life-saving, money-saving improved Medicare for all.

Help us build the single-payer contingent by coming to Freedom Plaza on October 6th. Please email Vanessa@healthcare-NOW.org if you and/or your organization are planning to attend.

The October 2011 movement stands for placing human needs over corporate greed; for stopping the machine and creating a new world. If you want economic justice, human rights, peace, a healthy environment, and an end to corporate criminals’ control of the political process, then you belong in Freedom Plaza on October 6th. Please join us!

If you want to get involved but cannot make it to D.C., check with the organizer in your state to see if a solidarity event is being planned.