President Obama: the Answer is Medicare for All
Talking points below.
Once again the president and congress are not including any discussion of the only real solution to America’s health care problems – expanding and improving Medicare to cover everyone in America. On February 25th, the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care will be holding a “Sidewalk Summit for Improved Medicare for All” outside the White House in Washington, DC before the Democrats and Republicans have their session. If you are able to be in Washington, DC meet us at 9 AM at the White House. Specific meet up details will be announced as the event gets closer.
If you can’t join us in DC, consider taking bold action for the health care we need and organize a local “Sidewalk Summit” in your area. Check out these talking points, responding to each of the goals President Obama has set for health reform in his State of the Union Address, “But if anyone…has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know.”
The President’s goals and our responses:
1. Expand coverage and provide more Americans health care – Improved Medicare for All will provide comprehensive medical, mental, dental, vision and prescription coverage to all people (everybody in, nobody out) living in the United States from birth to death without gaps. No system based on private insurance can make the same guarantee.
2. End insurance company abuses – Improved Medicare for All will remove the expensive and bloated private insurance bureaucracy from our health care system and effectively end their profit-driven practices of denying and restricting coverage. All people in America will enjoy the same sense of security that those with traditional Medicare currently feel in knowing that necessary care will be covered and that their coverage cannot be taken away. Medicare is accountable to the public, rather than to investors.
3. Control health care costs – Improved Medicare for All is the only solution with built-in cost controls. There will be immediate savings of $400 billion per year simply by removing the high administrative and marketing costs that come with having over 1,300 different private insurance plans. Additional savings will arise through negotiations for fair pharmaceutical prices as Walmart does now.
4. Decrease the deficit – Improved Medicare for All is the only solution which will put the brakes on our health care costs which are spiraling out of control. Further positive effects on the economy will occur as businesses are relieved of the financial burden of paying for health benefits allowing them to focus on building their business, raising wages and competing in the global market. Having less volatility in health care prices will allow businesses to hire more employees, thereby spurring job growth.
5. Stabilize Medicare – Improved Medicare for All will finally relieve the financial stress which is placed on Medicare from providing coverage for those who have the greatest health care needs – those who are disabled or who are 65 years of age and older. Everybody, healthy and ill, will contribute to the Medicare fund throughout their lives knowing that Medicare will be there for them when they need it.
We urge brief presentations a few minutes long, video taped by independent video as well as notification of the media and articles written by real health care advocates. Hold the event at an appropriate federal building or other landmark and share your videos with us to circulate. Let us know what you’re planning and we can help provide you with talking points, press lists, and help spread the word about your event. For more info, email us at info@healthcare-now.org.
This is an opportunity for us to clearly show how our solution – a national health system funded by a single payer; improved and expanded Medicare for All – is the best alternative and the only one that can meet all of the president’s goals. Hold your own summit. Video tape it and share it with others. Write about it on blogs and websites and in your local papers. Make yourself heard.
No matter what the Congress and president do, if anything, the time is now to lay the foundation for a real health care reform movement that cannot be ignored.
Please be in touch with us if you want to organize an event locally, or if you plan to join us in DC on February 25th.
I have lived in England, Denmark and Canada, and all 3 of those places had WONDERFUL HEALTH DELIVERY SERVICES PAID THROUGH TAXES. Nobody in those countries has to stress over being ill – from cradle to grave!! Their needs are met without additional cost! WE NEED A SINGLE PAYER HEALTH SYSTEM DESPERATELY IN THIS COUNTRY!!!
Dear Sir/MS:
I’m a Medicare recipient,am happy with it. My question – Will Medicare pay for everything; but the 10% and will supplemental insurance be necessary to pick up the difference in health care and drugs? Supplemental insurance is not that expensive, maybe paying personally for that is a good idea. I’m for Medicare.
Yours truly
Mary Ann Trebesch
To answer your question, click on HR676 above for a summary of HR676.
Medicare for all – that is obvious to all of us but the WH and legislators who are in bed with big Pharma and insurance companies.
Indeed. The WH and legislators are in bed with the insurance cartel and Big Pharma.
The best answer/solution to this health care crisis is HR-676.
I am permenently disabled due to a work injury in 1996. I was working in a hospital. They (the defence insurance company) delayed services and requested MRI updates for so long that when I finally told my family praticioner at Kaiser Medical Center (not the responsible hospital injury) but through my job as an advocate in a non profit ILC,
I was scheduled for surgery ASAP because the crumbled discs that were pushing on my spinal cord and causing the headachs, arm numbness and falling as well as dropping things, etc.
