Take Action: Ask the DNC to adopt single payer in the 2016 platform!
On Friday June 24, the Democratic Party’s Platform Drafting Committee rejected an amendment that would have committed the Party to fight for Medicare for All, by a 7-to-6 vote.
Fortunately, there are steps you can take right now to help us make sure Medicare for All is on the 2016 Democratic Party platform!
1. Volunteer to be one of the 40
Our goal is to get 2,000 more paper signatures by the convention. We’ll need 40 committed activists to get 50 signatures each. Good places to collect signatures are Democratic party meetings, progressive organizations’ events, or even just public open spaces like the park. Download the PDF of the petition here.
If you’d like to step up and be one of the 40, please email us!
Why is this petition important?
The petition, which demands that the DNC respect the will of its base and put single payer on the party platform, is up to 22,0000 signatures and growing every day. Now that the platform committee isn’t taking any more public testimony, signing and circulating the petition is the only direct way the people can be heard before the final vote! It’s is also a great way to grow the single payer movement, by identifying and recruiting more single payer supporters for the fight today and beyond November.
2. Help us Identify your State’s Platform Committee Members & Delegates
It’s important that we know who these delegates are so we can start reaching out to them about the single payer amendment.
Platform Committee Members are the 186 representatives chosen from each state to vote on the platform in Orlando on July 8-9.
Delegates are the 2,383 representatives to the convention who are elected/chosen at the state or local level, and who are committed to supporting either Clinton or Sanders (but can vote on the platform as they please).
If you know who your state’s platform committee members and/or delegates are, please email us!
How to find your state’s Platform Committee Members and Delegates
- Call the staff in your state party’s office.
- If they’re unwilling to give you the information, think of someone who is active in the party – they may have insider information.
- If you know your delegate or platform committee member, reach out and ask them to support a single-payer amendment (we’ll also be following up with everyone we can).
National health insurance was pioneered in the United States 120 years ago by fraternal benefit societies– the funny-handshake people– whose members built hospitals, orphanages, old folks’ homes and, for pennies per week, received sickness and death benefits. Their genuinely nonprofit systems, serving one third of American households, could have merged to national scale but were gradually outlawed by corporate lobbyists.
Canada’s national health plan began in 1972 based on the 1947 co-op model created by a Saskatchewan farm town of 15,000.
In 1997 I started the Ithaca Health Alliance, without government subsidy, whose members were covered for 12 categories of common emergency (broken bones, stitches, burns, etc) to specified maximums, anywhere in the world, for $100/YEAR. We then built a free clinic. Though the Alliance was approved by New York’s insurance department, by our Chamber of Commerce and all local officials, and though it was expanding its payment menu, the IRS in 2011 forced it to become a charity.
Another hundred years of conferences and panel discussions will not achieve a national health plan. We need to begin where we live. My book “Health Democracy” explains how. http://www.paulglover.org/hdbook.html
Today, the League of Uninsured Voters (LUV) http://www.luvpower.org concludes that United States medical insurance has become a crime, not a crisis http://www.luvpower.org/painsure.html, and that nonviolent revolution to restore nonprofit care, with mutual aid health insurance, is next.
Health care is a basic right for all persons living in a developed country.
Let me know how I can help get the rest of the signatures. I am a Ward 6 Delegate for Haverhill, MA I will not be attending the Philadelpia convention. I am involved with the Haverhill Democratic Committee as a Ward committee member. Please let me know. I plan to attend political functions.
The US is monetary sovereign. Healthcare could be entirely paid for without taxation…the US Treasury would be authorized to create the funds to pay for all healthcare needs through the existing Medicare system.
This approach would be also be net stimulative to the economy.
I would like to be one of the 40 volunteers
It’s obvious that the DNC are in the pockets of health care insurers and HMO’s who wrote Obama care that shifted the burden of paying for health care onto the backs of the middle class and still left 20 million uninsured.
Under their ‘tender mercies’ the US has gone from 6th in health outcomes to 36th and sinking. Corporate health care is a great big flop.
Hey, If I get the 50 signatures where do I send them and what is the deadline? Please advise.
Also, any script for calling the DNC delegates?
You’re doing great work. ll try to ascertain the names of my delegates and platform committee members, but I think we need an actual progressive party. The Democrats are just an other group in the service of big business as usual.
I plan to circulate the petition, but am not willing to commit to getting 50 signatorees. Can I send scanned PDFs of the signed petitions to info@healthcare-no.org? Or what should I do with them?
Barry
Like in other progressive countries, in America, the 99% would greatly benefit from a single payer health system.The very rich will always be able to purchase health care. Having worked in health care for all of my adult life this is my judgement and shapes how I will vote.
The healthcare system is not working for most people.
America needs single payer/Medicare for All. I practiced medicine for 30 years in New Jersey and the system is broken. Profit has no place in medical care– and pharmaceutical companies MUST be regulated!
Sure, I’ll try to find out who these mysterious platform committee members are in New York!
Thank you for doing this!
Anne Sumers, M.D.
Single Payer all the way…
Please add me to the volunteer who will obtain more signatures for the single payer insurance! This is the way to go!
I am a delegate from Oregon, and will be one of the 40 people!!
How can we find out if someone from our area is circulating the petition? I want to make sure Northern NV is covered …
The people in DC don’t have to worry about healthcare–they have the best there is. They don’t understand the worry most Americans have about healthcare:
If we lose our job, we lose coverage for our families and the cost of private insurance is rising 20% plus every year.
Even if we have insurance, the out of pocket costs we would have would be great enough to send us into a financial tailspin or bankruptcy. Everything we have worked for could be wiped out with a single illness or accident.
We need to make sure all our citizens have the same access to affordable healthcare as our lawmakers and stop letting insurance companies make obscene profits off our basic right to healthcare.
Our insurance premium went up this year along with the co-pays and out of pocket amounts and Rx co-pay with smaller list of approved Rx Meds. And God forbid we have no preventive care at all. If my Dr. list blood work as general the insurance will not pay, the ins., says thee hast to be a specific reason or history. Another words I have to wait till I sick with cancer before I can get any care. This is not right. To me preventive care is what medicine should be about not treating after your sick. The cost for preventive care ins,. is too high for me and my husband to afford. My plant closed so 409.00 is all I get a month from early pension I’, 60 years old.
I have 44 signatures, so I should be able to get 6 more, and I think I can get the delegate and platform committee names. Is it too late?