Cong. John Conyers Speaking on single payer health care March 29th in Albany

For more information, Single Payer NY 518 434-7371 xt 1#

Cong. John Conyers will be coming to Albany for a Congressional Town Hall Meeting on Sunday, March 29th at Westminster Presbyterian Church, 262 State St. in Albany. The event is from 2 to 4:30 PM.

Conyers is the lead sponsor of HR 676, the single payer Medicare for All bill in Congress. Conyers was a last minute invite to the recent White House forum on health care after groups protested the lack of inclusion of single payer advocates, despite being the plan most favored by the American public, doctors, nurses, and researchers. The bill has the most support in Congress of any universal health care proposal.

This meeting is one of ten nationwide meetings funded by the Presbyterian Church USA to open the discussion of Single Payer Healthcare for the United States. Congressman Paul Tonko will also be participating in the forum.

Please plan to come and please send this flyer around to all the groups and individuals you know who will be interested in attending. This is a unique opportunity for all of us.

One focus of the forum will be the role of the faith community in promoting single payer health care. There will be a panel on faith leaders speaking

Dr. Andy Coates of the PNHP chapter in Albany will answer some of the basic questions on single payer.

Cong. Conyers will provide an update on the national effort to promote single payer.

Both US Senators and Governor Paterson have also been invited.

Co sponsors include: Albany Presybtery; Capital Area Council of Churches, Interdenominational Ministers Conference, Fifth Avenue AME Zion Church of Troy, Labor Religion Coalition of NY State, Single Payer New York, Capital District Area Labor Federation, Capital District Alliance for Universal Health Care, Solidarity Committee of the Capital District, Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) Capital District Chapter, Albany Medical College Student PNHP Chapter, Hunger Action Network of New York State, New York State Nurses Association

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www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/11-3

Put Single-Payer on the Table
by Amy Goodman

President Barack Obama promises health-care reform, but he has taken single-payer health care off the table. Single-payer is the system that removes private insurance companies from the picture; the government pays all the bills, but health-care delivery remains private. People still get their choice of what doctor to go to and what hospital to use. Single-payer reduces the administrative costs and removes the profit that insurance companies add to health-care delivery. Single-payer solutions, however, get almost no space in the debate.

A study just released by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a media watchdog group, found that in the week before Obama's health-care summit, of the hundreds of stories that appeared in major newspapers and on the networks, "only five included the views of advocates of single-payer-none of which appeared on television." Most opinion columns that mentioned single-payer were written by opponents.

Congress is considering H.R. 676, "Expanded and Improved Medicare for All," sponsored by John Conyers, D-Mich., with 64 co-sponsors. Yet even when Rep. Conyers directly asked Obama at a Congressional Black Caucus meeting if he could attend the White House health-care summit, he was not immediately invited. Nor was any other advocate for single-payer health care.

Conyers had asked to bring Dr. Marcia Angell, the first woman editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, the most prestigious medical journal in the country, and Dr. Quentin Young. Young is perhaps the most well-known single-payer advocate in America. He was Martin Luther King Jr.'s doctor when King lived in Chicago. "My 15-minute house calls would stretch into three hours," he told me.

But he came to know Barack Obama even better. Though his medical partner was Obama's doctor, Young was his neighbor, friend and ally for decades. "Obama supported single-payer, gave speeches for it," he said..

This past weekend, hundreds turned out to honor the 85-year-old Young, including the Illinois governor and three members of Congress, but the White House's response to Conyers' request that Young be included in the summit? A resounding no. Perhaps because Obama personally knows how persuasive and committed Young is.

After much outcry, Conyers was invited. Activist groups like Physicians for a National Health Program (pnhp.org) expressed outrage that no other single-payer advocate was to be among the 120 people at the summit. Finally, the White House relented and invited Dr. Oliver Fein, president of PNHP. Two people out of 120.

Locked out of the debate, silenced by the media, single-payer advocates are taking action. Russell Mokhiber, who writes and edits the Corporate Crime Reporter, has decided that the time has come to directly confront the problem of our broken health-care system. He's going to the national meeting of the American Health Insurance Plans and is joining others in burning their health-insurance bills outside in protest. Mokhiber told me, "The insurance companies have no place in the health care of American people.. How are we going to beat these people? We have to start the direct confrontation." Launching a new organization, Single Payer Action (singlepayeraction.org), Mokhiber and others promise to take the issue to the insurance industry executives, the lobbyists and the members of Congress directly, in Washington, D.C., and their home district offices.

Critical mass is building behind a single-payer system. From Nobel Laureate in Economics Joseph Stiglitz, who told me, "I've reluctantly come to the view that it's the only alternative," to health-care providers themselves, who witness and endure the system's failure firsthand. Geri Jenkins of the newly formed, 150,000-nurses-strong United American Nurses-National Nurses Organizing Committee (nnoc.net) said: "It is the only health-care-reform proposal that can work. ... We are currently pushing to have a genuine, honest policy debate, because we'll win ... the health insurers will collapse under the weight of their own irrelevance."