I am writing this because every treatment that was recommended by any of the specialists were denied by the Hospital (Sequoia in Redwood City) to the point that I suffer pain the will not go away. Myquality of life has been greatly reduced due to pain as well as never knowing if I make plans I will be able to keep them.
I truly believe that there should be Federal oversite and a CAP on insurance rates, not on the rights on the aged, chronically ill, and people with disabilities.
Thank you:
Lesa OMara- 1670 Kentfield Ave.
Rear Cottage
Redwood City, CA 94061-2706
650-2611579 Home 650-520-1825 Days
Great idea !! Sorry I can’t be there. If I lived closer or had the money to go, I would. Have you considered organizing a MLK type, million person march on Washington ? I think that is what is needed now. Seems like there would easily be well over a million people that live east of the Mississippi that could and would drive to D.C. to force the government to take the approach of improved Medicare for ALL.
Retired in Oregon,
Harold (Hal) Iler
EVERYBODY IN NOBODY OUT
http://www.robertrossband.com/Everybody_In_Nobody_Out.mp3
By Roberty Ross
Chorus
EVERYBODY IN NOBODY OUT
EVERYBODY IN NOBODY OUT
EVERYBODY IN NOBODY OUT
EVERYBODY IN NOBODY OUT
Verse 1
PEOPLE WANT MEDICARE FOR ALL
SO OFF THE TABLE IS OFF THE WALL
TO COMPROMISE WITH THOSE AGAINST
DOESN’T MAKE A BIT OF SENSE
DON’T WATER THE WHOLE THING DOWN
DON’T RUN IT INTO THE GROUND
TELL THE CONGRESS & PRESIDENT
IF NOT NOW BROTHER THEN TELL ME WHEN
Chorus: EVERYBODY IN NOBODY OUT …
Verse 2
THE PUBLIC OPTION MAY HELP A FEW
MANY MORE WILL GET THE ROYAL SCREW
WE’LL BE FORCED TO BUY A PLAN
OR THEY WILL FINE US OH YES THEY CAN
THEY WON’T REGULATE INDUSTRY
THEY WILL REGULATE YOU & ME
IS THIS THE CHANGE WE HEARD ABOUT
OR JUST ANOTHER REASON TO SHOUT
Chorus: EVERYBODY IN NOBODY OUT …
Bridge
HEAL THE MIND THE BODY & SOUL
HEAL IT ALL AND MAKE US WHOLE
WHEN WILL THEY SEE THE LIGHT
HEALTH CARE IS A HUMAN RIGHT
Chorus
EVERYBODY IN NOBODY OUT
EVERYBODY IN NOBODY OUT
EVERYBODY IN NOBODY OUT
EVERYBODY IN NOBODY OUT
Chorus
EVERYBODY IN NOBODY OUT
EVERYBODY IN NOBODY OUT
EVERYBODY IN NOBODY OUT
EVERYBODY IN NOBODY OUT
Tag Ending
EVERYBODY IN NOBODY OUT
EVERYBODY IN NOBODY OUT
Dear Robert Ross, Hope you have a guitar & can post that on youtube. It’s great!! Medicare for all is the only solution!
It’s very frustrating when put the facts in front of your Representative to Congress and the snub their nose at single payer.. My rep is Kathy Dahlkemper who will not support single payer.. We need to fight to elect more people like Antony Weiner, Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers who are leaders, not followers.They are people who will fight for what they know is the only real solution to our healthcare nightmare..Until we find a way to put leaders in Congress and not followers, I doubt anything will change..
1. Private health insurance is exorbitant. That’s why so many Americans are uninsured.
2. Health-insurance companies cancel (commonly retroactively cancel) individual policies. Most, if not all, health-insurance companies have teams of employees whose job is to cancel insurance on people who become really ill. They purposefully let people die. (They can’t get away with this for Federal Employees Health Benefits and other large-contract policies because of substantial appeals processes.)
3. Health-insurance companies refuse to pay valid claims by providers and policy holders.
4. Health insurance takes about 40% of premiums with about 30% going for administrative costs, billing, and overhead.
5. Payment for emergency-room and other care for indigents is spread among insured patients, self-paying patients, and Medicaid (US taxpayers).
6. A self-paying patient pays full retail; health insurance commonly gets a discount of 50-75% off. Yes, really, they pay 1/3.
