Have you noticed? The national single payer healthcare movement is growing in strength.
Therefore, not surprisingly, the healthcare insurance industrial complex is scurrying about trying to find new ways to hang onto their immense profits. They've devised plans for parents to keep paying for their children's healthcare into their late twenties or thirties in several states and a plan to deliver a Medicare-type plan (for which they get a big government subsidy, thanks to the Bush administration) that will provide for full choice of doctors and, most importantly, more dollars for themselves.
The "Massachusettization" of the debate is one of the ways the insurance companies are attempting to gain more profits. They claim that providing state by state so-called "universal" systems such as the Massachusetts plan extracting more government money and our personal money to pay insurance companies bigger bucks -- requiring middle class working people to purchase insurance from those same insurance companies-- will provide some kind of minimal insurance product that might be called "healthcare for all."
There are some politicians in Congress who want to see this kind of "corporate universal health insurance" partly because they are being called on to produce a healthcare plan and partly because a for-profit system doesn't jeopardize their campaign contributions from the health insurance industry and its Washington lobbyists. Their mantra is "anything but single payer." In other words, "keep our profits rolling in! Don't jeopardize the privatization agenda.
This callous (or perhaps misdirected) attempt at "non-partisan" universal healthcare is constructed on the backs of millions of suffering people in our country.
Here's what you can do: Most people are not fooled by these corporations. Healthcare-NOW is supporting the birth of a movement for a real 21st Century healthcare system in this country. Just today, another person in yet another state called to get involved in organizing a community campaign with Healthcare-NOW for a national single payer healthcare system. You could do the same.
People are fed up with having the insurance companies and Big Pharma dictate the terms of our healthcare.
We have a new project called "the Health Insurance Hall of Shame." And you can help. As we began planning it, we realized that there are hundreds of ways to focus national attention on the abuses of these companies. They fight against and have destroyed every effort to win a national non-profit healthcare system. People need to know this. We want to encourage lawsuits against these companies that have been committing "insurance company malpractice." Lawsuits should be filed against these companies when they deny care to desperately sick people and cancel their policies if the bill gets too large, charge ever growing premiums, deductibles and co-pays. We can develop a brief bank and a team of lawyers to take on these giants. And we should challenge their investments in Big Tobacco and other harmful corporations - investments they profit from by using our money. Watch for our new blog on the "Hall of Shame." And join us. Your help is essential to this project.
We can elect a Congress that will support a truly national single payer healthcare system and reject insurance lobbyist's bribes. We can educate and organize the public and arm ourselves and our neighbors against the parade of falsehoods and myths perpetrated by these companies. Michael Moore is looking for people to appear in his new film, people who are up against impossible odds if they don't get the medicines and treatment they must have if they are to survive "death by denial." You can help find these people and participate in promoting the film.
You can help make national healthcare a reality by joining Healthcare-NOW; send us your stories for Michael Moore; form a Healthcare-NOW group in your own community (there are over one hundred of these groups now); send us some financial support to keep this movement rolling; get copies of our materials; call us up or send an email and we will plug you in. Please check out the website today - right now -- www.healthcare-now.org ; Hit donate to join. Call: 1-800 453-1305; Write: info at healthcare-now.org,
Just be in touch. We want to hear from you! There is no way we can win this without the mass movement that is made up of you and you, and people like you.
Thank you for your support,
Marilyn Clement,
National Coordinator, Healthcare-NOW.