Hooray USA...

FIRST DAY FOR HEALTH-CARE REFORM!

Socialised Medicine ----

... Bring It On!

Health-Care Update

Junto Photos/Richard Carreño
John Conyers, left

Mix It Up with Single-Payer Health Plan By Richard Carreño Junto Staff Writer If you're bewildered about what kind of health-care insurance reform is going to come out of Washington, you're not alone. There's the Obama low-cost plan (available to all on an OPTIONAL basis); there's the Hillary plan (low-cost to all on a REQUIRED basis); and there's the BEST plan of all, the single-payer plan that dominates the market worldwide, including, significantly, Canada, the UK, and France, where the natives there LOVE their universal health-insurance programmes. The main man behind the single-payer scheme is John Conyers, the legendary Democrat Detroit congressman, who's backing HR 676, an expanded and revised Medicare for all plan. Remember the House number -- that's what you're going to cite when you push the plan with your reps. Conyers was at the University of Pennsylvania 7 March to lead a discussion -- more, a rally -- on the the plan. Conyers first introduced the bill in 2005, and -- guess what? -- it looks like it might have a chance -- not of passing, of course -- but of being taken seriously on its merits as a component to what likely WILL finally be a insurance reform act this year. Of course, that's thanks to Obama, a president who has the leadership qualities and the political mojo (almost a 75 percent approval rating) to get the job done. The time is ripe for another reason. With the Depression descending, even the once comfortable are finally getting afflicted. What was once the other guy's problem (especially that of the struggling underclass), the usual refrain by America's middle class, is now coming home to roost. Hello, you John-Wayne, anti-socialism-Hillary-haters, and welcome to the club. You're now part of the new underclass! The irony in the support of insurance reform, a unique strain in the American experience, is that the underclass (new and old) aren't the most vocal in pushing for universal heath care. The Penn rally was an example -- of about 200 in attendance, most were white, comfy-looking ageing baby boomers. With insurance. I felt at home. I'm part of that demographic, and, as a retired public school teacher, I have a Cadillac-like (an unfortunate choice of words these days, I know) insurance deal, thanks to my union, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. The one guy who stuck out in the crowd, who was apparently there more for his own cause than OUR cause, was a very loud black activist who wore a tee-shirt proclaiming his oh-so 20th century, the Rev. Jesse Jackson-like allegiance to the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America. Apparently he didn't get Obama's memo on this one. On the other hand, those who did have a clue, and who joined the Great Man Conyers, included national leaders in the single-payer effort like Walter Tsou, M.D., and Chuck Pennacchio, a Pennsylvania health-care activist and lobbyist. Incidentally, I'd be remiss if I didn't offer my props to The Inquirer, which, once again, in publicising this event, showed its true stripes has a reform advocate. Newspapers shouldn't stand idly by as the Great Issues are debated. In this case, The Inquirer hasn't -- shunting aside the popular bugaboo of 'socialised medicine.' For further details, go to http://www.phillyhealth.org/, http://healthcare4allpa.org/, and mail to: PUSHforhealthcare@gmail.com. Send an e-mail, letter -- hell, blow a kiss -- to John Conyers for never giving up on the good fight.

Single Payer Heatlh Care Now!

Advert Tell Congress We Want Single Payer Health Care We congratulate President Obama and Congressional Democrats for passing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to start the difficult process of reviving our economy. Sadly, Republicans are taking their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh, who declared "I hope [Obama] fails." Just three Republicans supported the recovery bill; the rest want big tax cuts for the rich. It's time for Democrats to enact the big changes that Americans voted for, and ignore Republican obstructionism. The first big change should be Single Payer Health Care . The latest poll shows Americans prefer government health insurance to private insurance by 59%-32%. That's because private insurance has failed. There are nearly 50 million US citizens with no health coverage at all, and at least 18,000 of them die unnecessarily each year as a result. Millions more have inadequate insurance coverage. Rep. John Conyers is leading the fight for Single Payer Health Care for decades with H.R. 676, the "Medicare For All" Bill . Democrats.com is joining the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care (LCGHC) to support H.R. 676. Please urge your Representatives and Senators to support H.R. 676: http://democrats.com/single-payer-petition?cid=ZGVtczQwNzg4NGRlbXM= Thanks for all you do! Bob Fertik

Say Arghh!

