This is not entirely true. I criticized the website because they need someone to fix it--to suggest that's a needed task someone could take on--not because I don't think the group has plenty to offer. But it's a coalition, it works through member groups. And its strategy is and has been from the start to work on HR 676... the same strategy you propose. Last year we put considerable pressure on Charles Rangel to schedule hearings on HR 676, he wouldn't. In response, Conyers held unauthorized hearings with Michael Moore. There's some film of them on the DVD version of SiCKO, as an extra.
Currently Healthcare NOW is encouraging a series of "Truth Hearings" to attack the whole individual mandate/market based plans, using Mass. as the laboratory case. There is also a week of actions planned leading up the the July 30th birthday of Medicare. They also have a traveling roadshow.
My experience is that the single-payer focused groups are not fragmented, but actually work very well together, although they primarily organize their own particular constituencies. The state/national split is necessary in states where there's a chance to do something, but there's not a philosophical difference. There is, fortunately, a deep rift between true national health care advocates and various nonprofits and foundation-funded grouplets that want to ameliorate the effects of the current system by requiring that insurance companies cover certain illnesses, or by saying the problem is we need to 'cover the uninsured'--what about the insured?!
>(5) In contrast, there's no organized movement of any scale that I
can discover for the Conyers Bill (HR 676), which apparently can't
even get hearings scheduled. I think this is the real hole in the
movement. We need a national bill, I think, for a couple of reasons[...]
You may not perceive it from a few hours looking at websites, but yes, there is actually a movement for HR 676, now of several years standing (the bill was introduced with the same number last session, as well.) That's why it has such widespread union support, a new development. A hint, the center of resources is not Healthcare NOW but CNA. Healthcare NOW's primary purpose is to support the bill. That bill, by the way, is almost entirely taken from the Labor Party's Just Health Care plan except that the funding for severance and retraining of displaced insurance company workers was removed.
>So that would be my strategy - focus on the Conyers Bill and link
state initiatives to it. And I agree that we should do it for Carl
instead of just kvetching. So, seriously, where do we start?
Here's what we did: Find out if your congressperson has signed onto the bill. Ninety or so have. You can find out at SickoCure, just enter your zip. If not, who's running against them? Any difference? If neither supports the bill, start raising holy hell about why not. Go meet with them. Bring 40 people. Get in the paper, make some noise. Find out how much insurance money both sides are receiving. Hold a Truth Hearing (Healthcare NOW's name for hearings they've been encouraging across the country)--start by collecting health insurance & health care stories from friends and neighbors. Distribute & collect surveys at local clinics or through sympathetic docs. Ask for people's phone numbers on the survey and ask them if they're willing to speak publicly about their experience. We were overwhelmed with people who are mad as hell and want to tell someone. We invited state, local and fed. elected officials to listen to their constituents and got a bunch there. (Don't let them talk unless they've signed onto the bill, and then only for a few minutes.)
But to do all this you need to either join or start a group, so I'd suggest you first do a serious investigation (not simply web-based) of who's doing what and then go meet them. You might be pleasantly surprised that there is actually a movement out there.
Jenny Brown