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Health Care Street Heat Targets Senator Schumer, Demanding Medicare for All
New York, NY. December 10, 2009 -- On Thursday morning, a group of
friends and colleagues, mostly middle-aged, sat and chatted over coffee
at a midtown deli near Grand Central Station. Then Laurie Wen, an
organizer with the Mobilization for Healthcare for All, showed up with
a box of granola bars and a bag full of T-shirts, and everybody
cheerfully rolled up their sleeves to write the number of an attorney
on their forearms. 
Two hours later most of them were in jail, and the "fourth wave" of a nationwide campaign to use civil disobedience to push for a single-payer plan had delivered its demands to the doorstep of Senator Chuck Schumer's midtown Manhattan office.
It's a particularly poignant day for Rich Marini, one of the advance team of people sitting here today -- and not in a good way.
"Ironically, today is the day that my company stopped providing health care to its employees," says Marini of Staten Island, a programmer at an IT firm called Tango Inc. "Henceforth all employees will have to pay in out of pocket about $8,000 a year. We were all told we have the "opportunity to re-enroll."
On the second floor of the deli, Laurie reminds everybody that in at least 20 other cities across the country, people are sitting in at the offices of health insurance companies and politicians. Senator Chuck Schumer has raised the ire of these activists in New York because of his role in recent negotiations in the Senate to lower the age of eligibility of Medicate from 65 to 55. The catch: this is viewed by many as a way to abandon the public option, or any anemic version thereof that remains in legislation currently being considered by the Senate. This bit of horse-trading is seen by activists here as a paltry trade-off, and one that reflects the senator's friendliness to the insurance industry over the desires of his constituents. According to OpenSecrets.org, Schumer is the biggest recipient in Congress of donations from the HMO/Health Services category, raking in $99,650 in campaign contributions this year. At press time a message left with Senator Schumer's New York press office was not returned.
"The frustration of his constituents is very real," says Dr. Laura Boylan, a neurologist who and member of Physicians for a National Health Program while marching in a boisterous picket line in front of Schumer's office before giving a brief address to the crowd. "He's claimed to be for single-payer in the past, but he hasn't moved on anything. I don't want to see any more people who have bleeding in heir brain because they can't afford to take care of their diabetes. We're not going away."
One thing that's impossible to ignore about this emerging movement is the willingness of health care professionals here in New York, and across the country, to risk arrest and the resulting legal headaches, borne out of their experiences in the trenches of America's dysfunctional health care system. "In my work, I see a lot of poor women who won't be covered by the Democrats' new plan," says Dan Murphy, a 35-year old medical student with close-cropped blond hair wearing dark blue scrubs. Dan, who specializes in OBGYN, is one of the first to link arms with fellow activists in front of Schumer's office, obstructing foot traffic in and out of the building. And he's one of the last to be handcuffed and pulled to his foot before being deposited in a paddy wagon nearby. At the end of the action nine had been arrested on the relatively light charges of disorderly conduct.
"I think we're going to see many more of these, because the fight is far from over," says Laurie Wen, busy exchanging contact details with the legal observer on the scene. "Nothing important was ever won in this country by us accepting crumbs."
- Posted in
10 Comments so far
Show AllThe most distressing line in the article states that the protesters were mostly middle age.
Young Americans stand to lose more than anybody in the corporate welfare being disguised as health care reform.
Millions of middle aged workers are deferring retirement 5, 10, 15 or more years solely to retain relatively affordable employer-sponsored medical insurance, thereby reducing the number of job opportunities for young Americans.
According to OpenSecrets.org, Schumer is the biggest recipient in Congress of donations from the HMO/Health Services category, raking in $99,650 in campaign contributions this year.
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Sounds like Schumer's in favor of single-payer to me.
The insurance companies make a single payment to Schumer and he keeps em' rolling in dough.
i almost ran over schumer 6 yrs ago in nyc he ran out from
between two parked suv's and i just missed by 6 inches it was that close. seeing whats going on now makes me rethink that.
if you called him a whore in front of a whore she would
slap you as an insult and you would have to apologize
for your insult!
