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Join Today’s Virtual March on Congress for Health Care Now
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Today, you can join in a million-person march for health care in Washington, D.C., without traipsing through our leftover snow banks. Our friends at MoveOn, Health Care for America Now! (HCAN) and other groups are staging a virtual march on the nation’s capital to tell Congress it’s time to stop stalling and pass real health care reform.
The virtual march coincides with a real life Capitol Hill rally and the arrival in Washington—after an eight-day, 135-mile march from Philadelphia—of a group of health care activists honoring the memory of Melanie Shouse. The St. Louis, Mo., health care activist recently lost her battle with breast cancer after her insurance company refused to pay for treatment her doctors said she needed. She was 41 years old.
The virtual and real rallies—the day before the televised White House health care summit—are designed to tell lawmakers they have had plenty of time to discuss and debate health care reform over the past year, and now it’s their job to make it happen.
Click here to join the virtual march and here, here and here for reports, photos and videos from Melanie’s March.
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6 Comments
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It is truely appalling how the misery and anger generated by the crisis in health care for tens of millions of working people is being totally manipulated and channelled by the AFL-CIO into supporting Obama’s cynical, corrupt, and corporate profit enhancing “Health Care Reform”.
To really start a “change” the signs and banners should be in support of “Medicare for All” legislation and demand the creation of an anti-capitalist “second party”. This would inform the bought off politicians from both Democratic and Republican parties that their days are numbered. The time is now to organize all working people to unite and fight for their economic needs through a new socialist political party to elect representatives for the needs of the people not corporate profit.
Read the daily World Socialist Web Site http://www.wsws.org
Medicare for all is not a good (or feasable) answer. Better to up the limit on Medicaid (medical insurance only) for those making under $150.00 with no insurance. Medicaid is already up and running so would not have to set up another Government Department. Maybe just hire a few more people. Preferably someone who knows what they are doing. If someone could tell me what this so called “Health Care Plan” is about I might be inclined to consider it.
Please, Mr. Trumka and AFL-CIO Executive Board, read this article posted today on CommonDreams. NOW is the time for change at the AFL-CIO and organized labor.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/02/24-5
Published on Wednesday, February 24, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Doctors’ Group: Obama Plan Leaves Millions Uninsured, Boosts Private Insurers
by Physicians for National Health Program
WASHINGTON – President Obama’s health care proposal, preserving as it does a central role for the for-profit, private health insurance industry, is incapable of achieving the kind of universal, comprehensive and affordable reform the country needs, a spokesman for a national doctors’ group said Wednesday.
“Regrettably, the president’s proposal is built on some of the worst aspects of the Senate bill,” said Dr. Quentin Young, national coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program, an organization of 17,000 doctors who support single-payer, Medicare-for-All approach to reform. Young’s statement comes on the eve of the president’s bipartisan summit in Washington.
“For example, the president’s proposal would ship hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to the private health insurance industry in the form of subsidies,” Young said. “And to help finance this, it would impose a new tax on health benefits of workers, especially those in high-cost states.
“Its individual mandate would force millions of middle-income uninsured Americans to buy insurers’ skimpy products – insurance policies full of gaps like ever-rising co-pays, deductibles and premiums. Such policies already leave middle-class American families vulnerable to economic hardship and medical bankruptcy in the event of a serious illness like cancer,” continued Young, citing a recent study.
“Even so, at least 23 million people would remain uninsured,” he said. “We know that being uninsured raises your chance of dying by about 40 percent,” he continued, citing another recent study. “That translates into about 23,000 unnecessary deaths each year. As physicians, we find this completely unacceptable.”
“In short,” Young said, “this proposal is an insurance company bonanza, not good, evidence-based health reform. The president would do better by abandoning the insurance and drug companies and instead taking up the single-payer approach.” His group has estimated that such an approach could save hundreds of billions of dollars annually by simplifying health administration.
“By building on and improving the already popular Medicare program, we could put our patients’ interests first,” he said. “Were President Obama to do so, he would meet with strong public support, including from the medical community.”
Although the physicians’ group requested an invitation to Thursday’s summit at Blair House, no reply from the White House has been forthcoming, Young said. Similarly, requests from Reps. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, Anthony Weiner of New York and Peter Welch of Vermont president that single-payer advocates be included in the meeting have apparently gone unanswered.
Outside the Blair House on Thursday, a grassroots “Sidewalk Summit for Medicare for All” will underscore popular support for the measure.
We keep saying the same thing but the union higher ups have not listened. Are they getting paid by the health insurance companies? If they are they should be dumped. We need Medicare for All aka Universal Single Payer. Listen up, Trumka and the rest of you union uppities.
HERE IS A PICKET SIGN THAT THE AFL-CIO NEEDS TO CARRY TO DEMONSTRATIONS AND TO POST HERE ON THE BLOG!
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/02/24-5
M E D I C A R E
F O R
ALL!
mistybeige: Why is Medicare For All not feasible? The senate bill is a goody bag for the insurtance companies and really serves no benefits to us; mandates, taxes on policies, not all uninsured will be insured. The house plan insures 95-96% of the uninsured. Bottom line insurance costs are not going down (look at Anthem Blue Cross, they are getting the jump for some BS reason; more healthy people are dropping, yeah right!) medication costs are not going down. Move-On sold out, HCAN halted the single payer movement with advocating a public plan which is on and then off, and the president really doesn’t want it.