Guaranteed Healthcare

Tell your Congress Member it's not too late to win single-payer! Attend Town Hall Meetings in August! -- It's the culmination of our national work for healthcare reform, so we must send a message to your member of Congress and Senator:

1. Support single payer in a floor vote in both houses (HR 676/Senate bill 703)

2. Enable states to establish single payer systems – keep the Kucinich amendment as part of the final healthcare reform bill

3. Employee health benefits should not be taxed; employees have given up salary increases to keep quality health benefits

Find your member of Congress here. Click more for a list of Town Hall meetings. Together we can make a difference–don't let the "tea-baggers" stop our movement for real reform!

From the frontlines of the healthcare movement… 

Guaranteed, single-payer healthcare is alive and kicking in California.

In Massachusetts, activist Dr. David Himmelstein explains how the “individual mandate,” which forces the public to subsidize insurance industry profits, is blowing a huge hole in the state budget.

And Pennsylvania is gearing up to bring fundamental healthcare reform to the Keystone State.

Here’s an extraordinary image of an extraordinary moment: Steve Maviglio, the Deputy Chief of Staff to Fabian Nunez, the Speaker of the California Assembly, directing Capitol police to arrest an un-insured patient for trying to speak to the media about healthcare reform.  That’s Maviglio on the far right.

Conversations with press like this happen every day, every hour in the Capitol; it’s why the building exists.

But I guess most conversations aren’t on the subject of the insurance industry’s number one priority—which is to pass an “individual mandate” law.  And most conversations don’t happen as a gigantic fake healthcare reform bill seems to be careening to an ugly defeat.

Which is why most conversations don't end with patients being cited for a misdemeanor.

We’ll tell what happened and why, below

Unbelievable.  Yesterday most of California’s major insurance corporations (Blue Shield, Kaiser, Cigna, etc. etc.) testified in support of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s healthcare reform bill…and the donations they have given to Assemblymembers was money well-spent, as the bill passed and was sent to the Senate.

From Iowa to California to Massachusetts, the national healthcare debates are finally starting to hit the key point: the problem of the health insurance corporations.  We'll take a look below…

The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee said today that it will oppose the latest healthcare plan proposed by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, which would sentence patients to patients to forced insurance, threats to seize wages to pay the premiums of the very for-profit insurance companies who are speedily wrecking our health care system, and no controls on the costs patients would be legally required to bear.

“As more details continue to emerge, it is apparent that this proposal is riddled with flaws that could exacerbate the healthcare crisis for countless numbers of California families,” said CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro.

A new Field poll today in California shows voters choosing a single-payer healthcare plan over the insurance-driven proposals supported by Governor Arnold and his Democratic allies.

The finding is in line with past research finding voters way ahead of politicians on the issue of guaranteed healthcare.  The timing on this poll, however, could not have been better for healthcare advocates, as the California budget just got passed and Governor Arnold, his Democratic helpers, and their insurance buddies are about to try to shove a regressive healthcare measure through the legislature.  Their plan just got harder.

Here's proof the politicians aren't arguing, they're just pretending to argue.  It's a fake debate they're having with each other.