Damn!
Well, just don't let it not happen again.
· Yr Obd't Servant
When our government pays the medical bills then they have a vested innterest in assuring that the corporations stop poisoning the American people. This must be why our senators don't want a 'public option' - they get paid to promote suffering and death. When is November?
"When our government pays the medical bills then they have a vested innterest in assuring that the corporations stop poisoning the American people."
That sentence contains the most important thought I've read in a long, long time. Is there a way to turn it to our advantage?
raydelcamino writes:
"The most distressing line in the article states that the protesters were mostly middle age.
Young Americans stand to lose more than anybody in the corporate welfare being disguised as health care reform."
Agreed, but were we not young once, and feeling immortal? They aren't paying attention. Note also that most of the teabagger protesters have been "middle age." Perhaps this has to do with the fact that anyone under 45 really has no memory of the struggles of the Sixties. Maybe the Baby Boomers will Rise Again, you know, like Get It Up (without Viagra...).
Meanwhile, the picture accompanying the article is important, because those who think that "Medicare for All" is the be-all and end-all are sadly mistaken. It has been very badly co-opted by the Congress, while the health reform bills now before the Congress threaten even more cutbacks. Many doctors refuse Medicare now; more would refuse it later. For a good background on the details, see the works of Mary Lynn Cramer, such as "Progressives Abet Obama-Fraud; Don't Confuse Medicare with Single-Payer," at CounterPunch.org.
***
Schumer is a Zionist. He's probably hoarding blood-diamonds smuggled across the Williamsburg Bridge. He doesn't give a rat's ass about the average American. Zionist Exceptionalism/American Exceptionalism; what's the difference...?
-30-
A Progressive Tax Revolt is the only recourse we have. As Progressives, we have no choice, but to withhold our tax dollars from the government, until they capitulate, and respond to the wishes of the people.
The Right has co-opted the concept of tax revolt (for obviously different aims), but we need to take it from them, and make a statement.
It is THE ONLY WAY. Otherwise, our votes are completely and utterly meaningless, and our voices might as well not even exist.
This country responds ONLY to money. Let's make it hurt.
I am an African. Your post is honourable and necessary. I wish I could help. Americans, whatever their politics, are one with the world. Whatever some Americans say this is not toads against frogs; pigs against horses; us against them. The government of the USA is one of us against us all. The USA is indulging in a World War. It divides Americans to rule them. It has to be stopped, for it negates the rights and health and wealth even of those Americans, namely the Right, who support it.
Stop paying the USA to destroy you.
Furthermore I ask you to read Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. Please note how he accuses his enemies of doing wrong for doing many things he is himself doing. It is a fundamentally absurd speech. It is screamingly embarrassing to hear an intelligent man utter such rubbish; to hear the English language being torn to shreds, some say eloquently.
Perhaps it was one of the choice of only two startling alternatives the Nobel award knew were unavoidable. He could have announced withdrawal, negotiations and reparations in the name of peace, but in full awareness of the perpetual consequences he chose to perpetuate war as peace. He actually did it! Any who now hold Obama's speech as valid are, like Obama, not balanced.
This is a serious charge.
The last time I read about that lowering of Medicare from age 65 to age 55 it was presented as a path toward Medicare for All. Now this article depicts the idea as a total cop-out. If the Huffington Post spent a paragraph expanding on the reasoning behind the assertion, then it would be providing a public service. But throwing spears around without any communication as in the way the Huffington Post treated this topic, is one of the many elements of the status quo that we don't need. And why did the Huffington Post carry General Electrik ads designed to warm up the public to the MIC? I think the HP has some pots on the fire of a burning society.
Universal healthcare as a right is beyond debate. We own it. We always have. It's just been temporarily stolen and it's just a question of whether the thieves will hand it over voluntarily or by force.