BREAKING NEWS: BIG BREAKTHROUGHS FOR SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE
By Kevin Zeese
June 9, 2009
Less than a month after 13 single payer advocates were arrested protesting
the exclusion of single payer, it is at the table in both Houses, making
progress while the multi-payer pro-insurance reform is faltering.
When we started our campaign one month ago to put single payer national
health insurance on the table, we were ignored.
When we stood up and demanded that single payer be part of the debate, we
were arrested.
Today, single payer is breaking through, while the multi-payer pro-health
insurance reform is faltering.
Here's the news, single payer national health insurance will be at the table
in the Senate with a witness participating in a hearing this Thursday. And,
on Wednesday a hearing is being held on single payer in the House of
Representatives.
The Senate Committee on Health, Education and Pensions has invited Margaret
Flowers, MD of Physicians for National Health Policy to testify this
Thursday at 3:00 PM in a hearing on health care reform. Flowers was one of
the Baucus 13 I was arrested with three weeks ago protesting the exclusion
of single payer from Senate Finance Committee hearings.
And, on Wednesday, the Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee
of the House Education & Labor Committee will hold a hearing titled
"Examining the
Single Payer Health Care Option" this Wednesday, June 10th at 10:30 am in
2175 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C.
Single payer is making advances while the multi-payer pro-insurance industry
reform bill is faltering.
There are deep divisions over how to pay for the reform with the very
unpopular taxing of health benefits now being considered. This was
something President Obama opposed during the 2008 campaign. Paying for
single payer is much easier as the waste, fraud, abuse and bureaucracy of
the health insurance industry – totaling $400 billion annually – would be
applied to providing health care. Single payer pays for itself while
multi-payer will add to the deficit.
Mandating that people buy insurance or face fines, another provision
President Obama opposed during the campaign, is gaining popularity among
pro-insurance company legislators. And, the mandates would provide subsidies
to the poor so they can purchase insurance – of course this is also a
subsidy to the health insurance industry. The working class which cannot
afford to purchase insurance will feel the burden of this requirement.
Under single payer people are provided health care without these costs which
is one reason it is the most popular reform among voters.
The Public Insurance Option is opposed by Republicans and the insurance
industry. While several schemes have been reported to make the public
choice option ineffective, it is causing deep divisions. Single payer is
the most popular health care reform among voters, doctors, nurses and
economists because it provides all Americans with choice of doctors and
providers.
The business community is questioning the pro-insurance reforms because
they will include mandates on business requiring them to pay for health
insurance. At this critical time business needs relief not burdens. Single
payer will provide businesses with economic relief by reducing the costs of
health care and leveling the playing field among all businesses and allowing
them to compete internationally with other countries with single payer
systems.
In an effort to save the faltering pro-insurance reforms, President Obama
announced his administration would be getting directly involved in health
care negotiations with Congress. And, he announced town hall meetings
throughout the U.S.
President Obama will find that at all of these town hall meetings single
payer will be the most popular reform among Americans. He needs to listen
to voters. When Obama was in the Illinois Senate he said he supported
single payer but that before Americans got it they needed to win back the
House, Senate and Presidency. Well, all three are now in Democratic Party
control. It is time for President Obama to advocate for the people and push
for single payer, and the multi-payer system as the insurance industry is
the root cause of the problems in health care.
For those who support single payer, now is the time to escalate your
activity. Contact your member of the House and Senate today (202-224-3121).
Let Congress know you want real health care reform not a subsidy for the
insurance industry.
More information:
Health care reform falling apart as details become known
http://www.prosperityagenda.us/node/362
http://www.prosperityagenda.us/node/318
http://www.prosperityagenda.us/node/286
Congress considering taxing health benefits
http://www.prosperityagenda.us/node/352
http://www.prosperityagenda.us/node/287
Robert Reich on how health care profiteers plan to kill public option
http://www.prosperityagenda.us/node/346
Insurance companies push to force people to buy insurance
http://www.prosperityagenda.us/node/338
http://www.prosperityagenda.us/node/364
Author's Bio: Kevin Zeese is Executive Director of the Campaign for Fresh
Air and Clean Politics (www.FreshAirCleanPolitics.net) whose projects
include Voters for Peace (www.VotersForPeace.US., Prosperity Agenda
(www.ProsperityAgenda.US), True Vote (www.TrueVote.US and
www.TrueVoteMD.org) and Climate Security (www.GlobalClimateSecurity.org). He
is also president of Common Sense for Drug Policy (www.csdp.org).
