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TechnoratiThe Medicare-for-All Moment
There is only one solution to the twin problems of escalating health care costs and the epidemic of the uninsured: a Medicare-for-All, single payer system.
Unfortunately, the healthcare debate on Capitol Hill has evolved without serious consideration of the Medicare-for-All single payer health proposal. There are many reasons for this, but one is that many who actually support Medicare-for-All have claimed that the proposal is "not feasible."
With the House leadership having settled on a single proposal, now is the time to set aside worries about feasibility. The House process is resolved. Members of Congress should have the opportunity to vote on the merits, up-or-down, on a Medicare-for-All single payer health proposal.
Whether they will have this chance is in the hands of Speaker Nancy
Pelosi, and likely to be decided today. Contact her right away to urge
that the House be permitted to vote on a Medicare-for-All single payer
health proposal. Call (202) 225-0100 or (as a second best alternative,
submit comments on the Speaker's web page: <http://speaker.house.gov/
Representative Anthony Weiner, D-New York, has proposed to introduce such a Medicare-for-All measure on the House floor in the form of an amendment to the leadership's healthcare package. If a vote is permitted, it will mark the first time either house of Congress has voted on Medicare-for-All, and will be a landmark in the inevitable march to a national Medicare-for-All system.
Meanwhile, Representative Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, is seeking to enable states to implement their own Medicare-for-All single payer health initiatives. Representative Kucinich introduced an amendment in the House Education and Labor Committee to facilitate such action, by providing for waivers of ERISA (employee benefit) requirements for states adopting single payer plans. This amendment passed the committee with bipartisan support. If Speaker Pelosi decides to incorporate it into the leadership bill, it stands a good chance of becoming law.
Although there are reasons to be skeptical, one can hope that the health reform package that ultimately becomes law will significantly expand coverage and curb insurance industry abuses.
But it is certain that the health reform package will not solve the overwhelming problems of coverage, cost and quality of care facing the country. Solving those problems requires going to the source: the health insurance corporations.
With its private health insurance industry-dominated system, the United States spends far more than other wealthy nations on health care (at least 50 percent more than every country except Luxembourg) but sports middling health indicators.
The private health insurance industry-dominated system in the United States permits 45 million people to live without health insurance, denying them access to preventative and routine care, resulting in the death of at least 35,000 people a year.
The private health insurance industry-dominated system tolerates private health insurance companies making life-and-death rationing decisions for millions of people with only minimal accountability.
The private health insurance industry-dominated system lets private health insurers refuse to take sick people as customers and engage in endless manipulations to discard its customers if they do become sick.
The private health insurance industry-dominated system features a system in which medical bills and illness contribute to almost two of every three personal bankruptcies -- even though three-quarters of these bankrupt people had insurance when they became sick.
Not least, the private health insurance industry-dominated health care system translates into a private health insurance industry-dominated political system. As a result, too many politicians refuse to consider real solutions.
There is a cure all for these ills. It is a Medicare-for-All, single-payer system, in which the government pays medical bills (thus operating as the "single payer").
In a Medicare-for-All system, health care is available as a matter of right. No one is denied treatment because they can't pay. No one is mandated to buy coverage. No one is denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions. No one goes bankrupt paying medical bills.
A Medicare-for-All system would save $350 billion-$400 billion a year in costs (up to $4 trillion over the 10-year period routinely analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office) -- enough to cover all of the uninsured. No scandalous CEO pay packages. No money siphoned out of the system by rent-seeking middlemen. No needless paperwork and bureaucracy.
A Medicare-for-All system succeeds by doing away with the private health insurance industry.
The powerful insurers, understandably, don't like this idea. Yet despite waves of deceptive and misleading propaganda about the purported horrors of government-run insurance, the people do like the idea of Medicare-for-All -- polls show it is supported by a majority of the public. But insurance industry dollars have spoken louder than the people's voices. And so Medicare-for-All hasn't been given a serious hearing in Congress. Speaker Pelosi should at least enable a clean up-or-down vote. Call (202) 225-0100 and urge her to do so.
44 Comments so far
Show AllThis is my first post here...
I don't really understand...perhaps there is a lot of complacency among the American people? I immigrated here from another country, which, lets say, has more problems, to make conversations as such non practical.
But here at least you have a due process. So please, someone, explain WHY
1) the issue of healthcare as a human right has not been brought up to the Supreme Court?
2) people don't come to the streets and protest against this "reform"? there are more people willing to spend $$ to go to Beyonce concert or Michael Jackson funeral, but not do something that can help their lives?
