CNA/NNOC Statement on the House bill on healthcare

by CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro
For Immediate Release
November 9, 2009

Of all the torrent of words that followed House passage of its version of healthcare reform legislation in early November, perhaps the most misleading were those comparing it to enactment of Social Security and Medicare.

Sadly no. Social Security and Medicare were both federal programs guaranteeing respectively pensions and health care for our nation's seniors, paid for and administered by the federal government with public oversight and public accountability.

While the House bill, and its Senate counterpart, do have several important reform components, along with many weaknesses, neither one comes close to the guarantees and the expansion of health and income security provided by Social Security or Medicare.

By contrast, if the central premise of Social Security and Medicare was a federal guarantee of health and retirement security, the main provision of the bills in Congress is a mandate requiring most Americans without health coverage to buy private insurance.

In other words, the principle beneficiary is not Americans' health, but the bottom line of the insurance industry which stands to harvest tens of billions of dollars in additional profits ordered by the federal government. Or as Rep. Eric Massa of New York put it on the eve of the House vote, "at the highest level, this bill will enshrine in law the monopolistic powers of the private health insurance industry, period."

Can the Democrats Avoid a Populist Health Care Rebellion?

By KEVIN ZEESE
The leadership of the Democratic Party is on the verge of passing health insurance reform. The centerpiece of the “reform” is requiring Americans to buy overpriced insurance from private corporations. But, it is evident that many in the Democratic voting base see the insurance industry as the problem – not the solution – and are getting angry about a new law that will force people to buy from corporations they don’t trust.

Just a few weeks ago the Mobilization for Health Care for All was announced (www.MobilizeForHealthCare.org). The Mobilization focuses on the denial of doctor-recommended care by the insurance industry. Sit-ins were planned at health insurance companies with demands that insurance corporations stop the denials. The Mobilization sought 100 people willing to sit-in at insurance corporations and risk arrest as people sat in at lunch counters two generations ago.

The response has been explosive, nearly 800 have signed up to risk arrest and thousands have signed up to join the protests. In the last 20 days 78 people have been arrested protesting the real death panels – the private insurance industry – who according to a California study deny doctor recommended care 20% of the time.

The Mobilization hoped to have “patients not profits sit-ins” in three cities last week, and instead it had them in nine cities. On the next Mobilization day, October 28th, there is likely to be twice as many cities protesting the insurance industry – just as Congress considers forcing Americans to buy insurance. This may be developing into the largest campaign of non-violent civil resistance since the Civil Rights era.

Many of the protesters supported Obama and were active in Democratic campaigns. Does the Democratic Party think that people willing to risk arrest against the corruption of the insurance industry will support Democratic candidates with time, money and votes who force them to buy insurance from these corporations?

Press Release: AFL-CIO Convention Endorses Single-Payer

Unanimous Vote for Medicare-for-All Reform 

PITTSBURGH – In a historic vote that adds the nation’s leading voice of American workers to a broad national campaign, the AFL-CIO voted unanimously at its national convention here today to endorse the enactment of single-payer, universal healthcare for all Americans. The resolution was sponsored by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, and the Alameda County (California) Central Labor Council. In urging its support, CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro, an AFL-CIO National Vice-President, noted the recent death of Crystal Lee Sutton, the real-life union organizer from the film Norma Rae who died last week after a long battle with cancer, exacerbated by her own three-year fight with her insurance company. “No one should spend the last days of their life fighting with their insurance company,” said DeMoro. “We should not make choices of who gets healthcare based on their ethnicity, gender, or economic status. But I am addressing the labor movement, not Wall Street. And we all know what is the right thing – the moral thing – single-payer healthcare.”

It marks the first time in perhaps two decades that the AFL-CIO has been formally on record in support of single-payer, which would essentially expand and improve Medicare to cover all Americans. Labor unions around the country have been in the forefront of grassroots actions around the nation in support of single-payer and many labor bodies submitted resolutions to the national convention in support of an endorsement. The resolution notes that “the experience of Medicare (and of nearly every other industrialized country) shows the most cost-effective and equitable way to provide quality healthcare is through a single-payer system. Our nation should provide a single high standard of comprehensive care for all.” It also sites specific single-payer bills, including HR 676, which has 86 cosponsors in Congress.

