[Sosfbay-discuss] Fw: National Healthcare Update!

Wed Jun 3 23:10:55 PDT 2009

--- On Wed, 6/3/09, CNA/NNOC: The RN Union <website at calnurses.org> wrote:

From: CNA/NNOC: The RN Union <website at calnurses.org>
Subject: National Healthcare Update!
To: "Caroline Yacoub" <carolineyacoub at att.net>
Date: Wednesday, June 3, 2009, 6:20 PM

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Inside this issue:
1. Healthcare House Parties sponsored by Organizing for America
2. TAKE ACTION: Join us in San Diego June 4th!
3. Reports on today's Baucus healthcare meeting

Join a Healthcare House Party near you!
The movement for single-payer grows, following actions in 50 cities – Now tell President Obama!
The next step is for each of us to take the single-payer message to the Obama for America (OFA) "kickoff" meetings on June 6. Click here to find one near you. 
Polls show strong support for single-payer, and the folks attending these events are friendly to the cause of real healthcare reform. This is a great opportunity to build support and send our message to President Obama.

TAKE ACTION: Join us in San Diego June 4th!
Message to Insurance Companies: It’s time for you to go! Nurses, Doctors, Patients to Protest Health Insurance Lobbyists in San Diego - June 4th
Health Advocates to Offer AHIP $11 Billion Check to Dissolve in Favor of a Guaranteed, Single-Payer Model 
As America's drive for healthcare reform heats up, the lobbying group for health insurers will meet this week in San Diego—and will be greeted by an impassioned demonstration organized by nurses, doctors, and patients supporting single-payer healthcare reforms.
WHAT:    Nurses, Doctors Protest Health Insurance Industry
WHEN:    Thursday, June 4th, 8:30 a.m.  (media availability at 8:00 and 10:15 a.m.)
WHERE: San Diego Convention Center, 5th @ Harbor, near grass meridian
The healthcare advocates will give the lobbyists an $11 billion dollar check, representing their annual profits, as a symbolic final payout to encourage the health insurers to leave the industry and be replaced with the kind of universal, nonprofit coverage common to other democracies.  

Senator Baucus hears from doctors and nurses: single-payer is the solution
As a result of the growing movement for single-payer, the protests at the Senate Finance Committee, and the support we demonstrated for Senator Bernie Sanders' single-payer bill (S. 703) on May 13, CNA/NNOC co-president Geri Jenkins, RN, Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro, Dr. David Himmelstein, PNHP president Dr. Oliver Fein, and Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, went with Senator Sanders today to a meeting with Senator Max Baucus, who is leading the Democratic healthcare reform effort in the Senate.  It was the first extended discussion Baucus has had with single-payer advocates. He heard from doctors and nurses on the front lines about the need for a real policy debate on single-payer and the dangers of keeping the insurance companies at the apex of power – and the opposition doing that will create among doctors and nurses. In response to Rose Ann DeMoro's request, Baucus agreed to drop the charges against
 those arrested at the Finance Committee hearing.
Two reports on this important meeting: 
Inside the Baucus Single-Payer Meeting--What Was Said, What's Next
National Nurses Movement's Diary
Daily Kos 06/03/09
Today's meeting of the nation's leading single payer activists with Sen. Max Baucus was historic, and a recognition of the power of the tens of thousands of nurses, doctors, and grassroots activists across the country who have been turning up the heat on the policy makers in Washington. Make no mistake – your voices are being heard. And, the protests and pressure will continue.
As Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, told Baucus, "there is a groundswell" across the country that will continue to press for single-payer reform, and Baucus and other policy makers in Washington "are going to get to know us very well."  In a later press conference, DeMoro blasted the conventional wisdom that single payer is not politically viable. "Is it politically viable to let people die and suffer from a lack of political will?" Noting the fight for women's suffrage and the civil rights movement, she emphasized, "we're going to have to turn up the heat. Women did not get the right to vote by voting on it."

Read the complete nurses blog post and see flickr photos here
-----------------------------
By David Swanson, After Downing Street (excerpt)
Advocates of single-payer emerged from the meeting with Baucus declaring their determination to push ahead with what they see as a fundamental struggle for human rights.  Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee and national vice president of the AFL-CIO, said the fight for single-payer is a civil rights movement, and that people "have to turn up the heat."  When someone questions the political viability of single payer, she said, we should question "allowing people to die and suffer for lack of political will."
The press conference, in which Baucus did not participate, was attended by the New York Times, Politico, the Associated Press, Pacifica Radio, Congressional Quarterly, and a camera that Flowers believed belonged to CNN.  Sanders opened the press conference with a statement on the domination of the private for-profit health insurance companies wasting $350 billion per year in billing, profiteering, and complexity.  If we were serious about healthcare reform, he said, we would be having a serious discussion of single-payer.
Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine and senior lecturer at Harvard, said that in her diagnosis the disease was market-driven healthcare in which access is based on the ability to pay.
Dr. David Himmelstein, co-founder of PNHP and associate professor medicine at Harvard Medical School, reported that Baucus had said he might be willing to drop charges of unlawful conduct and disruption of Congress against 13 people but had no intention of opening up any hearings to include single-payer.  
Geri Jenkins, RN, co-president of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee and a practicing registered nurse, reported that Baucus had implied he'd made a mistake in not including single-payer but that it was too late now.
And, finally, Dr. Oliver Fein, president of PNHP and associate dean at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, said that he and his colleagues had asked Baucus for a full hearing on the merits of single payer and asked for the Congressional Budget Office to create a comparison of single payer with whatever plan Congress produces that is not single payer.  Senator Sanders said that he would continue to push Baucus to hold a hearing.

Thanks for your support!
California Nurses Association
National Nurses Organizing Committee
2000 Franklin Street
Oakland, CA 94612
www.CalNurses.org 
www.GuaranteedHealthcare.org

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