Dr. Young has now been invited to a Senate meeting along with the "usual suspects": health-insurance providers, Big Pharma and health-care-reform advocates. I asked Young what he thought of the refrain coming from the White House, as well as from the leading senator on the issue, Max Baucus, that "single-payer is off the table." "It's repulsive," sighed Young. "We are very angry." But not discouraged. I asked him what he thought about Burn Your Health Insurance Bill Day. "Things are heating up." he chuckled. "When things are happening that you have nothing to do with, you know it's a movement."

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
© 2009 Amy Goodman

Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 700 stations in North America. She was awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the “Alternative Nobel” prize, and received the award in the Swedish Parliament in December..

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No Reason to Demonize U.S. Single-Payer Health:

Commentary by John F. Wasik

March 11 (Bloomberg) -- It’s time to stop kicking sand in the face of single-payer health care. It may be the strongest solution around to insure every American at a lower cost.

After decades of industry campaigns against this model -- dubbed by its critics as “socialized” medicine -- it’s important to stop whining and evaluate the many economic benefits. Health care is a fundamental human right.

If President Barack Obama wants real change in American health care, he will have to get over the fear of even mentioning single-payer concepts. At his health-care summit last week, only the threat of a demonstration garnered late invitations for Oliver Fein and Congressman John Conyers, two leading proponents of the single-payer plan.

Health-care costs have become a crippling personal-finance burden for 45 million uninsured and 25 million underinsured Americans. Those outside of the fractured employer-based system are only one illness away from financial ruin.

Lose your job and most likely your health coverage will disappear unless you want to pay exorbitant rates. And it’s getting worse. Because of the growing jobless rate, some 14,000 Americans are losing their coverage daily, according to the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

A single-payer plan would cover everybody regardless of employment situation and save money by cutting out middlemen.

$400 Billion

Fein, president of Physicians for a National Health Program, said a single-payer program would offer $400 billion in annual administrative savings and provide “effective cost containment provisions such as bulk purchasing and global budgeting.”

Obama has said he would keep an open mind on health-care solutions. Yet when asked on March 5 about why he was against single-payer medicine, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs replied: “The president doesn’t believe that’s the best way to achieve the goal of cutting costs and increasing access.”

The mainstream media have similarly been sheepish about touching the subject.

Most media outlets covering last week’s summit didn’t even mention the idea of a single-payer proposal, according to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a New York-based group.

While Obama’s team has strategically avoided backing a specific proposal, under the administration’s 2010 fiscal year budget outline, the burden for whatever plan that emerges will be shared by creating a $634 billion pool.

New Levies

Letting Bush-era tax cuts expire on the 2.6 million highest- earning Americans and imposing new levies on corporations and oil companies will pony up some funds needed for a national plan. The preferential tax rate on capital gains and dividends would be raised to 20 percent from 15 percent.

Even when employers cover most medical expenses, workers are paying an increasing share that isn’t financed by personal-income growth. Premiums for employer-sponsored health care have risen four times faster than workers’ earnings since 1999.

-- Since 1999, average premiums for family coverage have climbed 119 percent, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit that tracks health-care issues. Out-of-pocket contributions for workers have more than doubled in that period.

-- Employers are asking more from employees and covering less. More than 93 percent of workers with family coverage need to contribute to the total premium.

-- Without universal health-care, the number of uninsured will rise to 54 million from 45 million today over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

-- Every 30 seconds, someone in the U.S. files for bankruptcy because of their medical bills. An estimated 18,000 Americans die each year from lack of insurance.

Grace Period

How would market economics work with a single-payer model? Legislate a grace period in which Americans would have a choice between private plans and the expanded Medicare buy-in model.

In a “Medicare-for-all” program, care would be publicly financed and privately delivered. You would keep your own health- care providers and hospital. The government wouldn’t dictate who your doctor is or choose your hospital. It would be acting more like a huge purchaser bargaining for the best treatment and drugs at the lowest price.

Of course, you would have to level the playing field by eliminating health-care tax deductions for employers and give every individual a tax credit.

There would be a national market and regulation for health policies and no one could be denied affordable coverage. No more “cherry-picking” of only the healthiest people and rejection of the sickest or those with chronic conditions.

Working Model

A good working model would be the National Health Insurance Act, which was introduced in 2007 by Conyers, a Democratic representative, and had 93 co-sponsors in the 110th Congress.

Neighborhoods and communities are imperiled when health-care expenses drive everyone to economic ruin. More than 1.5 million families lose their homes every year to foreclosure due to medical bills.

The urgency is there, but the Obama team needs to get even more aggressive if it wants to craft a fiscally sustainable program. Medicare earnings limits and subsidies for drug companies and managed care should also be on the table.

If Congress doesn’t act soon, the fiscal and social sacrifices in the future will be draconian.

Single-payer haters don’t like the idea of seeing who will provide the highest-quality, low-cost coverage and will do anything to shut down the discussion. But let’s at least put this free-market comparison to the test.

(John F. Wasik, co-author of “iMoney,” is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)