7. Too many people arrive at ER’s for care for chronic conditions, colds, mild flu. There are not enough physician’s assistants, nurse practitioners, and clinics for colds, flu, immunizations, and simple chronic conditions to free up ER’s and physicians for more serious conditions.
8. Prescriptions cost too much. Congress failed to establish Government-negotiated prescription costs. This was stabbed in the back at the time of Medicare, Part D. Doughnut hole. Need I say more? The U.S. Government has given away the store on patents for drugs developed under Government research grants. Reverse that. Many of the major drug companies have been exposed by internal memoranda for suppressing evidence of life-threatening side effects of their drugs. Don’t feel sorry for them receiving lots less for drugs. They spend several times as much on advertising as on research. Pass a law banning drug-company advertising except in medical journals. That should make up the difference.
9. Everyone, including the Senators and Congressmen in the pockets of the health-insurance industry, who is against universal health care has good-to-excellent health insurance as part of an employment package for free or for modest premiums.
10. If FedEx, UPS, and the USPS can coexist and compete, why can’t Aetna, HealthNet, Kaiser Permanente, and others coexist and be competitive with a Federal Health Insurance (FHI) that is based on a flat 5% income tax?
11. The working administrative and billing template of FHI administration already exists. It is Medicare. The plan already exists. It is typical FEHB HMO coverage.
12. An example of a plan is HealthNet High Option FEHB. Total premium, employee contribution and government contribution, for a family is about $12,000/yr. Deducting insurance company admin costs, overhead, and profit of 40% gets the cost of care down to $7,200/yr if spread as insurance over a large number of people.
13. Health-insurance companies could continue, as before, to cherry-pick customers and keep the big accounts. (Politics is the art of the possible.)
14. Ways to cut costs and make this possible for 5% include Government negotiation of prescription costs, the simplified billing of FHI, and FHI getting the same billing rate as insurance companies.
15. Restructuring the private health-care system (still private) would enable additional cost savings. ER’s for emergencies, Urgent Care for urgent care, clinics for colds, flu, immunizations. More nurse practitioners and more physician’s assistants to free up physicians’ time for patients who really need them. This program eliminates inappropriate ER visits for colds and chronic conditions that cost Federal or State governments or force hospitals to embed those costs in the care of other patients.
16. Figure out the flat tax it would take to fund this (4-6%), no BS about tax on sugared soft drinks, etc., then tell the American people to put up or shut up. Here’s a plan that really covers and really pays. It’s cheaper than any existing plan. Simple question. Would you pay 4-6%?
17. You’ll notice there is no mention of 1.5% cost containment. That’s because that’s completely dishonest eyewash and lip service with no real intent to save money. And it disappeared from the horizon long ago.
Healthcare Plan–Existing Health-Insurance Providers Plus Federal Health Insurance (FHI)
1. Combine Medicare and Medicaid and make it available to everybody for 5% of income, just like Social Security (7%) and Medicare (1.4%) are now—no income cap.
2. Coverage would be what U.S. Government employees’ HMO’s provide but for everybody. Use something like the HealthNet High Option FEHB brochure for a model. (That’s what I have). Private providers receive discounted rates (about 67%, ie., they receive 1/3 of retail billed amount) as they do today from insurance companies.
3. Health-insurance companies could continue, as before, to cherry-pick customers and retain the big accounts.
4. The U.S. Government must negotiate prescription costs.
Benefits
1. This continues private providers and allows health insurance companies to continue as before but provides competition between the government plan and private insurers.
2. By externalizing health-care costs from business costs, it would make American companies more competitive.
3. Simplified billing and elimination of health-insurance-company administration, profit, and overhead saves a bundle. Health-insurance companies will squawk, but as I indicated earlier, let them keep the big accounts. They don’t want to provide insurance to individuals anyway, they just want the premiums.
4. Restructuring the private health-care system (still private) would enable additional cost savings. ER’s for emergencies, Urgent Care for urgent care, clinics for colds, flu, immunizations. More nurse practitioners and more physician’s assistants to free up physicians’ time for patients who really need them. This program eliminates inappropriate ER visits for colds and chronic conditions that cost Federal or State governments or force hospitals to embed those costs in the care of other patients.
5. Improving efficiency would reduce costs. For example, have hospitals learn some efficiency from companies such as Radiology, Ltd.
6. Eliminating health-insurance companies from FHI causes them to lose some customers and puts some their employees out of work. Many of them are former health-care providers (nurses, physicians). In this plan, lots more health-care providers will be needed. Laid-off health-insurance employees can go back to being useful as physicians and nurses.