The vote came shortly after the convention was addressed by President Obama who repeated his call for comprehensive healthcare reform, and will accompany another AFL-CIO resolution supporting other Congressional efforts to pass comprehensive reform. It also followed a reception hosted by CNA/NNOC and other unions Monday night featuring filmmaker Michael Moore whose previous film SiCKO presaged the current national debate with its indictment of the healthcare industry, and was on hand to premiere his latest film, Capitalism: A Love Story to the AFL-CIO convention. In his speech Moore recalled that 65 years ago President Franklin Roosevelt proposed a second bill of rights which called for a right to universal medical care, a fight that continues. He noted that every day the healthcare industry spends over $1 million to block reform while thousands of Americans continue to lose coverage, and urged labor and community activists to keep up the fight. 

Regardless of the outcome of the current healthcare legislative action, said United Steel Workers President Leo Gerard, “we’re going to continue the fight for single-payer. I’m not in favor of universal insurance, I’m in favor of universal healthcare. We are going to fight to make sure every single American gets high quality healthcare.” “We know the patient care crisis, we see it every day,” said CNA/NNOC co-president Zenei Cortez, RN at the reception. “We will not rest until we get rid of the private insurance companies that profit off of suffering.” Greg Junemann, president of International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers and chair of the HR 676 Labor Caucus, which has won similar endorsements from hundreds of international and local unions and state and local labor federations, noted to the convention the unity of labor in fighting for real reform. He also cited the ongoing fight of workers every day to protect the health coverage many have now. “The labor movement needs to set our flag on the top of the mountain, and that we will not rest until we have single-payer healthcare for all,” said Junemann. DeMoro welcomed the many international guests in the convention, and noted how most of them represent industrial nations where no one dies from lack of health coverage or goes bankrupt or loses homes due to un-payable medical bills. “The reason? Because they have single-payer or other national healthcare systems, and because your labor movement led the fight for healthcare. Here insurance companies are at the apex of power, controlling our lives. It is not the public option we should be questioning, it is the private option and its horrendous power over our families,” DeMoro said. “When we meet again in four years, perhaps if we adopt single-payer, we will be like all our international brothers and sisters in this room, and no longer be the richest nation in the world but just 37th in healthcare,” DeMoro said.

Press Release Link: http://www.calnurses.org/media-center/press-releases/2009/september/afl-cio-convention-endorses-single-payer.html

Sick and Wrong: "How Washington is screwing up health care reform – and why it may take a revolt to fix it" - Rolling Stone

Click here for: Sick and Wrong - Rolling Stone Article by Matt Taibbi

Top Ten Ways To Tell Your President & His Party Aren't Fighting For Health Care For Everybody

by Bruce Dixon (Published on Friday, July 31, 2009 on Black Agenda Report)

 

With the corporate media relentlessly distorting the public discussion around health care reform, it time for some clear, bright lines to help us tell who is doing what to whom, and whether any of it leads to health care for all of us. Here are ten of them.

 

Barack Obama and Democratic majorities in the House and Senate were swept into office on a promise they would deliver affordable and accessible health care for all Americans. But the corporate media journalism limits the national health care conversation to what insurance companies, drug companies, for-profit health care professionals, their executives, lobbyists and politicians of both parties and other hirelings have to say. So it isn't as easy as it ought to be to tell what the politicians are doing about accomplishing health care for everybody. Hence we offer these ten points. This is how you can tell whether your president and his party are fighting for the health care you deserve.

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Who's Blocking Health Care Reform Now? Blue Dogs? Senate Dems? House Progressives? Or the White House Itself?

By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

In less than a year, Democrats have transformed themselves from the party of change to the party of excuses. Republican birthers and teapartyers, blue dog Democrats, rogue donkey and elephant senators, and even progressives favoring single payer or the shadowy “public option” have all been blamed by the White House for holding up health care --- or is it health insurance --- reform. But with the end of the August recess, the ring is closing and the clock is ticking...    
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