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HOST A PARTY -- Let's Tell the Single Payer Story

Posted by Donna Smith - S... on December 5, 2008 - 2:56pm

President-elect Obama's transition team says they want to hear from us on healthcare.  So, the time has come to rise up and speak up as never before.  Let's contribute the single payer -- publicly funded, privately delivered -- healthcare message loud and clear. 

Go to the change.gov site to sign up and host a health care community discussion.

http://change.gov/page/s/hcdiscussion

If we're going to have a seat at the discussion table, we're going to have to invite our friends, neighbors and family, set the table and serve up the best option for this nation's healthcare mess --



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Oh what a night for a health care discussion!

Submitted by DeAnn McEwen RN on January 6, 2009 - 12:37pm.

It was Christmas Eve in Sacramento, and we had the ear of family and friends from out of town who were gathering to attend an early church service that would include candle-lighting and carolling. During a pre-service meeting in the church's social hall, we knew of and learned about some of the experiences of the attendees who had their own troubles finding "room in the (health care) inn," when their hour of need for assistance arrived.

When I registered on the change.gov website to host the event, as a single-payer advocate, I was disappointed by the Obama transition team's survey questions and their framing of the issue.

They seemed to be looking for validation of the obvious, and we all know how bad the crisis has become. And they seemed to overlook the fact that there is a solution that the rest of the civilized, industrialized nations provide for their people, some form of universal health care. None of them uses profit-making, investor-owned insurance companies like our country to stand between us and our doctors and the health care we need. Our system is more expensive and we get less in terms of longevity and health outcomes.

As a member of PNHP, I received a much more appropriate link to the talking points and tools I needed to educate and advocate for the advantages of the single-payer approach.

Our report back to the transition team included our stories about how our families, friends, and patients are harmed and subject to suffering and preventable complications wrought by our current fragmented and inhumane market-based system of health care delivery.

Our concensus and recommendation to the Obama team was that we should expand and improve the single-payer system we already have in this country, Medicare, to cover everyone. We support legislation that will be reintroduced in Congress this year that will do just that: H.R. 676, The U.S. National Health Insurance Act. One nation, one plan...with liberty and justice for all!

"We commit ourselves to any wrong or degradation or injury when we do not protest against it." Lillian Wald,(1867-1940), American Social Reformer/Founder Public Health Nursing

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