3) who is hypocritical, the government, or the people? Do the people deserve its government?
4) not ONE person just stop paying taxes in protest to false government policy and escalate this issue all the way to the top? Would you stop paying your taxes unless single payer is passed?
I don't understand...so much criticism of the obvious...the corruption by power, the rape of the voters, the abuse... it's like hating the child molester and then sending him to work at the kindergarten.
The Thomas Merton Center would not honor Obama, vanmungo. They'd lose all their cred if they did.
thegreatrockyhill,
Thank you for the link.
Kucinich honored for social justice effort
Speech addresses health care access
Monday, November 02, 2009
By Paula Reed Ward, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Throughout his 12-year stint in Congress, and for more than two decades of public service before that, Dennis Kucinich has focused on a variety of issues revolving around peace, justice and equality.
From the environment to unemployment to nuclear disarmament, the congressman from Cleveland has tackled each issue.
The battle for him -- to extend universal health care to all Americans -- was front and center last night as he accepted the Thomas Merton Center's annual award for social justice at the Churchill Valley Country Club.
"The plan Congress is looking for this week is not enough," Mr. Kucinich said.
He referred to the "incredible, shrinking public option," and said he is hopeful that his amendment, which protects the rights of states to have single-payer plans, comes back into the fold.
Otherwise, the former Cleveland mayor said that insurance companies will continue their stranglehold on health care in the United States.
"The insurance companies will end up with more money, more control and more customers," he said.
Mr. Kucinich urged the more than 500 people in attendance to contact their congressional representatives to urge them to reinsert his amendment into the national health care bill.
In his introduction of the Ohio Democrat, state Sen. Jim Ferlo, D-Highland Park, said that no one has been more out front on issues of peace and social justice than the guest of honor.
"I think politicians have a very distinct opportunity to work for peace and justice," said Melissa Minnich, the communications director with the Merton Center. "What he chooses to speak out on goes very well with the movement of the center."
During his speech, Mr. Kucinich's comments ranged across the spectrum of social causes he's worked for.
As he took the stage, he praised the Merton Center and its members for protesting against the G-20 and in favor of economic justice.
"The greatest issue facing this world is that all of the engines of the economy are being used to accelerate the wealth of the world upward," he said.
The American middle class has disappeared, he continued, and wealth has continued to accumulate for only a few.
Sounding at times as if he were shouting to throngs gathered at a campaign rally, Mr. Kucinich praised the labor movement and talked about unacceptable levels of unemployment today.
"Unemployment is a disease that threatens the body politic," he said. "It strips people of human dignity."
He then told the audience that it is time for a new New Deal, and that it is the government's responsibility to provide jobs where the private sector will not.
He then segued into America's long-standing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, of which he has been highly critical.
"We have a right to security, but what could make us more secure than having bread on our tables, jobs and education?"
Mr. Kucinich said that America has become comfortable with war.
"We're seeding the principles of war into everything we do in our society," he said. "War should not be inevitable. Peace should be inevitable."
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09306/1010167-455.stm#ixzz0VtrnrjHR
Kucinich is a fraud.
He is beloved by other liberal Democrats, but rightly despised by independent radicals, who are on to his cynical game: spout all the right words on the campaign stump, and then advocate support for the very mainstream Democrats who oppose everything he claims to stand for.
Only in America, with its MSM-debased standards of political discourse and brain-dead electorate, would this kind of hypocrisy gull so many people.
I loved his quote about unemployment. So true. I have never heard anything like that coming out of Obama's rhetoric. Then again, I don't listen to Obama anymore. With Bush I just cringed, with Obama I feel my blood pressure rising and migraine coming on. He's just plain not good for my health anymore, and I am uninsured so ...
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09306/1010167-455.stm
Kucinich honored by Thomas Merton Center.
Obama awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Get the drift?
Medicare for all is favored by a majority of Americans.
How can we convince Congress to actually do what the people want?
Tell your members of Congress that unless they support Medicare for all, you won't support them.
Take the Medicare For All Pledge now:
http://bit.ly/medicareforallpledge
Yes, I shall await the simple extension of Medicare for All.
I shall withhold my votes for either party until we have it.
Universal healthcare is a widely accepted premise among the American people: Republicans as well as Democrats believe in it, wholeheartedly.
They differ in how they think it can be achieved cost-effectively. Fully HALF the nation buys the GOP argument that it can be achieved better through private insurance means.
