Guaranteed Healthcare

California nurses succeed in delaying Blue Shield rate hikes for 60 days
People power works, and not just in Egypt.

Blue Shield of California today announced a 60-day reprieve in an unconscionable rate hike of up to 59 percent it intends to foist on individuals and families. The announcement coincided with announced plans by nurses, patients, and consumer advocates who stormed Blue Shield's posh California corporate headquarters in downtown San Francisco.

Coincidence? That's what Blue Shield insisted, even though they scurried to get out their press release the same morning they were surrounding their doors with barricades, chains, and security guards to protect their property from families facing bankruptcy with outrageous rate hikes and nurses who care for the collateral damage from insurance abuses.

The idea of a Medicare for All type, single-payer healthcare system will be heard on the Senate floor.  Late last evening, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont filed Senate Amendment No. 2837, and there are two additional original co-sponsors of this amendment, Senator Roland Burris of Illinois and Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio.

There is no time to waste.  Join the action.  Take just a moment every week to work for single payer, guaranteed healthcare for all. 

No bail-outs needed.  Just publicly financed, privately delivered healthcare for everyone in America.

Freedom to choose, freedom to live a healthy life, freedom to leave this nation in better shape for our kids and grandkids.  It is up to us.

The video you've just watched,  answers some questions about the awful "decision" to close Charity Hospital.  It's a real eye-opener. I urge you to watch it during these bleak days of media analysis on the Republican vice presidential nomination.

Surely you remember Charity Hospital three short years ago, during the terrible days of Katrina?

Charity, like Grady in Atlanta, Cook County in Chicago, Parkland in Dallas, and many others--all are under financial siege. They are also iconic American healthcare institutions.

Before it was shuttered, Charity had one million ER visits a year.

Eighty five percent of the people who came through its doors had no insurance--no Medicare, no Medicaid, nothing.

Check out this video I shot at the Yearly KOS Convention in Chicago where I interviewed random bloggers about the need for HR 676 (Conyers) - SINGLE PAYER Healthcare for everyone in America. I blogged from the convention last week about the workshops I attended, how diversity had dramatically increased from the first Yearly KOS in Vegas, and how healthcare relates to cultural diversity, video production, and union organizing.