TheMillerCircle.org

Don’t give up on supporting a big push for the single payer health plan, as we head down the home stretch for healthcare reform legislation. According to Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, Harvard Professor of Medicine, the popularity of a single payer health plan (HR 676), and the persistent advocates of such a plan, have been a significant factor for keeping the public option on the table, an option that is still in place in four of the five healthcare reform bills that have been coming out of the House (3) and Senate (2) committees. Only one of those bills, the Baucus plan, lacks a public healthcare option. A consistent advocate of a single payer plan is the California Nurses Association. Their recommendation is to phone your congressional representatives and let them know about your choice–it’s more effective than emails and faxes. If you go to their website, they can direct you to the phone numbers of your Senators and Representatives or you can get them from *.gov sites. You can find House members here and Senate members here.

In today’s New York Times, Senator Tom Harkin, chair of the Senate Committee on Health, has predicted that Congress will pass a healthcare reform bill and that it will contain a public option plan. Nancy Pelosi has promised to bring the single payer plan, HR 676, the “Medicare for All” bill to the House floor for a vote. An overwhelming level of support for that bill will directly impact on the public option plan in all the others. Right now, the public option plan of the other bills is a bit murky, but none of the bills under consideration will allow the 160 million workers currently insured by their employers, to participate in the lower rates that could be afforded through the public option. So all these bills in their current form still support the for-profit system of our present healthcare disaster and don’t provide much wiggle room for removing ourselves from employer-based insurance–the real enemy of reform.  On the other hand, public support for HR 676 is strong, with a majority endorsing such a system. Even if it cannot pass into law this year, strong public support for the single payer plan, best endorsed by massive phone calls, will directly impact on the details of the public option of any bill passed this year and could lead to expansion of that option to include those currently left out. Only by reducing profits and preventing health insurance companies from participating in the American casino-style economy, can we begin to have a rational healthcare system. We need our healthcare reform to serve as the beginning of a people’s revolution through insistence on conforming to public demands and serving public needs.

The single payer plan is gaining momentum, now that we have had a chance to see the deficiencies in the other plans, especially the one that just came out of the Baucus Finance Committee. But, should a single payer bill pass, through heroic efforts of constituents, followed by a celebrated signing in the White House, we could begin to chisel Obama’s likeness onto Mt. Rushmore. A recent CBC poll in Canada had Tommy Douglas, father of the Canadian single payer healthcare system, voted as the greatest Canadian politician in history. All we need is a few miracles created by continuous public pressure to overcome the massive lobbying done by the health insurance industry and the Chamber of Commerce.
RFM