This is actually an advantage, to those of us on the left, since we actually want TWO things: universal healthcare AND single payer healthcare (i.e. a public utility system like Medicare). But, due to the universal appeal of universal healthcare, we only need to push for ONE THING: single payer healthcare. Once the rest of the nation realizes how much money we are saving using a public utility as our insurer, the pathway toward universal healthcare will be self-evident.
I propose that the left limit itself toward pushing, wholeheartedly, and unequivocally, for single-payer healthcare for any american who chooses to enroll in it. Single-payer healthcare is insurance through a public monopoly provider, with numerous requirements that make the insurance a much lower risk for everyone involved. If you join, you can't 'unjoin', and neither can your insurer. Its a lifetime commitment, like Medicare. Likewise, any American who chooses private insurance cannot later join the public insurer, or everyone will once they get sick and find themselves dumped by their private insurer. In response to their gov't mandated monopoly on your health insurance, the public insurer promises to abide by gov't regulations on profit-caps, and to use their negotiation status to secure low-cost pharmaceuticals.
Since those who want this option compose HALF the American people, if we were to STRIKE for it, we wouldn't have to strike for long before we got it. Partly, its because its what we privately WANT, and all of America is in favor of people getting what they privately WANT (that's a clarion call of the right, btw). We WANT the lack of choice in a public plan, we feel it will be much less expensive, and provide better coverage (based on the example of other countries). Although this conflicts with the philosophies of the right, their primary philosophy is 'give people a choice', and they would have to admit that all we are asking for is a choice.
Once the country at large realizes the extraordinary savings possible with true single-payer health plans, they will KNOW immediately how to proceed with universal healthcare (unless they LIKE parting with their money on behalf of the uninsured).
But we'll never get the right to sign up to this in any other way. They'll assume we're trying to cut into their 'choices', and clam up.
I do not like violence or advocate it, but I am surprised that some health care CEO, politician or lobbyist hasn't been shot when they sentence families to bankruptcy and men, women and children to death every day with deceptive and immoral decisions. Many families crushed by Insurance company death panels were being good little consumers buying insurance and keeping their mouth shut. How long will people die quietly?
Congress doesn't care what we think. It's no surprise that so called Health care Reform has been twisted by the Health mafia into a huge swindle that will now essentially force everyone at gun point to buy their defective over priced products with NO real option on the Gov't side. The Congress and the WH have betrayed all of us just as they did with the so called Wall st. bail outs and non-reforms. Obama is a terrible disappointment. He gives good speeches but his actions are another thing altogether. I hope the Dinocrats have their heads handed to them for this deceitful load of crap they're calling Health reform.
No bogus bills.
Kill it and get back to single payer.
There are a lot of battles that cannot be won or cannot be won soon, but this is not one of them. The only chance the elites have to stave this off is to produce something so bleeding complicated and ridiculous that it will take a few years for anyone to realize how it works and why it doesn't. And then they can hope to convince people that the reason their self-torpedoed zeppelin won't float is because "socialism doesn't work."
Let's hold out for something workable.
“The gap between our citizens and our Government has never been so wide. The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers; clear leadership, not false claims and evasiveness and politics as usual..What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well financed and powerful special interests. You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and a fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends…Our people are losing…the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy.”
--Jimmy Carter, July 15, 1979
Thanks for this touching quotation from the genocidal war criminal of East Timor, the person who launched the criminal proxy aggression against Afghanistan that overthrew a progressive left government there and empowered the fundamentalist mullahs, who launched a disastrous round of corporate deregulation that has destroyed the airline industry, who spread his legs for the banking industry with the following appalling piece of legislation:
"A Democratic Congress and Democratic president (Jimmy Carter) enacted the Monetary Control Act of 1980 which removed all remaining controls on interest rates and repealed the federal law prohibiting usury (note that sky-high interest rates and ruinous predatory lending have been with us ever since). It was the 1980 legislation that took the lid off banking and doomed the savings and loan industry, the mainstay that used to provide housing loans and home mortgages. The thrifts were able to raise capital because they were allowed to pay a half percent more in interest to depositors. Bankers wanted them out of the way. The Democratic party obliged."
--William Greider (http://williamgreider.com/content/krugman-gets-his-history-wrong)
If anyone is out here admiringly quotes this right-winger Jimmy Carter, the man who firmly set the Democratic Party on the path of neoliberal dumping of the heritage of the New Deal, then you can bet that commenter is a right-winger, too, out here to sow falsehood and deception among true progressives.