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From: Sid Shniad
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/jun/02/dr-tiller-abortion-murder-extremists
The far-right's violent return
The murder of George Tiller is an chilling reminder that the violent
extremism of America's far-right hasn't gone away
By Michelle Goldberg
The Guardian: 2 June 2009
When Barack Obama was elected president last year, pro-choice activists were
elated, but there was an undercurrent of anxiety. In the past, the extremist
fringe of the anti-abortion movement has responded to political
disempowerment with violence.
In 1993, not long after Bill Clinton was inaugurated, the United States saw
its first murder of an abortion provider, when Dr David Gunn was shot
outside his clinic in Pensacola, Florida. Five months later Dr George Tiller
was shot in both arms. They kept coming: seven shootings that culminated in
the 1998 murder of Dr Barnett Slepian in his suburban kitchen, felled by a
sniper as he made soup.
Even the bombing of the 1996 Atlanta Olympic games turns out to have been
motivated by fanatical opposition to abortion. When he was finally sentenced
in 2005, perpetrator Eric Rudolph said in a written statement that the
attack was meant "to confound, anger and embarrass the Washington government
in the eyes of the word for its abominable sanctioning of abortion on
demand."
Then, during the Bush administration, the killings stopped. Many believed
this was due to a triumph of law enforcement, but in the reproductive health
field, people couldn't help but fear that maybe the violence had been halted
because the anti-abortion movement was making progress by other means. That
meant it could resurface. After the 2008 election, the National Abortion
Federation, an organisation of abortion providers, sent out an alert asking
members to be on guard. Clinic staff nationwide talked of beefing up their
security.
So when Dr Tiller was assassinated in church on Sunday morning, it was a
hideous shock, but it was also, in some ways, predicted.
This April, a leaked report from the Department of Homeland Security warned
about a possible outbreak of right-wing violence. "Paralleling the current
national climate, right-wing extremists during the 1990s exploited a variety
of social issues and political themes to increase group visibility and
recruit new members," the report said, mentioning opposition to gun control,
free trade, abortion and same-sex marriage, as well as racial antagonism.
Then, as now, there was a Democratic president regarded as illegitimate and
amoral by many on the far right. There was economic upheaval and a
proliferation of apocalyptic rhetoric about liberal tyranny and the need for
patriotic individuals to stand up and take action.
Conservatives howled in protest, complaining that the government was
demonising their ideology. But the DHS was on to something. Experts who
study the far right saw the rhetoric in various extremist movements
ratcheting up. Brian Levin, director of the centre for the study of hate and
extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, is a former cop
who often consults with law enforcement. For the far right, he said, Obama's
election signaled that "the country has now become the cesspool that they've
been warning about. When people feel so disenfranchised, or an event has
taken place that for an extremist is considered so pivotal, it makes sense
that we look at what these extremists are saying, because someone is
listening."
Someone like Tiller's alleged killer, Scott Roeder, who was almost exactly
the kind of person the DHS was warning about. His ideology, such as it was,
appeared to combine an extreme paranoia about the federal government with an
Old Testament fundamentalism and an obsessive focus on abortion. He had
connections to the "sovereign citizen" movement, which rejects all
government authority above the local level, and, according to Levin, is full
of white supremacists. In the 1990s, police found bomb-making materials in
Roeder's car, although he was only sentenced to probation, and eventually
his conviction was overturned on a technicality.
Right now there is no way to know why Roeder, like other similar figures,
laid low during the Bush years. But it's chilling how quickly the febrile,
frustrated milieu of the Obama-era right produced its first killer. We can
pray he'll be the last. But we shouldn't count on it.
Michelle Goldberg is the author of The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power,
and the Future of the World, published by Penguin.
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