July 2009 – Healthcare-NOW

Happy Birthday Medicare!!!

Today, single-payer supporters from all over the country are celebrating the 44th birthday of one of the nation’s most popular public programs: Medicare. On this anniversary of Medicare, we are calling for an end to a wasteful private health financing model based on earning profits through the restriction and denial of needed health care. This…

Canadian Union Writes Obama & Congress Defending Canada’s Healthcare

The President of the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE), one of Canada’s largest unions, has written President Barack Obama and all members of the U.S. Congress asking them to look past the “malicious misrepresentations and scare tactics” in the current debate over American health care reform and see the true value of…

Protesters Demand Network Coverage of Single Payer

From Democracy Now! – Here in New York, demonstrators gathered at ABC News’ Manhattan headquarters Tuesday to present a petition against the exclusion of a single-payer option from coverage on healthcare reform. Earlier this month, ABC News disinvited President Obama’s former physician, Dr. David Scheiner, from a televised forum. Scheiner had planned to question Obama…

“I Prefer Single-Payer, But …. “

The Selling of Single-Payer Features By HELEN REDMOND for Counterpunch – “Start off on high ground but end up somehow crawling…” –Bruce Springsteen, The Big Muddy The farce in Washington DC called health care reform makes the blood of single-payer supporters boil. That the Obama administration has crafted and is trying to push through an…

Corporate Media Have Ruined the Health Care Debate

By Isabel Macdonald for AlterNet – TV networks have shut out coverage of single-payer as an option for health reform. We must work to get it back in public debate. The debate about health reform is clearly in critical condition, with the prospects for President Barack Obama’s proposed “public option” looking increasingly uncertain. The U.S.…

Nine More Go to Jail for Single Payer

By David Swanson – Following a pattern of civil resistance in Washington D.C. and around the country, citizens in Des Moines Iowa on Monday risked arrest to press for the creation of single-payer healthcare, the establishment of healthcare as a human right, and an end to the deadly practices of Iowa’s largest health insurance company,…

Hope for Health Reform? Push Single-Payer Now

By John Nichols for the Nation – It is unsettling to listen as President Obama and House Speaker Pelosi talk up a health-care reform “plan” that has yet to take shape in any realistic form. The vagueness on the part of the president and the speaker is, of course, intentional. Obama and Pelosi are still…

Bait and switch: How the “public option” was sold

By Kip Sullivan for PNHP – The people who brought us the “public option” began their campaign promising one thing but now promote something entirely different. To make matters worse, they have not told the public they have backpedalled. The campaign for the “public option” resembles the classic bait-and-switch scam: tell your customers you’ve got…

Obama Admits US Can’t Insure All Americans Without Single Payer (Video)

From Democracy Now! – Obama devoted most of his White House news conference to defend his push for healthcare reform. He acknowledged the US won’t be able to provide healthcare insurance to every American without adopting single payer, which his administration has opposed.

Why Obama’s Public Option Is Defective, and Why We Need Single-Payer

By Drs. Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein for the Progressive – Once Congress finishes mandating that we all buy private health insurance, it can move on to requiring Americans to purchase other defective products. A Ford Pinto in every garage? Lead-painted toys for every child? Melamine-laced chow for every puppy? Private health insurance doesn’t work.…