Push to Pass

Need to find and read a summary of HR 676? It is here along with the names of the co-sponsors of the bill. HR676 was introduced by Representative John Conyers. The full bill is here (30 pps. pdf). The annotated version is here. (29 pps.)

Dan Schinhofen

Received a phone call from my friend Dan Schinhofen this morning. Dan is a conservative and writes a weekly column in the Pahrump Mirror. He espouses the conservatives view of politics.

Jack Wood

I am a progressive Democrat. I also write a weekly column in the Pahrump Mirror. I espouse the progressive view of politics.

Dan and I can take different views and argue about them without either of us having a handgun strapped to our waists or an AR-15 slung over our shoulders.

Dan phoned me this morning to inform me that since no one else in Pahrump has done so, he has arranged with the Pahrump Nugget to hold a Pahrump Town Hall Meeting on the timely question of Healthcare Reform, here in Pahrump, Nye County, Nevada.

Nye County, for those of you who don’t live in the county or the state of Nevada, is a bright red county, as opposed to blue. The Republican Party owns it, runs it, and holds the political power.

It is as good a place as any for our own Town Hall Meeting. I tip my hat to Dan for getting it set up. The Democrats sure didn’t.

Here are the details:

When: Sunday, August 30, 2009 from 3:00 – 5 p.m.

Where: Pahrump Nugget, intersection of Highways 160 and 372

Moderators: Dan Schinhofen and Jack Wood

Master of Ceremonies: Yet to be determined

Everyone is invited to attend and participate. Dan has undertaken to invite Senators Harry Reid, John Ensign, Congresswomen Shelley Berkley and Dina Titus and Congressman Dean Heller.

The event will be televised on Pahrump local TV channel 30.

This Summer, Let’s Win Single-Payer Healthcare!

For the first time ever, single-payer legislation will be debated and voted on by the House of Representatives in September.

This is very good news! At last single-payer health care is being elevated to the top of the healthcare “debate” or “argument.” As you will see, if you read this post, we ordinary people aka grassroots have some representation in Congress. Pay attention in the weeks ahead to Representative Anthony Weiner (NY-9) with HR 676 and Senator Bernie Sanders with S. 703.

Senator Bernie Sanders

I see this as a tact to go around the White House and Rahm Emmanuel-Max Baucus and their obsession with trying to get bipartisan support from the Republicans, which isn’t ever going to happen.

Healthcare is too important for fiddling around forever with politics as usual. It is time for “yes, we can” rather than “no, we can’t.”

Representative Anthony Weiner

Rep. Anthony Weiner (NY-9) introduced an amendment to President Obama’s healthcare reform bill (HR 3200) that would replace it with HR 676, the single-payer bill, and Speaker Pelosi pledged to bring it to a debate and vote on the full House floor in September.

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is expected to bring S 703 to the floor for a vote in the Senate.

And Rep. Dennis Kucinich (OH) wants to enable states to establish single-payer systems.

Let’s make this the summer of Single-Payer Action and demand that our Congresspeople vote YES on Rep. Weiner’s amendment, S 703, and Rep. Kucinich’s state single-payer amendment in September!

What is the Weiner Single Payer Amendment? Here are the amendment’s details. Please contact Healthcare-NOW! for lobbying strategy or advice – 1-800-453-1305 or info@healthcare-now.org.

Tell your Representatives that the Obama health plan is NOT enough and we want them to vote YES on Rep. Weiner’s single-payer amendment and Senate bill S 703. We need real health reform that will cover every American, provide real choice of doctors, and save the majority of Americans money.

Here’s What You Can Do to Help Win Single-Payer

1. Contact your Congressperson and demand they vote YES on Weiner’s Single-Payer Amendment.

• Call them (find their number here) at 866-338-1015 for the Capital Switchboard, email them, meet with them, birddog them at public events, have a one-person protest at their office every day using a rotating team… Download our toolkit on organizing an effective protest.
• Download these lobby materials to give to your Congresspersons
• Find a town hall meeting with a Congressperson near YOU! Use the form on the right side of this page.
• Order Healthcare-NOW! signs for your events – call 1-800-453-1305 or email info@healthcare-now.org.
• Whatever tactics you use, remind them we will remember their vote on this amendment during the mid-term elections. Remember, civility rules. Here are some tips for achieving a constructive town hall meeting.

