Guaranteed Healthcare

SINGLE PAYER MINUTE
October 27, 2008

This episode we look at the unconscionable salaries that Health Care and
Pharmaceutical CEO's are paid, while 50 million of us go without
insurance, millions more suffer medical bankruptcy, and suffer
premature mortality.

Single Payer Minute                       
                                                                                           October 9, 2008

In this week's episode: "For Profit Health Insurance: An Abusive Relationship" Vanessa Beck testifies about an abusive relationship with her health insurance companies that she has struggled with for most of her life.

Watch Single Payer Minute

News You Can Use

• The New York Times is reporting that pharma-predator Eli Lilly has agreed to pay $62 million to settle claims it improperly marketed Zyprexa, its top-selling drug, to patients who did not have schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, and did not need it. 

   

• The Associated Press reported that California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that would have cracked down on health insurance companies that retroactively cancel policies of people who file claims.  The measure would have established an independent review process of each case and required that policies be rescinded only if insurers prove consumers willfully misrepresented their pre-existing conditions on a policy application.

   

• The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review a case that would undermine consumer protections and determine whether "injured people can bring claims against allegedly defective drugs and other products to state courts. In an appeal to the Supreme Court, pharma-predator Wyeth argued that FDA approval of medication labels precludes lawsuits in state courts filed over alleged problems with the labels.

   

What is the solution to this type of chronic criminal behavior?  We need to get a restraining order filed against the abusive for profit health and pharmaceutical companies, and move to a Single Payer system.

Action You Can Take

If you want the health care system to change then join us. This week your assignment is to write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper and call into your local talk radio show and say "no more bailouts for corporations and wall street" It's time for single payer health insurance on main street!

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.

By Donna Smith, community organizer

California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee 

WASHINGTON, DC – Well, the American Patients United and Healthcare-Now second annual healthcare justice week has been filled with memorable moments as events reach out across the nation to remember those lost to the healthcare crisis and to honor those still fighting.  In DC, CNA/NNOC and several other groups joined in an amazing protest action targeting the AHIP folks (American Health Insurance Plans) as they met at the Capital Hilton and then we held a small, quiet vigil at the Capital Reflecting Pool.

And what a week of intense contrasts – in Washington and around the nation. On Sunday in New Jersey, citizens marched in a New Orleans' style funeral procession, and in the picture above you see nurses, med students, patients, doctors and community activists marching in front of the Humana building in Chicago demanding, "Single payer healthcare not corporate welfare."

And on Friday, the amazing nurses of CNA/NNOC will march across the Golden Gate in San Francisco and call for true reform.  It's a week of purpose and of action for single payer...