This from Unknownnews:
Health care hell in America
♦ The House has finally unveiled its health care reform legislation, and it's better than the Senate version and better than nothing, but it's certainly hard to get enthused about it. There's jubilation from some on the Left that the public option is in it, but that's only by virtue of redefining "public option" so that it's meaningless (and calling that "robust").
You could scratch your head bald trying to figure out how Dems think they can run for re-election on this alleged accomplishment. The leaderless Democrats have half-heartedly stumbled toward something they can tell people is health care reform, when of course it's just designed to protect and bolster insurance industry profits.
Medicare is guilty of age discrimination so the government should just sue itself to get an injunction to provide coverage to everyone regardless of age. To heck with Congress.
FROM DENNIS KUCINICH'S SITE:
"As long as there are for-profit health insurance companies, there will be no effective way to protect consumers against ever escalating premiums, co pays and deductibles, unless the insurance companies know that people at a state level will always have a choice to reject the insurance companies and establish a single-payer not-for-profit system."
"That is why the Kucinich Amendment must be put back in the health care bill, not just to protect the rights of states to pursue single payer, but to protect the rights of consumers to be free of the economic death grip of the insurance companies."
THE COMMITTEE AGREED BIPARTISANLY TO PRESENT THE AMENDMENT FOR STATES TO HAVE THE RIGHT TO ESTABLISH SINGLE-PAYER HEALTH CARE.
Nancy Pelosi, the "democrat" Speaker of the House has the power to send this to vote or not.
Then we will know which representatives we REELECT and which ones we let the door hit on the way OUT.
This, of course, is from the same Dennis Kucinich who tells everyone, every election cycle, to vote the straight Democratic ticket--to vote for the very Democrats who have crushed single payer and put forward a "reform" bill that is nothing more than a giant subsidy to the private insurance industry and Big Pharma.
Does anyone still take this hack seriously?
Well said. The congressional "Health reform" is really an insurance corporation handout. The Kucinich amendment allows the states to go around this outrage. If the Kucinich amendment is not on this dangerous bill, our health care costs will rise even faster. Pelosi knows this so she obviously wants to eliminate the Kucinich amendment. Pelosi is a traitor.
By the way--I'd like to hear how the Kucinich amendment--which punts the whole single-payer fight to a long march through the states--can possibly have any effect on health costs. Please parse this one out in detail for us.
This should be a good one.
But Kucinich tells everyone to vote for Pelosi, and Reid, and Obama, etc., etc.
Doesn't that seem self-defeating to you?
Perhaps you have another touching quotation for the East Timor war criminal Jimmy Carter that will explain all this for us.
I'm with you on that. How can Kucinich be any less effective if he leaves the democratic party?
Single Payer or Single Term
I would rather see this so-called health care reform completely fail than see the likely proposed legislation pass. Pretty sad. It has been clear for quite some time that we aint gettin HR 676 or anything remotely close.
Thank you Robert Weissman and Common Dreams and most of all, Dennis Kucinich.
Dennis Kucinich's state single-payer amendent: "This amendment passed the committee with bipartisan support. If Speaker Pelosi decides to incorporate it into the leadership bill, it stands a good chance of becoming law."
I made the call.
Who can deny this man, Dennis Kucinich is not fighting for us?
Dennis Kucinich 2012.
sue,
Don't look now but "you know who" is off his meds again. Ignore him. He is not well.
AGG and socialist,
Thank you. I noticed and am taking your advice.
"Thanks" to two character assassins?
Your ethical sensibility is in the basement.
What did you "noitce"
That you have no substantive arguments?
That you can't come up with an answer to the fact that your American Idol Kucinich constantly tells people to vote for the mainstream Democrats who are opposed to everything he claims to stand for?
You've got nothing but adolescent hero worship--no ideas, not a scintilla of critical intellect.
Your approach to politics is that of a groupie.
While "you know who" seems capable of making good comments, his style is quite insulting, hostile and abrasive. I made the mistake to try and communicate with him, it is futile.
You made an attempt to communicate with me?
By intentionally misquoting me and lying about my voting record?
Thanks, Mother Theresa, but no thanks.
Plus, there are ten provinces in Canada...and three territories.
Plus what?
So ya' got me by one on the number of provinces.
Now do you have anything serious to say on the issues I raised, or do you traffic only in trivial pursuits?
Sue 1403--
Are you on Kucinich's paid staff, or are you just love-struck? (Hint: he's already married). I notice that you seldom if ever respond to any critical comments about Mr. K.--you just reliably seve up your campaign-boilerplate du jour.
Anyway--on the so-called Kucinich amendment:
Katie Robbins of Healthcare Now said “this bill falls so short, even with the Kucinich amendment — we will not support it.”
