Let’s Heal the Economy and the Health of Our People
Thanks to all of you for your kind words, re: my column/letter to the troops….the healthcare for everyone, single-payer troops who are now scattered by the millions across this land.
Here goes another one, a column to explain how easy it will be for us to get great healthcare for all of us.
Finally, after HEALTHCARE-NOW’S four years of hard work and building understanding among people nationwide, we are where we hoped to be. Imagine! Election day is almost here. We had hoped to have a large enough majority in Congress favoring a single-payer, national system that could override any veto–or at least encourage the next president to say yes to national healthcare for all and to say no to the continuation of insurance company domination. Now we are close to having that kind of majority. The insurance companies cannot continue to force us to purchase their product.
What does this say about the economy? One of the best ways for the economy to begin to heal itself is to refuse to put billions of dollars into insurance companies that refuse to cover everyone, that charge enormous fees, and that participate in enormous fraud on the economy of the people and the nation. Enough people understand that we can have a national healthcare system for everybody in this country while spending less money and providing quality to every person, man, woman, and child. Now it is our turn!
One more time–this time, play this tune to jazz, classical, red neck, symphonic, and blues music–we can afford this! In fact, national healthcare for everyone will cost less. Why? How? Remember! It is easy!
One small fact stands in our way right now today. It is the cost of insurance companies.
If we decide to eschew the cost of doing business with insurance companies, then we can have higher quality, better healthcare for everybody. It is easy as pie; as American as apple pie or cherry if you prefer.
ON THE OTHER HAND, if we believe that we can’t have excellent healthcare without having insurance companies in charge, then we will no longer be able to have excellent healthcare for all of us. We will continue to have as many as 50 million of us uninsured at a cost of an additional $386 billion dollars per year.
But we can do this. NOW is the TIME. Let’s heal the economy and the health of our people all at once with a single-payer, national healthcare system–now–with a new congress and a new president! Or together with whatever we come out with on November 4th. Now is the time!
Thank you,
Marilyn Clement
National Coordinator, Healthcare-NOW!
“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane.”
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
It’s great to hear from you Marilyn – I really believe that with the economic situation we absolutely need to continue to push the need for Single Payer to heal our people and our economy – in cities and counties everywhere we see how much they would save. Now is the time to make those connections clear to everyone. I believe we can – Having completed a successful road show trip across upstate New York we have talked to so any people who are understanding the concept of a Single Payer system and truly believe it is the answer. Rebecca
Thank you Marilyn once again for your expression of the possible and charge to the troops – a timely charge as we go the Chicago Strategy Conference. Yes, let’s take “We can afford this” to heart and to music. Here’s a start : “If we can sing it, we can swing it……..
The economic situation may even be an opportunity to finally achieve single payer insurance with free market forces discredited, need for bold solutions and (as trooper Rebecca Elgie notes) peoples’ understanding of a single payer system.
With all the hard work you have done for this cause, and all the people I have spoken to, I find that there is still a tremendous lack of comprehension of what is at stake. I am not about to give up but I think we have to continue to call legislators even though I find them to be callous and unyielding. They must know the truth but MONEY is so influential. It is Washington as usual. We have to mount loud, persistent demonstrations, tell the truth about all the money that Congress is getting, and how their relatives are involved as well. And they have to get so many phone calls that their lines are jammed constantly. We have to find people who can reach our legislators privately and warn them that we mean business. We have to find people in the media to do much better to include stories about single payer. I don’t know if the criticism that PBS made a dent, although I have read that they are saying they would have to do a program exclusively devoted to single payer. Well we have to pester the media. I think PBS got the point. As soon as Sick Around America ended I was on the internet to condemn the awful job. And I get the impression they were inundated with strong messages. We literally have to start a revolution. No more Mister Nice Guy. The internet and 800 numbers make it easy. Everywhere I go, they can see me coming. I will not let remarks like “people are lazy, selfish, complacent, uninformed, tired, etc etc. get by!