By Donna Smith, American SiCKO, communications specialist, CNA/NNOC 

While ad campaigns rolled out from some groups and the media focused themselves on -- well -- themselves, and their coverage of the presidential race, the champion of single payer healthcare reform rolled out his own plans and moved ever forward in the steady march toward victory.

Rep-John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary and primary sponsor of HR676, joined the national Healthcare Not Warfare campaign in seeking national platform status for true reform.  No wiggle, no waffle, no sequential silliness that allows some Americans in while holding others partially out of the plan.  Conyers knows that with 91 co-sponsors already on board and many more in the November election pool, the path to passage of HR676 is much more "politically feasable" than the convoluted and corrupt path to marginal change.

Awesomely simple and exquisitely responsible, single payer offers patients maximum flexibility in seeking quality healthcare, and it offers the nation maximum “bang for the buck” by removing the mark-ups for excessive profit necessary in the current for-profit, private health insurance markets.

The incremental health reform plans are quite convoluted and difficult to follow. Designed to protect all the corporate, for-profit entities currently making money in our system, it is nearly impossible to accomplish universal access to care while maintaining the status quo of our national corporate healthcare system.

Steady as we go, single payer friends, Conyers and his cohorts always remind us that our cause is just, the path is clear and we can win true, universal care for every American.  

I am blessed to be one of the four national co-chairs of this PDA campaign, along with Conyers, Soloman and Marilyn Clement of Healthcare-Now.  Read the attached article and jump in with us.

Sign on to this effort and spread the good word.  Single payer reform is on the agenda.

http://www.pdamerica.org/articles/news/2008-07-23-08-28-37-news.php

Launch of Grassroots Statement by Delegates For Platform to Guarantee "Health Care for All"

July 23, 2008, Washington, DC

Rep. John Conyers, a leader for health care reform on Capitol Hill, is the first Democratic National Convention delegate to sign a new statement urging that the convention adopt a plank in the 2008 party platform to "guarantee accessible health care for all."

Launched by Progressive Democrats of America, the grassroots statement aims to gather hundreds of signers among delegates to the party's national convention before it opens in Denver in late August.

The brief document--titled "Statement in support of Universal Health Care as a plank in the Democratic Party Platform of 2008"--was drafted by two co-chairs of PDA's Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign, Congressman Conyers and Norman Solomon. Both are Obama delegates to the Democratic National Convention. Also signing the statement prior to its national launch on July 23 was Rep. Jim McGovern, a Clinton delegate and PDA board member.

Now, a grassroots effort is starting among activists nationwide to contact and encourage convention delegates to add their names as signers. Delegates can do that online here. 

Non-delegates are also invited to go on record in support of the statement, here. 

The statement calls for the 2008 Democratic Party Platform to include "a plank calling for our nation to enact universal health care that will":

• "guarantee accessible health care for all"; 
• "create a single standard of high quality, comprehensive, and preventive health care for all";
• "allow freedom of choice of physician, hospital, and other health care providers";
• "eliminate financial barriers that prevent families and individuals from obtaining the medically necessary care they need"; 
• "allow physicians, nurses and other licenced health care providers to make health care decisions based on what is best for the health of the patient."

PDA is encouraging activists--wherever they live--to contact delegates from their area and urge them to become signers of this statement here.