[Antiracism] [Workers' Rights] Labor Leaders Demand That 'Single Payer' Be Part of Obama Healthcare Reform Discussions

[WMass Jobs With Justice]

On March 5, Pres. Obama will hold a summit to discuss healthcare reform. Not
one single-payer advocate has been invited to attend, even though the
majority of Americans support a national health plan. Send
<http://capwiz.com/pdamerica/issues/alert/?alertid=12829556&PROCESS=Take+Act
ion>  the president an email TODAY, asking, what happened to democracy,
transparency, and accountability?

 

 

From: Rand Wilson [mailto:rand at mindspring.com] 

 

Labor Campaign for Single-Payer Healthcare
Healthcare Is A Right -- Not A Privilege
www.laborforsinglepayer.org


For Immediate Release: March 4, 2009
Contact: Mark Dudzic: 201-314-2653 - mdudzic at igc.org

 

Labor Leaders Demand That 'Single Payer' Be Part of Obama Healthcare Reform
Discussions

 

The Obama administration's plans to hold a "Health Care Summit" that
excludes advocates of single-payer healthcare reform has drawn a sharp
response from labor leaders around the country.

 

"President Obama has indicated that his administration is committed to the
passage of a new 'universal' national health care program for all Americans,
and he wants it done this year. For working people, and particularly the 48
million Americans currently without health insurance, this is welcome news.
We also applaud the President's efforts to provide immediate relief to the
growing number of unemployed workers faced with the loss of their health
insurance," said Mark Dudzic, National Coordinator of the Labor Campaign for
Single Payer Healthcare.

 

"At the same time," he continued, "we are deeply concerned by the apparent
failure of the administration to include a single supporter of HR 676 among
the 120 invited participants to Thursday's Health Care Reform Summit. We are
calling on our supporters to call and write the White House and demand that
our voice be heard."

 

HR 676, the "Expanded and Improved Medicare for All" Act, was re-introduced
this year by Congressman John Conyers. It currently has 59 congressional
co-sponsors. Because it eliminates the private insurance industry from
profiting from people's misfortunes and, like Medicare, establishes the
federal government as the "single payer" of everyone's medical bills, HR 676
can provide healthcare for all with no co-pays or deductibles in a fiscally
prudent manner. HR 676 has the endorsement of hundreds of state and local
labor federations and local unions as well as many other civic and religious
organizations.

 

"The first step is to ensure that HR 676 has a 'seat at the table' in the
upcoming healthcare reform debates," said South Carolina AFL-CIO President
Donna Dewitt. "It needs to be given the same degree of attention as all
other credible proposals for reform and subjected to a side-by-side 'facts
based' analysis with those proposals."

 

Leaders of the Labor Campaign for Single Payer are urging President Obama to
consider alternatives which, like Medicare, would not rely on private,
for-profit insurance companies to ration health care to the American people.
"Proposals which funnel our precious healthcare dollars into the pockets of
the for-profit insurance industry and other special interests will do
nothing to contain and control costs or improve the quality of care," said
Fernando Gapasin, President of the West Central Oregon Central Labor
Council.

 

Labor leaders from Massachusetts are particularly concerned that their
state's law requiring all individuals to purchase private health insurance
is being touted as a model for the nation. 

 

"Last month 40 of my fellow union leaders wrote to President Obama to urge
him to reject a Massachusetts-style plan that would leave private insurance
companies at the center of the system through an individual mandate and
expensive public subsidies supported by taxes for plans that still don't
provide enough coverage. The Massachusetts plan is widely recognized as
unsustainable and now that we are facing an economic crisis, it is even more
problematic." said Peter Knowlton, president of the Northeast Region of the
United Electrical Workers Union (UE).

 

"If anyone should be excluded from this summit," said Ray Stever, New Jersey
State Industrial Union Council President, "it should be the representatives
of the health insurance industry. These are the very people who caused the
crisis in the first place. They will move heaven and earth to continue to
deny Americans the healthcare justice that citizens of all other
industrialized countries enjoy."

 

The Labor Campaign for Single Payer Healthcare joins other single payer
advocates and organizations who are demanding that their views be
represented in the growing debate over health care reform. These include the
Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Healthcare, Healthcare-NOW, the All
Unions Committee for Single Payer, the Physicians for a National Health
Program and the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing
Committee whose Co-president, Geri Jenkins, RN, recently warned, "Any reform
premised on expanding the insurance-based system will likely fail, frustrate
the public desire for a real solution to our healthcare crisis, and
undermine the political capital the administration has earned for reform."

 

"That is why it is so important to speak up at this moment," said Clyde
Rivers of the California School Employees Association. "The stakes are too
high to allow special interests to hijack a discussion whose outcome will so
importantly affect the lives and livelihoods of the American people. We call
on President Obama and the leaders of both houses of Congress to give HR 676
the fair and open hearing that it deserves,"

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The Labor Campaign for Single Payer Healthcare was formed at a January 10th
meeting in St. Louis, Missouri attended by over 150 representatives from
labor organizations in 31 states that have endorsed HR 676. We believe that
the struggle for universal, single-payer health care needs labor's dynamic
grassroots involvement.  <http://www.laborforsinglepayer.org>
www.laborforsinglepayer.org.

 

 

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