Thursday: Let’s Discuss the Fair Elections Now Act
While single-payer is the most popular reform in polling of the public, physicians and nurses, it was largely “off the table” in Congress during the reform debate. It is clear that members of Congress, of both parties, are dependent on campaign money from the industries that benefit most from preserving the current broken health care system.
What can single-payer advocates do to change this situation?
Healthcare-NOW! has endorsed the Fair Elections Now Act as one way to loosen the grip of for-profit interests over our democracy.
The Fair Elections Now Act, a voluntary system for publicly funding congressional election campaigns, has been introduced in Congress and is supported by the national campaign finance reform groups. The Act allows candidates to run for Congress on a blend of small private donations (under $100) and matching public funds. The Act has over 140 co-sponsors in the House and 11 in the Senate.
Passage of this bill will provide members of Congress with an alternative source of campaign money, allowing them to represent their constituents, rather than their campaign funders. It will also provide any citizen who can qualify for Fair Elections funding (including single-payer advocates) with enough money to mount a credible challenge to incumbents.
Join Healthcare-NOW! for a discussion with leading advocates of the Fair Elections Now Act on Thursday, April 22nd at 8pm Eastern Time.
Featured speakers include:
Frank Kirkwood of CitizenFundedElections.org and the Western PA Coalition for Single-Payer Health Care
Chris Melody Fields, Common Cause’s Director of Outreach
Moderated by: Katie Robbins, National Organizer for Healthcare-NOW!
Here is the dial-in information:
Conference Dial-In: 1-218-862-1300
Conference Code: 441086
Please send your questions for the panel to info@healthcare-now.org.
In order for our manufacturing which still remains in the United States doing business nationally and internationally to compete they need the same health care system which eliminates the cost of the health care entitlement by the employer, completely. Otherwise companies may continue to leave America for a better business enviroment. An easy example of international competition is the Olympics. In order for U.S. athletes to compete the I.O.C. changed many rules to level the playing field. The biggest change was the paid athlete. So,the burden is completely on the individual U.S. citizen and guests, allowing our remaining companies the same rules of competition as every other nation. America is the only nation which requires business to pay for health insurance. Everybody would contribute to the public health system even people who never worked. Brazil has a large non working population who have public health. Take a look at it.
Nobody talks about bringing the jobs back to America. So if thats the case then instead of a Value Added Tax (VAT) simply do like President Reagan did and place tarriffs on the products imported from NAFTA – GAT countries and use the money to balance the budget or pay unemployment compensation, or health care. The VAT tax just makes it more difficult for U.S. companies to compete in the global economy.
At the end of each year most governments at all levels have surplus or unspent monies which they usually wastefully spend. The saying is “use it or lose it”. Make an incentive for government to return those monies by creating health accounts for the government employees for payments the future years.