Guaranteed Healthcare

By Donna Smith

They arrived on May 26 to the DC courthouse in business dress and on time.  The single payer supporters now known as the Baucus 8 who were arrested on May 5, 2009, in your United States Senate hearing chambers came ready to be arraigned on Tuesday morning and to find out what the formal charges against them would be.  I witnessed the proceedings the day they were arrested, and I came this day to court to see the process through with these brave Americans who stood for all of us and demanded that a witness advocating for a single payer healthcare system be seated in at least one of the 41 witness chairs filled in recent Senate hearings on healthcare reform.

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.