7. This essentially provides everybody with the same coverage that HMO’s provide through Federal Employees Health Benefits, but at full cost. However, it costs a lot less than any health insurance most uninsured people could buy, and it’s real coverage that doesn’t get canceled.
8. The alternative is to keep the enormously unfair, needlessly expensive system we have or change to some hodge-podge mess that ultimately demands that people who can’t afford health insurance buy health insurance that is too expensive, gets canceled, and doesn’t pay.
Michael C. Carpenter
Hydrologist
2679 N. Sundance Trail
Tucson, Arizona 85745
520-743-4064
While I agree with a great deal of what you said, the fact that you got a few things wrong tends to dilute the impact on those you may be attempting to convince.
No data that I’ve found place private health insurance pay-outs as low as 60% of premium intake. The average appears to be in the 75% – 80% range – from 84% for large employer-sponsored plans down to as little as 66% for individual policies.
And it’s silly to believe that an OPTIONAL flat 5% income tax would pay for optional Medicare: the wealthy would opt for private insurance costing far less than 5% of their income, taking that large chunk of financing out of the equation.
The only really good solution is Medicare for All, which really doesn’t leave much room for private health insurers (and good riddance, I’d say).
A really strong, affordable ‘public option’ available to all (along with subsidies for all who needed them, whether privately insured or not) would solve the health end of the problem, but at quite possibly unsustainably high cost unless it effectively drove private health insurers out of business (which it is explicitly intended NOT to do – otherwise, it would just be Medicare for All).
So face up to it: as long as our government remains in the pockets of corporations, we’re just not going to get decent health care without paying through the nose for it to private insurers, regardless of how they try to present their bill as ‘health care reform’. Even a ‘throw the bums out’ approach won’t help unless we can find some way to avoid just electing a new bunch of bums (our new Rep. in 2006 campaigned on a Medicare for All platform, but never lifted a finger to support it after being elected).
This is not to say that we shouldn’t exert all the pressure that we can, but when those efforts fail (as they almost certainly will) we should also be ready to work toward fixing the underlying problem: government corruption, pure and simple (what else should you call placing the financial health of your contributors so far above the physical health of your constituents?). Sorry for bringing in reality to rain on the parade, but if we want actual results we need to face it. There is one other potentially fruitful approach, however: tackle the problem state-by-state, in smaller, perhaps more feasible chunks.
Dear President Obama,
Please scrap this really dumb concession of a Health Care Bill and ask your Congress and Senate to listen to the masses – and their hearts – and initiate a Single Payer System for our medical needs in this country.
You know it will be the best answer for the Nation, and will quickly send our economy back on the right track.
And P.S. – By removing insurance companies from the equation of health care, we can can only see an improvement to the quality of our services.
Please, PLEASE listen to the masses, and give us what we want!
Very truly yours,
Heidi Neville
Democracy is an abused word in the USA. Senators do NOT represent the people. They represent the moneyed interest. The streets and netwaves are filled with the voices of THE PEOPLE who want SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE.
“Government of the people, by the people, for the people…” give me a break.
GOVERNMENT OF THE RICH PEOPLE, BY THE RICH PEOPLE, FOR THE RICH PEOPLE is more like it.
We have waited too long to allow our medical coverage to continue on its current destructive path.
1) Currently 62 yrs old, can not retire, I would have no health coverage.
2) My wife is approaching 60, but will have the same problem in two years.
3) My son, 27 yrs old, has been working with the same company for a few yrs, has no health insurance. He doesn’t make enough to pay for the high cost of private insurance.
4) Have a friend, paying Blue Cross approx $1,900.00 per month for coverage. Needless to say, she isn’t working, and has about depleted her savings. Blue Cross just increased her premiums by over $200.00 per month.
5) Working people premiums continue to increase with coverage decreasing year after year!
6) In God we Trust!
Thank you!
Everyone who has commented on here is awesome!
Please if you get a second I would love to have any or all of you as fb friends. I am under “Jane Gray” with a photo of a dove for Peace of the Action as my photo. Also i recommend friending Terri DiMatteo, a huge SP advocate as well as of course Dr. Margaret Flowers.
Peace to you all & cheers to SP in our country! We will accept nothing less!
H.R. 676, Medicare for All, is the true answer to health care. It will save billions of dollars and
create thousands of jobs. The greedy insurance companies who have been paying off many
in Congress have to be tossed out!
Emily, I am in total agreement with you.
