Guaranteed Healthcare

Registered nurses, doctors, medical students, and dozens of labor and healthcare community activists joined with Rep. Mary Flowers and other Illinois legislators Tuesday, May 24 to introduce state legislation for a single-payer, Medicare-for-all style system.  HB 311, the Healthcare for All Illinois Act, would guarantee healthcare for every state resident.

Campaign for Guaranteed Healthcare for All Begins in Illinois with New Single-Payer Bill
Press Release 03/23/09

One more irony about the healthcare crisis: the politicians in charge of fixing it…are guaranteed healthcare through a system that is not just “single-payer” (in terms of being financed by the government instead of insurance companies), but beyond is actually government-run.

Nurses are running ads today in 10 Iowa newspapers pointing out that this means that Dick Cheney, with his heart trouble, would probably be dead now if he were an ordinary American forced to search for cardiac care in a thicket of mercenary insurers and heartless HMOs.  Cheney gets guaranteed healthcare; we get squat.

See the Cheney Ad in PDF here

We’ll take a look below, also at some recent highlights from the healthcare movement…

Did the nurses win a presidential debate?  The Washington Post thinks so.  We'll take a look at this and more in the Breakroom blog.

The second in the series of ads challenging Democratic Presidential candidates to get serious on healthcare launches in Iowa today—addressing Sen. Clinton—while nurses and doctors will converge on an upcoming Presidential forum with their critiques.

We'll take a look, cross-posted at the [http://www.GuaranteedHealthcare.org/blog National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association’s] Breakroom Blog, as we organize to make 2007 the Year of GUARANTEED healthcare on the single-payer model.

Out of Iowa comes two great pieces of news for those of us who want the Democratic presidential candidates to get serious on healthcare: a new series of television ads is launching today by a group of activist nurses and doctors, and labor is endorsing guaranteed healthcare on the single-payer model.