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Get Set to Take Part in June 25 Rally for Health Care Reform |
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Several thousand union members and community, health and faith activists as well as small business owners from up and down the East Coast are traveling to the nation’s capitol June 25 to tell Congress to pass real health care reform that works for real people.
Sponsored by Health Care for America Now! the mid-day Capitol Hill rally will be followed by lobbying visits and several town hall meetings in what organizers say will be the largest health care lobbying day ever held. The U.S. House and Senate will be debating health care reform proposals in committee and final bills are expected to be up for votes on the floor in July. Says AFL-CIO President John Sweeney:
Health care costs are crushing families, businesses and government at all levels. We cannot cover everyone without bringing down costs and we cannot control costs without getting everyone into the system.
President Obama and many congressional Democrats are backing health care reform that brings down costs, provides quality care for all and includes a public health insurance plan option, among other key principles. (Click here for more.) Says Sweeney:
We will create a uniquely American solution that fosters choice, competition and opportunity for all Americans to choose the health care that works for them.
But the insurance industry and big pharmaceutical companies are desperately trying to weaken health care reform and protect their soaring profits and near monopoly control of the health care market. Already, extreme conservative groups with big budgets are engaged in a multimillion-dollar scare campaign to derail real reform.
The June 25 rally is our chance to fight back and demonstrate the powerful grassroots support for the president’s health care reform drive. The AFL-CIO’s recently completed 2009 Health Care for America Survey shows how strongly working families believe we need health care reform. More than 25,000 people took the online survey and more than 6,000 told their personal health care stories. The message: It’s way past time to fix the nation’s broken health care system.
Visit www.HealthCare09.org to sign up and for more information. As Obama says:
Health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year.
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Says Sweeney:
“We will create a uniquely American solution that fosters choice, competition and opportunity for all Americans to choose the health care that works for them.”
This is what we have now and it DOESN’T WORK!
Our “uniquely American solution” costs BILLIONS OF DOLLARS MORE on PRIVATIZED health care. Other countries with national health plans have CUT OUT the profiteering middle men and do not allow for profit corporations in their health plans.
“fosters choice”: what choice is possible if all charge unaffordable premiums with all kinds of provisions to exclude costly patients.
“competition” between giant corporations? What competition is there among thieves?
“choose the health care that works for them.” NOTHING WORKS NOW even with many “choices available! The only choice available with NO AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE AVAILABLE is to arrange for your funeral!
Sweeney is not retiring soon enough!
That the AFL-CIO did not come out strongly for single-payer universal health insurance is another indication of how terribly
impotent the labor movement has become. Without the militant,
vocal and insistent voicing of the clear needs of the America’s working people, the organized labor movement has failed a golden opportunity to take a powerful stand for the working people. THIS FAILURE OF LEADERSHIP IS YET ANOTHER DEFEAT FOR ALL WORKING PEOPLE.
Brother Wells;
Your words appear a little harsh, but that is your opinion! I am disappointed that the AFL-CIO has not taken a more aggressive stand towards single payer healthcare. This considering that over 520 labor organizations have come out in support of H.R. 676.
By leaving the corporate healthcare leeches in place we will NOT have REAL healthcare reform! What is being pushed by the democrats is nothing more than continued profiteering by the corporations at our expense! Given the fact that the democrats as well as the republicans receive major financial contributions from the health care lobbyists it easy to see why REAL healthcare reform is so tough! (another flaw with our electoral system)
I will continue pushing for single payer as it is the only cost effective, humane, just and viable solution to the chaos we have now! HEALTHCARE IS A BASIC HUMAN RIGHT, NOT A COMMODITY OR A PRIVILEGE!
Universal Health Care
A poem by David G. Hurlburt 2007
Health care is our basic human right.
Now is the time to stand up and fight.
Put our money and our vote up on the line.
Get up on our feet and walk a picket line.
Dial a phone or write a letter,
Do it so every one will feel better.
Why should only the rich have medical care?
And the poor kids die don’t you care?
Get out of your chair and in to the street.
It is time for us all to vote with our feet.
Show and tell politicians, turn up the heat.
If we all fight together we can not be beat.
The Iraqis get universal health care,
The rules of war require that its there.
Prisoners in Git-mo get medical care.
But not all Americans that’s just not fair?
What about the hard working poor?
They need medical care for sure?
The system is broken it profits the greedy.
Let us fix the system to serve the needy.
While we are at it Health care for profit must go.
Single payer health care for all is the way to go.
Overhead and profit is just another poison pill.
We have had enough we have taken our fill.
Skyrocketing premiums, deductibles and co-pay,
Caused by advertising, profit and big CEO pay.
It must be stopped now and here is the fix.
There is a bill in the congress HR six seven six.
David, I love your poem. It expresses my feelings on this issue. Have said it many times over “UNIVERSAL SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE NOW”!!!
I have been a long time supporter of single-payer healthcare. HR676 is probably the best proposal “not on the table” right now. I resent the “healthcare” deck being stacked against HR676 in favor of other proposals (pro-insurance company bottom line proposals from the dems in the Senate and Obama)
Time for the supporters of single payer healthcare to speak up. Otherwise, the proposed reforms will probably not work and we will have to do it all over from scratch some time far in the future.
Note: if singlepayer fails; I would then be favorable towards the total nationalization of healthcare in America. I think many others would feel the same way.
Perhaps the dems did not note the past, but single-payer folks are most likely the majority of the “reform” of healthcare the last decade. Shutting them out was not a politically wise move and one that might cost dems some of their “majority” in the congress midterm or perhaps 2012