Enough is enough already. Medicare for ALL!! Each time I read about percentages of uninsured I get upset. Way too low. The voice of the people is NoT being heard and there are wayyyy more people without insurance than is being portraid and being portraid by those being paid off to spread the lies. Medicare for All. The insurance companies are killing people with increasing premiums. Cost of medication?? Come on people…200.00 for a bottle of antiboitics? Rush L. certainly was happy he had good healthcare recently when he had a health scare. God forbid if everyone had the right to stay healthy. He looked rediculous on utube. Cushy insurance is what he has and hes afraid of losing it. Healthcare is a right, not a luxury.
It is a crime what is happening to the US citizens and the gov. is to blame for it. They should step down if they can’t do the job of the people by the people. We need to stand up and fight for our rights and our health care and education. I believe that they want us to be stupid and unhealthy and I wish I could move from here for I don’t see it getting better instead it is getting worst. The people in the gov. are not for the people but rather for their money. We need a third party for the two isn’t working and they have showed us just how really stupid they are and we need to take back our gov. We need to wake up we are being controlled by some bad seeds…
I am 58 years old and have been without health coverage for over two years. I had to drop my coverage after my insurance company (who I had for 10 years)raised my premium to $1,200 a month and my husbands to $1300.00 a month. I figured I’d get a cheaper policy but low and behold, because my doctor told me years ago that my blood pressure was high during one visit and wanted me on medication (which I refused to take) now I have a preexisting condition and was turned down by three other companies. My husband will be turning 65 this November and we can’t wait to get him on Medicare. I just have to hope I stay well for seven years!
No where in the entire health care debate do I hear anyone mention including integrative medicine into our model. Acupuncture & Chinese Medicine,(has effectively treated most of the world’s populations for thousands of years), Nutrition, Homeopathy, Osteopathy, PT, Massage Therapy, Hypnotherapy, etc.
Big Pharma patented drugs are expensive where there are herbal equivalents that work while being cost effective and produce NO life threatening side effects. Once a patented drug is introduced into the wider population – that’s when we hear about adverse side effects. IE: Vioxx pulled after many reports of heart problems and death. (FDA is a quasi-judicial agency run by former CEO’s of BIG PHARMA – talk about conflict of interest).
Employing safer, natural, therapeutic alternatives will significanlty bring down Health Care Costs. Whether or not we manage to get a Single-Payer system – We should at least employ
these cost effective, integrative approaches that work.
What ever happenend to the Hippocratic Oath, “First, do no Harm”?
Great talking points. We need to keep challenging this president with his own words. If he is truly not just another corporate profit tool, he needs to PROVE it by getting behind Single Payer, like he did as a state senator in 2003, which you can hear for yourself by clicking on the name link in this post. Single Payer is the ONLY choice for REAL healthcare reform.
In addition to the obvious moral and efficiency arguments in support of Single Payer, it should be noted that almost all (if not all) nations having a successful Single Payer plan have funded it in great part by eliminating the many splinter health groups and melded them into one. Simplified, that means giving a Medicaid card to all VA, Indian Health, Medicaid, Child and Maternal Health, etc and thus eliminating duplication of services, huge administrative costs, and enormous costs of separate facilities. Are really strong enough to do that? It’s the only way we can afford Medicare for All
I with you 100% until we get it or my uninsured stented heart stops.
All of these points are very important in a Single Payer Health System BUT you neglect to mention that this system should be administered by the Federal government and not contracted out to private industry to administer the way it is now. Private industry’s ( whether it is the Insurance Company covering health care or the company administering Medicare) major goal is to maximize their profits by limiting the services to the public. Right now Medicare DOES NOT COVER PREVENTIVE CHECKUPS!!!!!! and they have many reasons why they will not cover certain procedures fully or at all (it takes a lawyer to understand it). Many doctors and medical facilities refuse to accept medicare for this reason and if medicare does not cover the supplemental insurance does not cover.
Medicare D (the prescription plan) has a doughnut hole that makes seniors pay 60 to 100% of the cost of their medications once they reach 2.500–to reach this point the program counts both the amount the insurance pays and the amount the senior pays–once the senior reaches $4500 then the amount is significantly reduced BUT the program only counts the amount the senior pays not the amount the insurance might pay. This is set up for the benefit of the employers and insurance companies not the senior. We have to make sure the Improved medicare does not work to the benefit of the employers and drug companies and that the seniors in the income bracket of 50,000 to 80,000 a year (the missing class) are not left out of government assistance as they are in the housing programs.