Obama-nation! Dying for Health Care By Richard Carreño Junto Staff Writer One of the biggest fictions of America-Firsters is that the United States has the world's best health-care delivery system. A lie? More ignorance, which is usually the fact with the USA-All-the-Way crowd. The reality is stark, according to Atul Gawande, writing recently in The New Yorker. In comparison to France -- I'm just loving this partuclar contrast -- the US has a lower life expectancy rate, a higher infant mortality rate, and higher overall medical costs. 'The French health-care system has among the highest public satisfaction levels of any major Western country,' Gawande reports. And, he noted, in 2000, the World Health Organization ranked France's national, socialist, Bolshie health-care system the real BEST in the world. The US's. No. 37. USA! All the way! Already,nearly 50 million Americans are without proper health, and figure will increase as our unemployment rate and Depression -- yes, friends, it's a Depression (another Bush legacy!) -- expands. Under such dire circumstances you'd think that Barack Obama (ie Nancy Pelosi) would have used his currently ship-wrecked national stimulus spending bill to goose a universal national health-care plan. Sadly, no. Forget the legendary -- and meaningless -- 100 days. Less than month into his Presidency, Barack has gone from 60 to zero. After his stupid choice of the flawed Tom Daschle, Obama has another chance to get it right. Memo to the President: It's not the man or woman who's indispensable in overseeing the re-do of our health-care system. Washington was indispensable. Lincoln was indispensible. FDR was indispensable. Now, it's your turn, bro! By the way, that's we elected you in fit of feverish hope. Now, it's also our turn to kick-start ourselves, as well. With a system that antes up more than $1 million in freebies to a mother of 14 to breed at will -- when others, many others are dying (again, see the Gawande article) -- you'd think even the usually torpid American public would rise up in rage. (Another object lesson from France: Hello, Protest!) Only if we could tie $4-a-gallon gasoline to the health-care reform, then, only then, might Americans have some spine to demand that we join every other Western democracy in providing free health care to every citizen.

What About the 50 Million?

Let's Get Some Drama, Obama!

Let's see?

Bail-out for Wall Street.

Bail-out for Detroit.

When are Dems going to have the nerve to face the real crisis: the Health Insurance Crisis?

Already, No Drama Obama is looking like a one-act play.
--- RDC

Carreño on the Street

Globalization Comes to Philadelphia

(New posting by Richard Carreño at Broad Street Review (BroadStreetReview.com).

This post will appear here after embargo date expires.

America's Shame

US Health Care On Life Support

By Richard Carreño

Bala Cynwyd, Pa:-- America's Shame, of course, is that 50 million of its citizens are without health insurance and/or access to proper health care. To its unabashed discredit, the United States is the only industrialised, Western country that does not provide universal health care. This shocking horror is well known, well documented, but without the widespread currency it needs to have among the populace. Enter Michael Moore's docu-tribe, Sicko.

For those of us who are following the issue, there's really nothing new in Moore's case statement. What he has done, nobly, is to take the cause of universal health care to a new arena of movie-making and one more accessible to the masses. It's comforting everyone can now know that 'socialised medicine' is not the bugaboo with which right-wingers have demagogued us for so long. All the myths and horror stories about universal health-care programmes in Canada, the United Kingdom, and France are also debunked. What we learn, in graphic detail, is how humane these countries are compared to the US, which -- even as the world's richest country and one that spends billions in fighting absurd wars -- deprives its own citizens of the dignity of proper health care.

Tony Benn, Britain's Labour warhorse, is Sicko's 'star, and says it best. The nomenclature is able to divide with fear mongering, creating despair, and enabling us into fearsome financial debt. Other Western countries see a social compact. We see a Darwinian society run amuck.

Moore's case is solid, entertaining, and persuasive. Since this is America, the land of the weak and meek, probably nothing will change.

Sicko does go off the skids, however, toward the movie's conclusion. Using the level of high-quality 'universal' care doled out al-Qaeda prisoners at Gitmo -- and, subsequently, the well-documented top-notch care in Cuba -- as a foil to constrast the woeful state that uninsured Americans receive is a stretch. Nice try.

