Labor Campaign for Single-Payer Calls on President Obama To Put "Medicare-for-all on the Table"

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http://pdamerica.org/articles/alliances/2010-02-05-12-07-18-alliances.php

The Labor Campaign for Single Payer joined the growing number of nurses, doctors and other healthcare advocates who have responded to President Obama's State of the Union challenge to "let him know" if there is a better approach that "will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare, and stop insurance company abuses."

In a letter (attached) sent to the White House, the 35 labor leaders on the LCSP Steering Committee called the current stalemate on healthcare legislation unacceptable to the American people. "e respectfully submit that taking single payer off the table was both a strategic and tactical mistake," they said. None of the proposals currently under consideration "meet the test of equity or justice." Instead, "A Medicare-for-All system would be far more cost effective than any of the proposed current reforms based on continuation of for-profit, market-based insurance. And it is a program that Americans are already familiar with--a solution right at our fingertips."


To view the LCS-P letter to President Obama, click here..."

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1. for my du n/t

[leftstreet]

2. K&R

[slipslidingaway]

3. :) Since P. Obama said make me do it and then asked the question...

about better ideas in the SOTU address, maybe he was asking for people to rally around what he has described as the best solution.

;-)

[JimWis]

4. It is good to see some of these groups working for single payer

come together. They should all do this, making a bigger voice. K&R

[slipslidingaway]

5. Yes it is and hopefully more people will voice their opinions...

once again I think Dr. Flowers is right, the public option has been a huge distraction which divided many single payer supporters.

Liveblogging ...
http://www.correntewire.com/national_medicare_all_campaign#comment-162752

By margaret_flowers on Sun, 02/07/2010 - 1:25pm

"You are correct that the public option was a huge distraction which split the single payer supporters. The damage was tremendous. Imagine how far the single payer movement could have come if we had the resources that the public option groups had. We came pretty far simply with the energy and passion of our grassroots base.

As to why this was done, we can only wonder. It was decided by the Democratic party early on that they thought introducing a pubilc option was the closest they could get to health reform. This was done out of fear of the health industries. They wanted to avoid the problems that occurred in the 90's.

Unfortunately, the same thing has happened. They made some major miscalculations such as thinking that if they included the industries in the discussion that the industries would be willing to compromise - they weren't. They also started their negotuations from their compromise position so that the result was even less than they were hoping to settle for.

At this point we are reaching out to the groups who supported the public option and inviting them to join the national Medicare for All campaign because we don't compromise! We stand by our beliefs. You can find info that compares single payer and the public option at pnhp.org and healthcare-now.org."