2. Brush-up on your talking points and educate others using our resources.

• Watch our teach-in on single-payer talking points and comparison with HR 3200 (Obama’s plan).
• Print out comparisons of single-payer and the public option.
• Remember the ills of the private insurance racket. Brave New Films has launched a hard hitting campaign to expose those who are profiting from denying care to the sick.

3. Write to your local media.

• Organize an op-ed/letter to the editor team and send in as many letters as possible.
• Protests against the media’s blackout of single-payer coverage have also been successful. The more calls media outlets get demanding they cover single-payer, the more likely they will cover it because they know there is an audience for single-payer.
• You can find press contacts here – send a media alert about your efforts to influence the health care debate in your area.

4. Download the petition for HR 676, collect signatures in your congressional district, and deliver the signatures to your Representative.
Go here for the petition.

5. Post this image, and link it to this campaign, to your blog, Facebook profile, and all over.

Here are direct links to this image:
http://www.healthcare-now.org/listimages/ptp.gif
http://www.healthcare-now.org/listimages/ptp1.gif
http://www.healthcare-now.org/listimages/ptp2.gif

6. Use Direct Action!
Sometimes we have to be direct to get the attention of the media and our elected officials, but we don’t have to use the scare tactics of the right to do so. Here are some strategies that people across the country have used to push the single-payer message:

• Not Covered Campaign!
• Vigils
• Die-Ins
• Demonstrations at Insurance Companies
• Demonstrations at the office of your Congress Person
• Demonstrations at Media Outlets

Here are the amendment’s details. Please contact Healthcare-NOW! for lobbying strategy or advice – 1-800-453-1305 or info@healthcare-now.org.

Senator Max Baucus

This amendment could not have happened without the unwavering commitment of grassroots, single-payer activists like you. From the mounting pressure of activists who disrupted Senate Finance Committee hearings, to the in–district birddogging of Committee Chairman Max Baucus, to the 13,000 signatures collected and delivered by FAIR to protest ABC’s censorship of single-payer, every little bit has helped push national, single-payer healthcare to the forefront of the debate.

