At the US Social Forum
Are you planning to attend the US Social Forum in Detroit from June 22nd to 26th? If so, we hope you will join Healthcare-NOW! at the USSF events below!
Workshop: Single- Payer Healthcare, the Solution to the Health Care Crisis
Thursday, June 24th, 10am – 12pm, UAW Building, 151 West Jefferson, PRES (Note Location Change)
Sponsored by: Michigan Alliance to Strengthen Social Security and Medicare, Local 6000 UAW retirees; Healthcare NOW!, Retirees for Single Payer
Learn about the single-payer solution in a 45 minute presentation. The presentation is followed by discussion of the single payer healthcare bill and opportunities to organize to lobby for this needed legislation. Speakers include: Michael Lighty, National Nurses United, Donna Smith, Reggie Cervantes, and Adrian Campbell of Michale Moore’s film: SiCKO.
People’s Movement Assembly: What the Health Happened and How Do We Get the Health Care We Need?
Fri, June 25, 1:00pm – 5:30pm, Cobo Hall: M3-31
Participating Organizations: Healthcare-NOW!, California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, Retirees for Single Payer, National Economic and Social Rights Initiative, Vermont Workers Center, Coalition of Uninsured and Underinsured for Single Payer, Alliance for Democracy, Physicians for a National Health Program, Progressive Democrats of America, American Patients United, All Unions Committee for Single Payer, Latinos United Now and Always Labor Campaign for Single Payer, United Steelworkers, People’s Health Movement, Hesperian Foundation, Prosperity Agenda, Private Health Insurance Must Go, Women’s Economic Agenda Project, Michigan Alliance to Strengthen Social Security and Medicare
The national debate on health reform went from discussing the heath care we need to how to make health care an affordable, quality commodity for those who can pay for it. Groups will present to what happened in this past year that reduced an opportunity to improve our health system to a political win that restructures the broken employer-based for-profit insurance system we currently have. We will examine the recent health reform, and why the battle must continue with an understanding that the movement for the health care we need is connected to the broader movement demanding healthy food, adequate housing, the right to water and a clean environment, having control over your own life, and being able to fully participate in decisions about your community. This meeting will seek to engage those who have been organizing for an expanded and improved Medicare for All system, as well as new perspectives in the discussion to launch the movement for the right to health care in a new and transformative way uniting head, heart, and feet together to secure the health care we need. We must do it together with a broad people’s movement ready to commit to doing the work to build for the health care for people not for profit.
Opening March
Join us for the Opening March on Tuesday, June 22nd! We will meet at Willis and Woodward at 2:30pm during the staging time to join the Retirees for Single Payer in the march. Contact us if you would like to wear a costume! info@healthcare-now.org.
Healthcare NOW Table
Volunteer to Table! Healthcare NOW will have a table at Cobo Hall Tues – Sat from 9am – 9pm. We need volunteers to staff the table in 1-2 hour shifts each day. In addition, we will be trying to collect 1000 post cards in support of HR 676. Please email Marfa at info@healhtcare-now.org to sign up to table and collect post cards with Healthcare NOW!
Other Right to Health and Single-Payer Workshops
For a Health System based on Equity and Solidarity: Building a Movement for the Human Right to Health in the U.S.
Friday, June 25, 10:00am – 12:00pm, USHRN Human Rights Tent (note our NEW time and location, changed from the official program to avoid competing with the People’s Movement Assembly listed below)
Lead Sponsor: NESRI, co-sponsored by the Montana Human Rights Network, the South L.A. Health and Human Rights Coalition, and the Vermont Worker’s Center
People in the U.S. are denied their right to health and health care. We will explore ways to strengthen the rights-based movement against this injustice and for a health system based on equity and solidarity. We will discuss different human right to health campaigns led by grassroots organizations in rural and urban locations. These campaigns range from advocacy for single payer at state level, to local planning for universal access to care, to community initiatives addressing the underlying determinants of health, such as housing, food and education. While these struggles adopt diverse strategies and tactics, all use the human rights framework to critique the current system and promote systemic change. Human rights principles – such as treating health care as a public good, not a commodity – can bolster resistance against market-based ‘reforms’ and guide alternative approaches. Panelists will work with workshop participants in smaller groups on strategies to develop health rights campaigns in new locations, forge links between health rights activists across the country and grow the national movement for the human right to health. Our goal is to expand and strengthen networks and encourage movement-building among activists.
The Struggle for Single Payer in the Time of Obamacare
Wed, 06/23/2010 – 1:00pm – 3:00pm
WSU Student Center: 289
Sponsors: Portland Jobs with Justice and Cleveland Jobs with Justice
There is an alternative to our broken for profit health care system. It’s called single payer. The newly passed US federal health care legislation does nothing to lessen the grip of the private insurance industry on our health care system. It does little to change the shameful disparities in access to treatment or control costs. At a number of Jobs with Justice chapters around the country, we are organizing and mobilizing for real health care reform: an improved and expanded Medicare for All system, with everybody in, nobody out. Single payer advocates were excluded from the recent health care debate. Now we are in the process of evaluating our efforts and strategizing for the next phase. Do we try to expand Medicare to cover those fifty and over? Do we pursue state single payer strategies? How do we make national and state level efforts support each other? This workshop will provide a brief analysis of Obamacare, recap single payer advocates’ organizing efforts and engage participants in discussion about strategic directions moving forward.
Are any insurance companies or pharmaceutical companies involved in this? Is this a Tea Party event? Is this more than a ploy to discredit the duly elected President? Or is it a legitimate single-payer effort?
Yep! This is a legitimate single-payer and event working to build the movement we need to win the right to health. Another world is possible!
I am very much interested in health care reform. I live in a small community in California and don’t expect there will be a meeting in my area, but want you to know I support your efforts and commend you for all that you do.