Guaranteed Healthcare

By Donna Smith

Some old adages survive because they are true.  No matter how you deliver the message – email, snail mail, voice mail, text message or old-fashioned word-of-mouth – if you forget to keep it simple and keep it local, your issue or candidate will lose.

The right-wing went into high-wind to scare seniors – a huge voting block – about healthcare reform.  And why not?  All politics is local. 

Tell a senior citizen you are going to raise property taxes for new schools and it won’t matter for even a moment that the money is for their grandkids’ education – those seniors will vote no.  Ask any number of local or state candidates for office.  Seniors, more than any other voting block, vote their pocketbooks and vote their own immediate well-being.

Don’t get me wrong, I love older folks.  In fact I am getting to be one. 

By Donna Smith 

It’s 2009.  We’ve elected President Barack Obama.  We’ve elected a Democratic majority in both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives.  Those bastions of social policy are now in place to protect basic human rights.  Good things should be in the offing – at least we should make progress in the direction of more equity for women and their families and perhaps most especially for women of color.  Right? 

And we’ve declared that healthcare is a basic human right.  Women surely fall into the category deserving of equal access to basic human rights.  So far, so good.  Surely we’re setting ourselves on a course to expand more healthcare equity to women.  Surely it must be so.

But, alas, it’s not to be. 

By Donna Smith

OK, if this wasn’t personal enough just yet for me, it just got a whole lot more so.  And if you think for one instant that in this nation at this point in history and with this popularly elected President and Democratic Congress you will be treated for a heart attack simply because you might die if you are not treated, think again.  And if you think having insurance helps, think some more.

On Friday, my husband was denied a blood test because a computer record from some distant time past and some other state showed he had a $7 balance with LabCorp.  I am not making this up.

My husband had a heart attack this week.  He woke up one morning sweating profusely and with a heart rate dropping.  I watched his color turn first ruddy then ashen, and then he felt as though he was going to pass out.  He would not allow me to call 911 as he slowly began to feel sick to his stomach and he believed his symptoms were digestive rather than cardiac. 

Sing along with the healthcare pirates... brought to you by our Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care partners Consumer Watchdog.

By Donna Smith, community organizer and legislative advocate 

You'd think after eight long and ugly years listening to pompous and wealthy officials slam their versions of social hatred down our gullets, we'd have sent those folks packing for good on January 20, 2009. You'd think as we debate healthcare reform for this nation, we'd have left the arrogance and the flaunting of greed back in the pre-Wall Street bailout days of summer 2008. And you'd think in the People's House, the United States House of Representatives, we'd at least have stood up and said that every single American is deserving of and yes, entitled to, healthcare and protected from going broke in the process of getting care when ill.

You'd think.

by Donna Smith

It's coming. You and me and every middle class, working person in this nation is about to start handing over more and more of their hard earned cash to the private insurance industry, courtesy of our own elected members of Congress and our very popular President. Fire up those Treasury Department presses. We're going to be printing and providing money for insurance companies like no bail-out we've seen yet this economic crisis cycle.

It's time to keep single payer healthcare reform front and center for our Congressional members as they take their spring recess.  Watch the video and see our single payer friends in Chicago as they rally in solidarity with those who rallied in Los Angeles on April 6 to see that our leaders stop excluding single payer from the discussion on health reform. 

APRIL 15th -- Tax Day -- time to call Congress 

Now it's time for our April monthly national call-in day.  So join with other members of the Leadership Conference on Guaranteed Health Care and add your voice to the call for healthcare justice.

On Wednesday, April 15th, the LCGHC is launching our fifth nationwide call-in day for single-payer national health care. Our message is clear: "Tax payer dollars should go to people, not profits. Support single-payer national health care now."

Lesser reform proposals will have our taxes subsidizing insurance company profits, not paying for real health care. We must fix our health care system by putting everybody in, and removing for-profit interests that are responsible for the sky-rocketing cost of health care. The only plan that meets these criteria is a single-payer national health care system.

So on April 15th, 2009, we ask that you join with thousands of others to call Congress, to support single-payer legislation in both the House (HR 676) and the Senate (S703).

If you don't know your Congresspersons, or want a script, all of the information you need is on our National Call-In Day page - http://www.healthcare-now.org/campaigns/call/

*If you cannot make phone calls, information for your US Representatives and Senators can be found at www.votesmart.org

If you know your Representative and Senators, the Capitol Switchboard number is 866-338-1015*. Ask to be connected, and then ask him or her to support HR 676 or S703. If they are already a co-sponsor, thank them.

The injustice in our healthcare system must end. If our Congress is serious about health reform, they will support single-payer health care now.

By Donna Smith

BURLINGTON, VT ­­– The White House may have hoped for a carefully structured discussion with a predictable and prescribed outcome that would fit smoothly into its desired agenda, but during the second regional forum on healthcare reform, the White House heard once again that other options are not only available but are also strongly supported by many Americans. Nurses from Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and New Hampshire joined doctors, patients, faith and community-based leaders, healthcare reform activists and students to rally in support of single payer health reform outside the White House regional healthcare forum held in Burlington, VT, today. 

CNA/NNOC has been hot on the trail of America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) executives for a long time.  Since we marched in San Francisco on June 19th, 2008, with thousands, to the front of the Capital Hilton in our hazmat suits in Washington, DC, in late September 2008, to the cold winds of Chicago and that Magnificent Mile march to the AHIP meeting there in November 2008, we have taken the message forward:  We want healthcare not for-profit health insurance for everyone in this nation.

And watch this video to see newly elected Congressman Eric Massa of New York, tell the story once again, today - March 10th, 2009, in front of the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Georgetown, where AHIP heard us yet again.