Guaranteed Healthcare

Healthcare-NOW presents a public response to the launch of the new Health Care for America Now Coalition.

 

On
July 8, 2008, a coalition of organizations called Health Care for
America Now
(HCAN) announced a campaign for healthcare reform. A spokesperson for
the group
stated that they plan to run a multi-million dollar ad campaign and
will
promote health care reform that offers a mix of public funding and
private
insurance.

We
share the group’s condemnation of our current failing health care
system and
their noble goal of reaching a solution that brings care to all. We
recognize
among the HCAN coalition many who also work with us to promote single
payer
non-profit health care as embodied in HR 676, national legislation
introduced
by Congressman John Conyers.

Healthcare-Now
welcomes all to the debate and applauds all activities that expose the
role of
the profit making health insurance and drug companies as the cause of
our
current health system’s failures.

Partly
because the name of the new group is so similar to our own, it is
important
that we point out what distinguishes the HCAN position from ours. Even more essential, the distinction is
important because the policy issue is the crucial foundation of
successful
health care reform. We have to get it
right this time around.

First,
we have to start from a proposal that works. It must make economic and
policy
sense. We have seen bad policy fail
repeatedly as state after state has hoped to reform their health care
yet been
unable to achieve their goals. The
initial surrender to include the private insurance industry in these
state
bills has sadly undermined all of these well intentioned efforts, and
all
states are now struggling with the costs of care in these times of
economic
hardship.

The
central role of private insurance companies in the HCAN plan will leave
us with
the same bad actors that are currently running amok in our health care.
We
cannot place the fox in the hen house and then hope to regulate his
diet. It is
in the nature of private health insurance corporations to seek to
enhance their
profit. (1) The private health insurance
system we have leaves 48 million Americans uninsured, causes 18,000
deaths/year, and accounts for half of the bankruptcies each year.

Secondly,
we must start from proposed legislation bold and beautiful enough to
inspire a
nation to rise up in unprecedented action to insist upon its enactment. No good reform can be passed without a grass
roots movement that dramatically changes what is possible inside the
beltway.
HR 676 will bring all medically necessary care to everyone with no
co-pays, no
deductibles, and no premiums. (2) It will make healthcare a human right
and HR
676 a struggle for social justice.

Third,
we encourage our friends working on health reform to take heart. It doesn’t make the nightly news, but support
for HR 676 has grown so rapidly that it takes your breath away.

HR 676 has 90
co-sponsors in the U.S. House of Representatives. It
has been endorsed by the Kentucky and
New
Hampshire Houses of Representatives, the New York State Assembly, and
by dozens
of cities and counties from Baltimore
to San Francisco and from Warren
County, Tennessee, to
majority Republican Renssalaer County
in New York.

The recent
General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA
proclaimed single payer, universal national health insurance "the
program
that best responds to the moral imperative of the gospel."

The General
Assembly of the Unitarian Universalists recently
endorsed HR 676. The U. S. Conference of
Mayors, representing over 1,000 cities with populations over 30,000,
unanimously adopted a resolution in support of HR 676.

Union support
for HR 676 grows daily and includes 34 state AFL-CIO
federations, 110 central labor councils, over 445 union organizations
and an
expanding number of international unions.

In
a rising revolt against insurance companies that deny care and
interfere with practice decisions, a recent poll of physicians showed
that 59%
now support single payer. Nationwide, 65%
of people believe that: “The United States
should adopt a universal health insurance program in which everyone is
covered
under a program like Medicare that is run by the government and
financed by
taxpayers.” (3)

Just
as the organized labor and other social justice movements ignited the
fire that
shaped the FDR era, so we must galvanize a health care movement that
will mold
the outcome of the era to come. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called us
to this
mission: “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is
the most
shocking and inhumane.” We must stay the
course, building support for the national, single-payer health
insurance
program embodied in HR 676. We cannot join forces with a coalition that
will
leave the same failed system in place.

The
popular support for single payer is there if we but hold onto our
courage and
build the movement to win it.

NOTES

(1)
See Navarro,
Vincent. “Yes We Can! Can We? The Next Failure of Health Care Reform,”
Unch
Special report, 3/6/08). See also Rodberg and McCanne, “The Case for
Eliminating Private Health Insurance,” CommonDreams.org, 7/13/07. The
insurance
industry’s ongoing efforts to privatize Medicare have increased costs
and
decreased effectiveness. See www.fairmedicare.org.

(2)
Section 102
(a) of HR 676 is very explicit about this. “The health insurance
benefits
under

this
act cover all medically necessary services, including at least the
following:
(1) primary care and prevention; (2) inpatient care; (3) outpatient
care; (4)
emergency care; (5) prescription drugs; (6) durable medical equipment;
(7) long
term care; (8) mental health services; (9) the full scope of dental
services
(other than cosmetic dentistry); (10) substance abuse treatment
services; (11)
chiropractic services; (12) basic vision care and vision correction
(other than
laser vision correction for cosmetic purposes); (13) hearing services,
including coverage of hearing aids.” Section
102 (c) states “No cost sharing – No deductibles,
copayments, coinsurance
or other cost-sharing shall be imposed with regard to covered benefits.”

(3)
AP-Yahoo
poll, Dec. 2007

For those who want to read more commentary
that attempts
to clarify this issue, we suggest the following.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rose-ann-demoro/why-is-health-care-for-am_b_111747.html Rose
Ann DeMoro, California Nurses, takes on HCAN
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/7/10/75316/4802
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/july/statement_of_dr_que.php
Dr. Quentin Young’s response
(PNHP) http://www.pnhp.org/blog/2008/07/09/a-policy-response-to-health-care-for-america-now/Dr.
David Himmelstein’s response
(PNHP)
http://www.pnhp.org/blog/ PNHP’s blog
http://uprisingradio.org/home/?p=2874 Radio debate between Richard Kirsch
(National Campaign Manager, HCAN) and Dr. David Himmelstein (PNHP)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20080709/cm_huffpost/111718
Yahoo News Posting from the Huffington Post analysis by Miles
Mogulescu,
Part 6.

Prepared by the
Healthcare-NOW
Board Steering Committee