WASHINGTON - May 26 - When American patients trust their health to a for-profit insurance company, they're doing nothing less than gambling with their lives.  Registered nurses from the National Nurses Organizing Committee and California Nurses Association today announce the launch of a new healthcare video game, based on this idea, called "You Bet Your Health." The game is part of a wide-ranging public education and political mobilization campaign for single-payer health reforms, which is the choice of nurses and doctors. 

The game can be viewed at www.YouBetYourHealth.com

This video game, which will be supported through online advertising, features an everyday patient trying to win healthcare from her insurance company.  In each case, the insurer wins.  Finally, as a bonus round, the patient spins to choose a healthcare system—and is fortunate to land on the single-payer model, which is succeeding in much of the rest of the industrialized world and which has been introduced in Congress as HR 676 (Conyers - MI) and S 703 (Sanders - VT).

The ads follow up on a national campaign that has seen RNs and MDs arrested before The Senate Finance Committee for speaking out on behalf of the idea, as well as blog ads, national television ads, and rallies outside each of the White House Regional Forums on Healthcare.  Each of these actions has demanded that Congressional and administration leaders at least consider, debate, and financially score the merits and demerits of a single-payer system in relation to other proposals as well as our current, multi-payer system.

"We all know the incredible financial and lobbying resources that health insurance and pharmaceutical companies bring to the table in Washington," said Deborah Burger, RN, co-president of NNOC/CNA, "but Congress does itself and the nation a disservice when it refuses to talk about the success of single-payer healthcare.  Nurses and doctors support single-payer because it works."

A single-payer system, says NNOC/CNA, is the most effective reform to assure universal coverage, choice of doctor, and real cost controls that will end the financial and healthcare insecurity faced by American families and American businesses. Under a single-payer system, patients choose from among competing doctors and hospitals, which are paid from a universal, nonprofit health coverage fund, with no co-pays or deductibles, real cost controls, and comprehensive benefits for less than we and our employers pay now.