Health Care Reform Forum, Saturday, Jan 10th

Health Care Reform Demystified:
Single Payer, Obama's Plan Massachusetts Plan and other "hybrid" reforms may be coming your way soon!

Dr. Quentin Young, Single Payer House Parties

Dr. Quentin Young of Physicians for a National Health Program spoke with Illinois Media Progressives for this week's "Single Payer Minute" to weigh in on HHS Secretary-Designate Tom Daschele's call for house parties on health care reform.

 

And one of our own PDA members had the honor of introducing Dr. Young to the blogging community...there's more...

Sun Times Columnist Calls for Quick Federal Action on National HealthCare Crisis

Similar to Fannie-Freddie Nationalization/Seizure

Mortgages are important. But nobody ever died from a bad mortgage. The same cannot be said about deficient health care. Only in a nation where the political discourse takes place on such a silly, superficial level could we nationalize one industry without warning before or discussion after, while the very idea of fixing a massive, perennial problem in another industry, using the same technique, is demonized and discarded.

 

BY NEIL STEINBERG Sun-Times Columnist here.

Opening shot... 

It isn't often that the particular verb in a complex financial story grabs you. But did you notice the exact action the government took regarding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac this week?

It "seized" them. The government seized the private mortgage giants to save them from collapse. The financial markets heaved a sigh of relief and soared in approval.

This was done by the Bush administration, which is ironic. These are the same people who call Barack Obama a socialist because he wants to do something far less abrupt with our wheezing health care system.

Fannie and Freddie control, we are told, $5 trillion worth of mortgages, while Americans spent $2 trillion a year on health care.

Yet the feds seizing the mortgage sector is a necessary measure, while the government managing health care is socialist folly.

Win-Win Campaign HR 676: Healthcare Savings for Healthier Cities

Healthcare-Now's Win-Win Campaign Featured on GRITtv with Laura Flanders

Chuck Pennachhio Speaks about Healthcare Not Warfare

 

Video Produced by Illinois Media Progressives

Chuck Pennacchio is the executive director of HealthCare4All, Pennsylvania. Chuck's  speech touches on the relationship between state Single Payer bills and the federal legislation (H.R. 676). Lister to Chuck's speech, and see why Pennsylvania may be the first state to enact Guaranteed Single Payer Health Care, in the United States.

 

Update: Aug 11, 2008

PITTSBURGH -- Joining forces with national single payer (HR 676) legislative leader Congressman John Conyers and statewide single payer (PA-SB 300) champion Pennsylvania State Senator Jim Ferlo -- see attached photo -- Healthcare for All Pennsylvania, Progressive Democrats of America (Donna Smith), SPAN Ohio (Mary Nichols Rhodes), New Jersey State Industrial Union Council (Ray Stever), Healthcare for All Colorado (Harvie Branscomb), and DNC delegate Bob Rever successfully pushed a "Guaranteed Healthcare for All" language amendment to the Democratic Party Platform on Saturday in Pittsburgh.
 
Our dynamic campaign to commit the national Democratic Party to a principled position that only the Single Payer Solution (publicly-funded, privately-provided universal heathcare) can provide is a critically important step forward for our citizen movement here in the Commonwealth and across the U.S.  So important, in fact, that Congressman John Conyers declared it a "huge victory" during our later meeting over lunch.  So important, too, that the results are splashed all over the mainstream media, the alternative media, and even today's Oprah Winfrey show (with guest Michael Moore discussing the healthcare issue).
 -- Chuck Pennachhio

U.S. Conference of Mayors Supports H.R. 676 Medicare for All

 
The Healthcare-NOW! WIN-WIN Campaign takes a giant step forward today! The Conference of Mayors currently in Miami, Florida endorses single payer Medicare-for-All, HR 676:
Finding that HR 676 would guarantee every mayor that all residents and employees of his/her city would be fully covered for healthcare and save billions of taxpayer dollars now spent on premiums to provide less than full health insurance coverage for government employees, the Mayors
 
"RESOLVED that the U.S. Conference of Mayors expresses its support for The US National Health Insurance Act (HR 676), and calls upon federal legislators to work towards its immediate enactment and further urges the adoption of a process to insure that healthcare providers justify any increase in health care costs."
 
A NEWS CONFERENCE BY MAYOR FRANKEL, FFHC PRESIDENT, RICK FORD, AND MAYORS PROJECT COORDINATOR, ALISON LANDES, TO EXPLAIN THE RESOLUTION AND PROVIDE INFORMATION ON THE BENEFITS OF H.R. 676 TO CITIES AND COUNTIES WILL BE HELD AT 10:00 A.M., ON TUESDAY, JUNE 24, 2008, AT THE WEST PALM BEACH CITY HALL, COMMISSION CHAMBERS, 200 SECOND STREET, WEST PALM BEACH, FLORIDA.
 
Visit www.healthcare-now.org to bring the Win-Win Campaign to your local government. Get involved today!

Your Health Insurance –- How Dangerous?

By Michael Brennan

These warnings about health insurance come from three informed sources:

1. seriously ill people with health insurance plans, surveyed by Consumer Reports,

2. doctors affiliated with HMOs serving Illinois,

3. the National Committee for Quality Assurance.

 

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