May 2009 – Healthcare-NOW

Everything is on the table except what’s not (video)

Sen. Max Baucus, Chair of the Finance Committee announced last week: “single-payer option is not on the table because it cannot pass”. A week earlier, a rally, co-sponsored by one of the main advocates of single-payer system, CNA/NNOC took place on Capitol Hill. Hundreds of nurses, doctors and health care reform advocates gathered to express…

Really, Mr. President

By Andrew Coates, MD – The Democratic National Committee (DNC), at its Organizing for America website, barackobama.com, has initiated nationally coordinated local events in June, the “Health Care Organizing Kickoff.” Organizers will call local contacts using an “Invite Call Script:” “For decades, health care reform has been blocked by special interest lobbying and political point-scoring…

Single-Payer Actions Planned in over Fifty Cities

Activists of every stripe take to the streets to support single-payer As the Obama administration calls for health reform to be done this year, people in support of improved Medicare for all, a single-payer national health system, take to the streets in over 50 cities around May 30th. Single-payer advocates support the removal of for-profit…

Baucus 8 Charged: It’s an Outrage Outdone Only by Their Humanity

By Donna Smith – They arrived on May 26 to the DC courthouse in business dress and on time. The single payer supporters now known as the Baucus 8 who were arrested on May 5, 2009, in your United States Senate hearing chambers came ready to be arraigned on Tuesday morning and to find out…

Disruption of Congress or Corruption of Congress?

Single Payer Trial for the Baucus 13 By Single Payer Action – Seven of the Baucus 13 were arraigned in Washington, D.C. Superior Court this morning. The Baucus 13 are doctors, nurses, lawyers and other single payer advocates who stood up before Senator Max Baucus and the Senate Finance Committee during hearings on May 5…

Single-payer mentions draw cheers at Baucus-sponsored health care talk

By Michael Moore of the Missoulian – Steve McArthur is a management consultant. Read self-employed. That means he has to buy his own insurance, a Blue Cross Blue Shield policy that costs him $584 a month and carries a $10,000 deductible. On Tuesday morning, he listened for a long time as Missoulians discussed health care…

Held hostage by the health system

By Dr. Marcia Angell – The Senate Finance Committee’s hearings on health reform earlier this month did not include testimony from any advocate for single-payer insurance. Physicians for a National Health Program, which represents 16,000 doctors, asked the committee to invite me to testify, but it chose not to. If I had been invited, this…

Bill Moyers Journal on Single-Payer

On May 22nd, Bill Moyers Journal interviewed Donna Smith, of California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, Dr. Sidney Wolfe, of Public Citizen, and Physicians for a National Health Program’s Dr. David Himmelstein. See Donna Smith’s interview here. See the interview with Dr. Sidney Wolfe and Dr. David Himmelstein here.

Put single-payer on the table

Editorial: Times Union (Albany, NY), May 19th, 2009 Earlier this month, eight courageous doctors, lawyers and other activists interrupted a Senate Finance Committee meeting on health care reform to ask why there wasn’t one advocate of a single-payer health care system at the table. Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, had them arrested. Shame on…

Bill Moyers’ Journal Discusses Single-Payer

This Friday, Bill Moyers’ Journal discusses single-payer healthcare. Guests include Donna Smith (California Nurses Association), Dr. Sidney Wolfe (Public Citizen) and Dr. David Himmelstein (Physicians for a National Health Program). You can look up the dates/times for your area here.