The Time Is Now! Healthcare-NOW!

[Jcrowley]

“The Time is Now.” said Congressman John Conyers to the Healthcare-NOW national strategy meeting, November 12, 2006, in Chicago. Conyers and 60 Healthcare-NOW organizers from 16 states joined in thinking about how to push forward for a single-payer national healthcare system in the United States in a marathon 10-hour strategy session. Healthcare-NOW is a bottom up movement organization, so the strategies evolved throughout the day came from very few speeches and a lot of discussion. Conyers's bill H.R. 676 will provide healthcare for everyone in the United States by eliminating the profits of the insurance companies and negotiating drug and other treatment costs. It will be paid for on a sliding scale by all of us together. We will have no bills, co-payments, deductibles, denials, or bankruptcies. And we will be paying less than we are now.



A New Organizing Strategy

Healthcare-Now believes that we have come to a crossroads, as a nation, on this issue. Our national effort to get universal health care was lost fourteen years ago for many reasons, not the least of which was the stranglehold of the insurance industry in control of the media and the U.S. Congress.

Instead of a healthcare crisis, we have a Greed Crisis. The profits of insurance and pharmaceutical drug companies have multiplied during the same period that people’s healthcare has become less comprehensive and less affordable.

Special Interest money has turned health care into an incredibly profitable business, ranking second only to the military-industrial-congressional complex. Another word for our healthcare crisis might be a "Profiteer Crisis." Over $2 trillion each year is at stake in the healthcare industry. But all of that could be changed fairly quickly if we cut the profits of the profiteers and put that money into real healthcare.



http://www.blackcommentator.com/206/206_national_healthcare_strategy_clement.html

[Cleita]

1. The time has come.

There was a time in the past that I suggested that the only way to get big corporate health care out of our system was to sell Medicare to companies and individuals at a rate that would undercut the private insurers drastically. This would be easy enough to do since adminsitrative costs of Medicare is between 2% and 3%. For profit companies' administrative costs are between 8% and 15%.

So I'm listening to Al Franken last week and he had a guest on who is suggesting the same thing. (Sorry I forgot the name.) I believe this will be the way to get rid of the private insurers and HMOs. Once they can't compete, they will get out of the business because it's unprofitable. Then we can work on expanding Medicare to cover everyone once we get the sharks out of the water and have some truly meaningful universal single payer health care for all.

[poverlay]

2. Hear! Hear! (I'm just here to cheer you on.) Woohoo Healthcare Now!!! n/t

[provis99]

3. canadian healthcare point of view

up here we're pretty flexible on all kinds of political opinions; but I think support for Canadian universal Medicare is around 90-95%. Having lived in the US for 10 years, I was saddened to see the barbarism of the pay for service system in the states affecting so many decent Americans, who deserve better from their Congressional representatives and leaders. The only way the problem will be solved however, is if healthcare is seen as a right, a minimum standard of decency and concern for other people's lives, rather than a commodity to be bought and sold in a market. Bananas and houseboats can be dealt with in free enterprise, not people's health and lives.

[Stargazer99]

4. You are going to scare the crap out of people with some

measure of wealth. People with money don't want to share even if it means eliminating misery for another human being.

[upi402]

5. ok, let's do the impossible!

:toast:
love that quote, simple, beautiful.