Why can’t we just get along and dance together and all win together?
We live in a Capitalist society and one of the evils of our society is self-interest and corporate profit maximization at all cost.
*I am for single payer and public option and integrated health insurance/taxes/jobs bill reform.
Personally and currently,I have sick friends and relatives who end up in bankruptcy because health insurance companies denied their claims. I have physician friends who are squeezed by high malpractice insurance year in and year out. I have friends who work for health and malpractice insurance & pharmaceutical companies who are overworked and underpaid. I have unemployed and underemployed friends who cannot afford Cobra and exhausted their unemployment benefits. Our organization for the past 2 years, have been denied over 800 times and never got grant funding from the government and public/private foundations for our nonprofit organization to further our public causes we established since 1993. Hence, our volunteers don’t have health insurance.
*I fully support “Medicare to All” and in all my posts in Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter for the past week, my wife Frances Strain and I called this “MEDISHARE”.
Everyone must concede, share, forgive, forget, and help each other!
— If we implement “Medicare for Everyone” or “MediShare”, what will be our plans for my friends who work for health insurance, malpractice insurance, and pharmaceutical companies who will lose their jobs? Any ideas? What jobs will the government create for them?
— What are we going to do with the Board of Directors & Officers of these health/malpractice insurance and pharmaceutical companies who are excessive, sociopaths, and financial sociopaths? Any ideas?
— Any ideas on how can my sick friends, who are now mostly bankrupt, recover from the evils done by health/malpractice insurance companies? They cannot even borrow money and losing their homes due to foreclosure!
— Any response President Obama, Congressmen, Senate, IRS, lobbyists, health/malpractice pharmaceutical companies, and us the majority financially poor?
EVERYONE HELP! WE NEED BALANCE! DON’T BE A FINANCIAL SOCIOPATH! PLEASE HELP EACH OTHER OUT!
Yes, for the love of God YES. We need single payer no insurance company involved health care. It just makes sense. Why would you want to have your health care dollars fund the fat cat self indulged money grubbing bastards that have killed untold amounts of people all for the sake of making more money for their selves. There should not be a profit motive in health care, therefore the insurance company should not be involved in an aspect of health care. Every country that has ever had universal health care has never repealed it. It must be a good idea.
We all need to do everything we can to push congress and the senate into this health care reform. I wish that I could be in DC to help demonstrate but I can write my senator and news paper and show up to local demonstrations. I will do whatever it takes to pass health care reform.
While I am a supporter of an single-payer or a medicare for all system. Given the current economic crisis (30,000,000+ out of work) do you really think now is a good time to for the U.S. to transition to search a system?
I am so very thankful to have read these messages. I now know that I am not alone.
Imagine if tomorrow morning every “health care industry” ad were to be pulled from the mass media market and the billions of dollars that would have been spent on marketing and advertising were instead set aside and placed in a “Medicare for All” account.
Every evening all across America our airways are flooded with ads from hospitals, drug (pushers) companies, and insurance monopolies.
How ironic that at the same time so many of our politicians are trying to convince the American people that we cannot trust the government we elect but can trust capitalist corporations when it comes to our health care!
“We the people” still have the power to vote these parasites out of office and replace them with men and women of integrity who will do what is right for America and give us “Medicare for all” with no caps for the rich and famous.
Thanks for being there to give us a voice.
It is very interesting that at the 2/25 Summit, PNHP statistics were often quoted…but no representative of PNHP was invited…is that because Washington assumesthat professional politicians know best about health care? Our elected officials don’t yet get it; access to health care is not a commodity. Single payer advocates continue to be excluded because we know access to afordable, portable, and equitable health care is a right; or at the very least, a public good. The Sente bill is deeply flawed, but not for the reasons the Legislators or the Presient report. It is deeply flawed because we people are dehumanized. I, and my sick daughter, are not to be compared to a cell phone! This is a national emergency…fight, fight, fight for single payer
Still unacceptable to vote yes as of March 19, 2010…Mandating everyone to pay for health insurance (including small businesses) or else pay penalties? That sounds extortion to me! What if your one of the 40 million who are uninsured and unemployed and also no money left after paying just the rent, food, basic clothing and transportation? double whammy! Where else these people get the money upfront to purchase health insurance? High interest loans? Your bailing out the banks and health insurance companies again!!!
AMEND THIS CLAUSE BEFORE VOTING YES AND CREATE SOME EXCEPTIONS!!!