Single-payer health care may not have legs this time around, but there are plenty of supporters who want to be heard. It’s good to see the press beginning to pay some attention to another point of view. We at Campaign Desk have often noted the lack of diversity in the public discourse over reform. In late January, Congressional Quarterly published a piece about the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Coverage, a new coalition of liberal advocacy groups and labor unions which, CQ said, was “trying to breathe new life into the idea of a European-style, single-payer health system in the United States.”
In Montana, Mike Dennison, a state house reporter for Lee Newspapers, has been writing about what he calls the “familiar mantra” of Sen. Max Baucus, who says everything is on the table except single-payer. “America is not ready for single-payer,” Baucus told reporters the other day. “We’re not Europe; we’re not Canada. We’re Americans. I think this country does not want single-payer.”
Perhaps now the media have an opening to do some investigating on their own to find out whether Baucus is right.
Only a single-payer approach will end the inhumanity of our failed healthcare insurance system, where profits are more important than patients’ health.
Only a single-payer approach will end the current disgraceful practice of insurance companies refusing to pay for medical treatment, denying claims, and engaging in rampant price gouging that discourages patients from going to the doctor and has resulted in 50 million Americans without healthcare.
The solution? NON-PROFIT, UNIVERSAL, SINGLE-PAYER HEALTHCARE. It works well in many, many countries around the world.
HR 676, The United States National Health Insurance Act, would ensure that every American, regardless of income, employment status, or race, has access to quality, affordable health care services.
The solution? The United States National Health Insurance Act, H.R. 676. You can read about it here: http://www.healthcare-now.org/hr-676/
Ask your Representatives to co-sponsor HR676.
Tell Senator Baucus to put Single-Payer Reform on the table: http://www.change.org/ideas/294/view_action/sen_baucus_we_need_accurate_numbers_not_creative_figuring
HEALTHCARE SHOULD BE A RIGHT, NOT A BUSINESS.
#1 Posted by care4all, CJR on Sat 7 Mar 2009 at 11:47 PM
A NEW STUDY SHOWS THAT SINGLE-PAYER REFORM WOULD BE MAJOR STIMULUS FOR THE US ECONOMY and would provide:
** 2.6 Million New Jobs,
** $317 Billion in Business Revenue,
** $100 Billion in Wages, and
** $44 Billion New Tax Revenues
You can find out more about this study here: http://www.CalNurses.org/
The press release is here: http://www.calnurses.org/media-center/press-releases/2009/january/nurses-to-congress-expanding-medicare-could-reverse-job-losses-and-repair-our-broken-healthcare-system-and-safety-net.html
#2 Posted by janie r, CJR on Sun 8 Mar 2009 at 12:35 AM
Medicare Advantage plans which use private insurers cost a lot more than plain old Medicare, but deliver worse outcomes.
So why on God's green earth do we want to stick taxpayers and patients with private insurers? So we can spend more and get worse care?
Let's quit beating around the bush. Single payer is the best, but the insurance and pharmaceutical companies oppose it and they spend big bucks(our insurance premiums) to influence Congress.
Single payer advocates need to be at the table to fight to make sure there is a public health care optiion,
#3 Posted by Gail Sredanovic, CJR on Sun 8 Mar 2009 at 01:31 AM
Much more relevant for the CJR is why the New York Times, with a Harvard Medical School graduate on the staff who has even written about rural health clinics in China, has not deployed the largest foreign staff in the US (plus the excellent reporters of the Intl Herald Tribune) to do a straightforward story to dispel the many myths --"You can't choose your own doctor" or "You have to wait months for treatment"-- about how single-payer works in industrialized countries and what ordinary people think about it. There are variations, but in general the answers are that it works well, and generally receives high marks rom patients -- and doctors! (especially in France) I lived under single-payer in France, Britain and Spain for 25 years; when the French saved the sight of one eye for $200 with a laser, but the Americans charges $2,000 two years later for the same thing in the other eye, the Times wouldn't even print an op-ed. but The New Republic did.
Lawrence Malkin (former European correspondent, Time Magazine, Overseas Press Club prizewinner, author,etc.)
www.lawrencemalkin.com
#4 Posted by Lawrence Malkin, CJR on Sun 8 Mar 2009 at 07:55 PM