November 2010 – Healthcare-NOW

New Outreach Guide

“Outreach Guide: Empowering Single-Payer Activists to be Organizers”, by Single Payer Now and Healthcare-NOW!, is now available for download. This Outreach Guide was designed to empower you— the dedicated activist — to become more involved in community outreach and education. The following components are fundamental in building our movement: community outreach, neighborhood meetings, fundraising events,…

No Cuts – Call Today!

Tell Congress: Don’t Cut Our Social Security and Medicare programs. CALL TODAY. Join today’s National Call Congress Day and tell your Representative and Senators to SAY NO to cutting our Social Security and Medicare. Call 866-220-0044 for the capitol switchboard and ask to be connected. Don’t know your Representative or Senators? Go here. The Co-Chairs…

Power and the Tiny Acts of Rebellion

By Chris Hedges for TruthDig – There is no hope left for achieving significant reform or restoring our democracy through established mechanisms of power. The electoral process has been hijacked by corporations. The judiciary has been corrupted and bought. The press shuts out the most important voices in the country and feeds us the banal…

Can We Count on You to Call Congress?

The Co-Chairs of the National Fiscal Commission have proposed carving up Social Security and Medicare like a Thanksgiving turkey. They want to increase the retirement age to 69, deeply cut benefits for middle-class workers, reduce annual Cost of Living Adjustments, increase healthcare costs to patients, and reduce Medicare reimbursements to providers. We need your help…

Health Activists Say “We Need to Make Health Care a Right for All People!”

Report Back from Healthcare NOW!’s Strategy Conference in Philadelphia on November 13 and 14, 2010 Healthcare-NOW! members renew support for national single-payer health care to make health care a right for all, start plans for divestiture campaign from private health insurance, and urge support for advanced state single-payer movements in Vermont and California. (Philadelphia, PA)…

What Value Do They Add to U.S. Healthcare?

By Donna Smith – Most Americans I know really don’t like to get ripped off. We don’t mind paying for something that is what we thought we were paying for. We just hate the feeling of having been taken. And boy, are we being taken en masse by the private health insurance industry. Doubt that?…

Let’s Save Medicare!

The Deficit Commission just released the chairman’s mark to propose how to reduce the national deficit, a problem integrally linked to the rising cost of healthcare. Among its draconian ideas, the cochairs proposal would require Medicare recipients to pay more out of pocket costs for the services they receive–meaning higher copays. Studies show that cost…

Wendell Potter on “Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out”

From Democracy NOW! – In the wake of the midterm elections, Republican lawmakers are vowing to repeal or defund the Democrats’ landmark healthcare reform bill that President Obama signed into law earlier this year. A health insurance insider-turned-whistleblower argues that, instead of repealing the law altogether, Republicans will ultimately settle for gutting the law of…

Medicare for All Co-Sponsors Returned to Congress by Big Margins

From PDA – As AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka has said, this election was about jobs. This election was also about health care and the progressive change that was promised but not delivered. The voters punished the corporate Democrats who helped block legislation to help working people, the unemployed, and those without health care. The Republicans…

CDC: 59 Million Americans Don’t Have Health Insurance

From Slate – Over 59 million Americans lacked health insurance for some part of 2010, a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds—a 4 million-person increase from 2008. The study examined 90,000 people from over 35,000 households across the country and found that the number of uninsured had steadily increased over…