• The United States is the only industrialized country in the world without a universal health insurance system.1
• In 2006, the U.S. census reported that 46 million Americans (recently revised downward to 45 million) have no health insurance.2
• “Over a third (36%) of families living below the poverty line are uninsured. Hispanic Americans (34%) are more than twice as likely to be uninsured as white Americans, (13%) while 21% of black Americans have no health insurance.”3
• More than 9 million children lack health insurance in America.4
• Eighteen thousand people die each year because they are uninsured.5
• According to the UN Human Development Report, “The uninsured are less likely to have regular outpatient care, so they are more likely to be hospitalized for avoidable health problems. Once in hospital, they receive fewer services and are more likely to die in the hospital than are insured patients. They also receive less preventive care. Over 40% of the uninsured do not have a regular place to go when they are sick and over a third of the uninsured say that they or someone in their family went without needed care, including recommended treatments or prescription drugs in the last year, because of cost.”6
• Half of all bankruptcies are caused by medical bills. Three-quarters of those filings are people with health insurance.7
• U.S. health care spending is approximately $2 trillion per year, or $6,697 per person.8
The United States continues to spend significantly more on health care than other countries in the world.9
• Administrative costs account for 31 percent of all health care expenditures in the United States. The average overhead for U.S. private health insurers is 11.7 percent; for Medicare, it is 3.6 percent; for Canada’s national health insurance program, it is 1.3
percent.10
• According to the UN Human Development Report, while the United States leads the world in spending on health care, “countries spending substantially less than the US have healthier populations.… The infant mortality rate for the U.S. is now higher than for
many other industrial countries.”11
• A baby born in El Salvador has a better chance of surviving than a baby in Detroit. The infant mortality rate in Detroit is 15.5, compared to El Salvador’s rate of 9.7.12
• Canadians live three years longer on average than we do.13
• A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that older Americans are significantly less healthy than their British counterparts – we have more diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, lung disease and cancer. Even the poorest Brits can expect to live longer than the richest Americans.14
• Cubans have a lower infant mortality rate than the United States and according to the U.N. Human Development Report, a longer average lifespan.15
• Over the next decade, the federal government will give the drug and health care industries an estimated $822 billion as a result of the 2003 enactment of Medicare Part D (the Medicare prescription drug plan).16
• There are four times as many health care lobbyists in Washington as there are members of Congress.17
• Ninety percent of Americans believe the American health care system needs fundamental changes or needs to be completely rebuilt. Two-thirds of Americans believe the federal government should guarantee universal health care for all citizens.18
NOTES
1 The Impact of Health Insurance Coverage on Health Disparities in the United States, Human Development Report, UNDP, 2005; Universal Health Insurance in the United States: Reflections on the Past, the Present, and the Future. American Journal of Public Health; http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1447684
2 http://www.census.gov/prod/2006pubs/p60-231.pdf This figure was recently revised downward to 44.8 million due to a computer programming error.
3 The Impact of Health Insurance Coverage on Health Disparities in the United States, Human Development Report, UNDP, 2005.
4 The Great Divide: When Kids Get Sick, Insurance Matters, Families USA Publication No. 07-102, February 2007.
5 Insuring America’s Health: Principles and Recommendations, Institute of Medicine, January 2004.
http://www.iom.edu/?id=19175
6 The Impact of Health Insurance Coverage on Health Disparities in the United States, Human Development Report, UNDP, 2005
7 “Illness and Injury as Contributors to Bankruptcy,” Himmelstein et al, Health Affairs, February 2, 2005.
8 Catlin, A, C. Cowan, S. Heffler, et al, “National Health Spending in 2005.” Health Affairs 26:1 (2006).
9 OECD, in Figures 2006-2007 Health Spending and Resources. http://ocde.p4.siteinternet.com/publications/doifiles/012006061T02.xls.
10 Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H., Terry Campbell, M.H.A., and David U. Himmelstein, M.D., Costs of Health Care Administration, N Engl J Med 2003;349:768-75.
11 The Impact of Health Insurance Coverage on Health Disparities in the United States, Human Development Report, UNDP, 2005.
12 http://www.infantmortprogram.org/stats.asp
13 World Health Organization, 2004 statistics.
14 James Banks, PhD; Michael Marmot, MD; Zoe Oldfield, MSc; James P. Smith, PhD, “Disease and Disadvantage in the United States and in England” JAMA 2006; 295:2037-2045; Alan Cowell, “Study Says Older Americans Are
Less Healthy Than British,” New York Times, May 3, 2006
15 UN Human Development Report, 2006. http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/pdfs/report/HDR06-complete.pdf
16 Congressional Budget Office, http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/77xx/doc7731/01-24-BudgetOutlook.pdf
17 Opensecrets.org (registered health/drug industry lobbyists)
18 http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/CBSNews_polls/health_care.pdf

Source for above: Michael Moore.com

Getting Rich by Denying Americans Care

UnitedHealthcare CEO Stephen Hemsley owns $744,232,068 in unexercised stock options. CIGNA’s Edward Hanway spends his holidays in a $13 million beach house in New Jersey. Meanwhile, regular Americans are routinely denied coverage for the care they need when they need it most.

Welcome to the American health insurance industry. Instead of helping policyholders attain the health security they need for their families, big insurance companies get rich by denying coverage to patients. Now they’re sending lobbyists to Washington, DC to twist the arms of lawmakers to oppose reform of the status quo. Why? Because the status quo pays.

Learn more about the glamorous lives of billionaire health insurance executives and tell us your story of being victimized by their greed. Then contribute to Brave New Films so we can continue to get the word out about the health insurance racket.

“How Does The U.S. Stack Up Against Other Countries Health Care System.” Anyone who doubts a public option for health care should watch this video. It contains different clips of other countries’ health care systems and compares them with our (the U.S.) health care system. As a side note (not mentioned in this video), Canada spends half a billion dollars annually treating U.S. citizens who illegally seek treatment there because they cannot afford treatment in the U.S.