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Single-Payer Snippets: Quick Updates from the Movement for Guaranteed Healthcare

Posted by Shum Preston on April 29, 2008 - 5:03pm

Single-payer Snippets: Quick Updates from the Medicare for all Movement

In Pennsylvania, a single-payer bill is aggravating the Governor.  One business owner explained his support like this: “To the contrary: fighting for single-payer is fighting for the survival of our business community and economic stability.”

Amy Goodman writes about the new wave of single-payer supporters, “Like Dr. Rocky White, a physician from a conservative, evangelical background who practices in rural Alamosa, Colo. A tall, gray-haired Westerner in black jeans, a crisp white shirt and a bolo tie, Dr. White is a leading advocate for single-payer health care.”

Is United Health, the largest health insurer in the world “dead money”?

Norman Solomon points out where the money for Medicare for All healthcare went: Iraq.

Finally, the SF Chronicle chronicles the harm and destruction that is part-and-parcel of our current healthcare racket.

 



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the audacity to hope...

Submitted by RN4MERCY (not verified) on May 4, 2008 - 11:18am.

Thanks for the updates, Shum. I really appreciated Amy Goodman's contribution being included here. It gives us hope. She outlines the formerly-known-as-Republican, Dr. Rocky White's conversion in becoming a single-payer proponent. We are creating the winds of change. For many people, it's not a Republican or a Democrat issue, or a liberal or conservative issue. We're all becoming fast-aware that there's a problem with our current market-based, profit driven health care delivery system. It's an inequitable and inhumane barrier to medically necessary health care.

As a nurse, I'm reminded of a Florence Nightingale quote, "Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better." We're not only discontented with what we have, we recognize, as health care providers, that the "for profit" health care system we have in this country is harming and killing people.

In terms of a single-payer model of "Medicare for All", the rest of the industrialized world is ahead of us, in terms of access to medically necesary health care and better health outcomes, such as a longer life span and a lower infant mortality rate.

It's about time that we come together as progressives; it's not every one for themselves; we're all in this together. "Everybody in, nobody out." HR 676, the Conyers/Kucinich legislation before Congress is our opportunity, as a nation, to show that we really believe in fairness and justice.

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