5-10-07, 7:00 pm PDT
Marilyn Clement
As Medea Benjamin said the other day, I sometimes feel like a battered wife. I keep coming back to Congress to try to get them to support a national single payer healthcare system knowing full well that many of them are bound to the corporations from whom they get millions of campaign dollars. So they reject me and kick me down the stairs. But still, I continue to believe we can get the healthcare system we need. I know from experience that we can win this great victory.
Still I have hope! And confidence. We have turned around terrible evils in the past and we have won great victories for our people despite the funding grease and the media bucks that keep us all from hearing the truth so much of the time.
We are trained to accept crumbs when our nation can really afford to provide the greatest healthcare system in the world to all of our people without spending an additional dollar. We already pay trillions and yet we get back a system that leaves 1/3rd of our people either uncovered or undercovered – suffering and dying while 1/3rd of those trillions of dollars go to insurance company waste.
More and more people are now hip to the fact that we don’t need insurance companies.
Even without big bucks for advertising and no money to hire a big organizing staff, we’ve encouraged and corralled a phenomenal Healthcare-NOW movement including all of you. This movement and people like you make up the single most important factor that will make win the struggle of healthcare! You give of your time and energy and resources to spread the information about guaranteed healthcare for all, a single payer financed system something like Improved Medicare for All and you are organizing your communities to build this movement. It is a great lesson in humility. The power of the people when they have the facts and are mobilizing themselves to act on those facts is greater than the power of big dollars.
EVERY DAY WE ARE TOLD WE MUST COMPROMISE. We receive a new headline and a new plan from a set of big business leaders or a big union together with Washington Beltway pundits or a governor of some state or a candidate for president or other politicians urging us to compromise and get a healthcare system that will mandate us all by law to purchase more insurance from the insurance companies and pay more taxes to purchase insurance for those who can’t afford it. It is called individual mandate. You pay; they take the money to the bank.
Individual mandate is the opposite of single payer. It is not what we want. It is not what we need. With single payer, we will all pay into our own healthcare system that we own – We will pay on a sliding scale and we’ll be paying less money than we are now paying out of pocket, for premiums, deductibles co-pays and no-pays. It will have a single payer such as an Improved Medicare for All controlled by the taxpayers. No more insurance company waste. No more drug company price gouging. No more corporate control of our healthcare system. So here’s where you come in: HOW CAN WE GET IT?
Some things you can do NOW to make healthcare a reality for everybody:
1. Keep building support in your community. Hold a healthcare Truth Hearing. Check our Website or call to find out how to do it. ; 2. Hold a Memorial Event for the 18,000 who die needlessly every year simply for lack of any healthcare coverage. (According to the Institute of Medicine); 3. Plan to come to the United States Social Forum in Atlanta June 27th-30th. Healthcare-NOW and many other healthcare groups will be there with a broad spectrum of people working for progressive change in the United States and the World. Tell your healthcare story at one of our Truth Hearings in Atlanta; 4. Watch for the dates and place for a National march and an Interfaith Meeting to push for passage of single payer, H.R. 676. We will know soon; 5. Check to be sure your member of Congress is an endorser of H.R. 676. Look on our website, read the bill and check the co-sponsors – 69 as of yesterday: . Call your Congress Member if he/she is not on the list. Call on Chairman Rangel and Speaker Pelosi to hold hearings on H.R. 676 now. FREE CALLS TO CONGRESS: 1-866-338-1015; 6. Make a tax-deductible donation or pledge to Healthcare-NOW. Please. We really need your support. 7. Continue to send us the emails of people who want to be involved in this issue; 8. Carry Healthcare-NOW petitions; 9. Stay strong. This is not the time to compromise our principles.
Much love and solidarity and HEALTH to all of you…
--Marilyn Clement, National Coordinator, Healthcare-NOW, 339 Lafayette St, NYC 10012,