But, this overarching political statement isn't necessary. Of course, the US already provides universal health care. Just ask the 2 million incarcerated. And there are subtlies that Moore ignores: Massachusetts' new plan, as well as San Francisco's experiment with universal municipal health care.

At the end of the day, Moore is right. The lack of universal health care is uniquely an American problem. (So is America's other Shame, the lack of legalised gun control, a topic that Moore shined a spotlight in an earlier movie, Bowling for Columbine.) The piece-meal approach we have so far adopted to address the health-care crisis -- state by state, children and women first ---- is a scandal in itself.

Here's to docu-tribes! Here's to Michael Moore!

NB: Interested in actually doing something about National Health-Care Insurance for the United States? The Philadelphia Area Committee to Defend Health Care will hold a meeting at 7 pm Tuesday, July 10, at the Penn Newman Center, 3720 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia.

Health Care Crisis

Universal Health-Care Insurance Now!

By Andy Stern, Golden Gate

Some people were surprised to learn today that I participated in a news conference with the CEOs of several major corporations - including Wal-Mart, with whom our union has major differences. We announced the formation of Better Health Care Together, a new partnership committed to building the momentum and political will we need to bring health care to every man, woman and child in America by 2012.

To some, it may seem like I took a risk, but it's nothing compared to risks millions of people in our country are forced to take everyday because of our broken health care system.
Three years ago I led a march for quality affordable health care across the Golden Gate Bridge with 10,000 concerned Americans, including a woman named Lisa Scott.
Lisa is a single mom. She worked every day of her life. Her 16 year old daughter Janelle was having respiratory problems, and the doctor sent her for an x-ray. But because Lisa still owed several hundred dollars from a previous illness, the x-ray was postponed and the doctor said they would just monitor her progress. Three days later Janelle died. She died in the richest country on earth, even though her mom worked every day. She died simply because she was too poor to afford health care.

This is not the America any of us want.

So I stood today with corporate CEOs, civic leaders, and another union for Lisa, and because I love this country. I am ready to do anything in my power to find real solutions to make quality, affordable, health care available to everyone.

And I stood up for America's and our children's future. Health care is no longer just a moral crisis, it's an economic crisis as well. Our country is living through the most profound, most significant and most transformative economic revolution in human history. This is not our fathers and grandfathers economy.

More people went to work today in retail than manufacturing. Our economy is no longer national but international. And the truth is, we are not going to drive into the future looking in the rear view mirror. We need new 21st century ideas and partnerships if America is going to thrive in today's global economy.

It is time to admit that the employer-based health care system is dead, a relic of the industrial economy. America cannot compete in the new global economy when we are the only industrialized nation on earth that puts the price of healthcare on the cost of our products.

That is a major drag on American business competitiveness and job creation. American business by 2008 will pay more for health care than they will make in profits. That is untenable.

But the good news is that the solution is no longer a matter of policy, but of politics and leadership. Today the winds of change are blowing. Unlike 1993, when health care reform failed, forces from every corner of America are coming together and looking for answers.
Governors of both political parties are showing leadership, as are presidential candidates, the insurance industry, the Business Roundtable and AARP.

The idea that it is time, in fact it is long overdue, for America to come together and ensure that everyone has quality, affordable health care by 2012 has gained wide acceptance everywhere. Everywhere, that is, but Washington, D.C.

And that's why I chose to join today with several major corporations, some of whom I don't always agree with, and some of whom I have been strongly critical, and will continue to be if their practices do not change. But I believe this partnership of unlikely allies sends a powerful message and offers even greater hope that we can finally stop talking about health care and do something about it.

We can't keep tinkering, hoping that incremental change will fix our broken health care system. We need fundamental change, meaning new thinking, leadership, new partnerships, and some risk taking, and compromising.
That's what we all owe our country. And what united us today at the announcement is our shared belief that it will be a far greater America when we finally get health care for all.
Team USA needs new a health care plan if we are going to compete in a global economy, and if we are going to help make the dreams of our children come true.

America's future is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice.

(Founding members of Better Health Care Together are: AT&T, the Howard H. Baker, Jr. Center for Public Policy, the Center for American Progress, the Committee for Economic Development, the Communications Workers of America, Intel, Kelly Services, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and Wal-Mart.)