There's a good reason for Ms. Robbins's statement: like the ever-malleable and shrinking pubic option, the Kucinich Amendment is the fruit of a timid, losing strategy.
This Kucinich state-by-state tack is just another doomed-to-fail farce to siphon off energy from the real fight. There are only ten provinces in Canada. There are fifty U.S. states--trying to pass single payer on that long, winding road should take only, say, about thirty years, during which 45,000 people per year will still perish from lack of ability to afford a doctor (not to mention that the states are mostly broke anyway). My guess is that most of the people proposing this leisurely, doomed approach probably already have very comfy coverage (certainly Kucinich does!) and feel no personal pressure to press for Medicare for ALL--now.
This state-by-state gambit is a variation of the half-hearted "public option" approach--give half the game away before the game even begins, the idea being, I suppose, that if you propose something half-assed right away, the corporate malefactors will be so bowled over by your reasonableness and politesse that they will just melt in gratitude and say, "Great idea!" The reality is that, like a feral beast, they will smell your weakness and attack you with redoubled ferocity--which is exactly what has happened in the Democrats' health-care debacle that is now unfolding--or unraveling--before our eyes.
the mighty xzorloc called and emailed, hope springs eternal.
My little family lives without hope, on pure love and will.
Our world is falling apart, the streets are empty, the shops are shut down and the social contract is dissolved in a breeze of fear, I can see it in the eyes of the old folks and the yuppies.
Yet I am happy to see my little daughter play in the sun, she will not know consumerism, she will know another world completely, better or worse it hardly seems to matter.
This is a great time for romantics.
One can never know what will come of actions. We never have advance knowledge. We are all equally subject to counter swings, unintended consequences and blow back. The only thing we can be certain of is that actions do get reactions. It follows that the side that generates the most actions stands the greatest chance of fomenting unforseen events.
In this fight, the champions of the status quo have their usual advantages, money and the tactical advantage of exclusionary purpose, but permitting states to formulate their own systems will expand the field of play and reduce those advantages. It improves the chance that unforeseen events will occur. Some will be retrograde and mean spirited, but some of them will be advance the cause of homogenizing health care.
Democracy itself is our strategic advantage in this vote, because it has an elemental power of meaning for the entire nation, not just one side. There are political opponents of homogenized health care who will value States' Rights over Federal control. They can be wooed to vote for these amendments. The corporations are afraid of democracy. It takes a lot of money to control democratic systems and it's cheaper to have just one, the Feds. Controlling 50 systems is like herding cats. As progressives, it behooves us to embrace States' Rights.
But remember: the outcome will not be what you expect. Gaea, the Earth, emerged from the Chaos, and gave birth to Ouranos, the Heaven, with whom she bore the first gods, the Titans.
http://www.ancient-mythology.com/greek/chaos.php
why waste your time? take it to the streets.
take it to the streets and the offices:
http://mobilizeforhealthcare.org/action/
How about to the doctors and insurance companies getting in the way?
I would like to see single payer health care pass but there is no chance that Congress will allow this as long as they are tied to the insurance giants whose controlling dollars come from companies' profits. 1994 and 2009 have both proven that until the profits of the insurance giants are shrunken to near zero, Congress will remained corrupted and ready to accept insurance bribes. AGG yesterday brought up an excellent idea on doctors which I agreed with. If you have access to a doctor who doesn't do business with those insurance giants, give it all your efforts to negotiate the costs before turning to a cheap doctor who is tied to the insurance giants. The more people opt out of insurance card membership and turning to doctors who are independent of insurance giants, the better we can lessen the influence of the insurance giants on Congress while increasing our influence. Otherwise, I see no success in trying to contact a Congress buried in insurance bribes.
Sioux Rose
Robert Weissman, you are a WISE man and highly compassionate. Thank you for all that you do, and I just contacted the Pelosi site. There are no counter-arguments to the points you raised. If the U.S. government was about honestly and openly debating issues of significance to the well-being of Americans, 90% of the priorites fueling this nation's ostensible policies would alter like a giant ocean liner suddenly shifting its course!
I called the number given for Pelosi's office, a young man answered, and when I stated that I wanted to urge ... he said: "Just a moment", and bounced me to voice mail where I left a message. I also submitted to the website.
Thank you Robert Weissman. I have emailed and telephoned. The call lasted less than 15 seconds.
This is the message I gave:
Good afternoon. "I strongly urge that the House be permitted to vote on a Medicare-for-All single payer health proposal."
I was thanked for my call.