Guaranteed Healthcare

Registered nurses, doctors, labor leaders, elected officials, and political activists sounded a call Tuesday at the Democratic Convention Tuesday for a broad national movement to enact comprehensive, single-payer Medicare for all in 2009.

With one important caveat, "we've got to win the election," Congressman John Conyers author of the single payer bill HR 676  told a large gathering at an event sponsored by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, Physicians for a National Health Program, and Progressive Democrats for America.

On a day in which the number of unemployed declined slightly -- but only because of the economic crisis which has pushed more Americans into government-funded Medicaid -- CNA/NNOC co-president Deborah Burger, RN asked how it is possible "in the richest nation on earth" for tens of millions to have to choose whether to pay their medical bill or their mortgage payment."

And, why is it that "I talk to patients every day who have to cut their prescription medications in half, or skip vaccinations for their children, or put off appointments with their doctor, all because of the unconscionable cost."

"How long," asked Claudia Fegan, MD, past president of Physicians for a National Health Program, "will we pay (insurance companies) to limit access to care, in a nation where more women die in childbirth than any other industrialized nation and 12 percent of veterans are uninsured. It's time we made healthcare a right for all and not a privilege for those who can afford it."

Greg Junemann, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Employees and chair of the HR 676 labor caucus, noted how the healthcare crisis has had devastating consequences for working people and their unions. He talked of workers who are no longer able to achieve pay increases because employers are diverting more money into skyrocketing healthcare costs, and how contract bargaining is increasingly focused on "bargaining over insurance, not even bargaining over healthcare."

"We're going to get this passed next year. We're going to make history," Junemann said.

What's going to make the difference, Burger and Junemann both emphasized, is the broad and growing grassroots movement for HR 676. Junemann noted, for example, that 455 labor organizations and 37 state AFL-CIOs have endorsed HR 676.

"The insurance industry and its allies are a powerful foe. But we have a group with us as well -- the public," said Burger, citing polls showing support by two-thirds of Americans who say the government should guarantee healthcare for all..

"And we have nurses and doctors and patients and millions of other Americans who have quietly been organizing and holding town hall meetings and house parties and showings of movies like "SiCKO" and writing letters to their home town newspaper and talking to their neighbors in city after city across America. There is no healthcare reform in this country today that has the groundswell of popular support and the passion and commitment of a broad, energized, sometimes enraged grassroots movement," said Burger.

HR 676 has more co-sponsors, 91, than any other healthcare reform bill in Congress, and CNA/NNOC and PDA are uniting to elect more pro-single payer candidates to Congress.

Two of those candidates spoke at the Denver forum. Debbie  Cook, mayor of Huntington Beach, Ca. running against a longtime Republican incumbent, recalled that when her son was born her family didn't have health insurance. She praised CNA/NNOC and nurses for setting a standard in the fight for guaranteed healthcare. "You didn't go into healthcare to maximize profits, you did it to maximize healthcare."

Andrea Miller, candidate in Virginia's 4th district, noted that "when you are sick you go to the doctor for healthcare, not for health insurance. If we're going to spend the money for healthcare, we ought to at least get it."

Burger and Fegan also counseled against halfway steps that will not solve the crisis.

"Band aids are nice but they don't solve the problem. It's time for us to demand what we need, what we deserve," said Fegan. Not much longer will we let this go on because we are heading for a fight for healthcare that is everybody in, nobody out."

Burger chastised "the experts and the political realists who counsel us to settle for incremental solutions whose premise is more insurance, not more care.

"On the anniversary of the enactment of the amendment for women's suffrage, let us remember that we did not settle for a limited right to vote. We did not settle for selective segregation when we fought for civil rights. And we must not settle for partial restraints on an out-of-control healthcare industry.".

"We need leaders and fighters, like so many of you in this room, who will not advise us to lower our expectations, but challenge us and everyone around us, to rise up, and bring everyone else along with us," Burger said.

"We know that change is on the way. We're moving in a new direction," said Conyers.

But the opportunity, most emphasized, would be far harder under a McCain administration and McCain's healthcare policies that would accelerate the healthcare crisis.