Saturday, August 09, 2008

Single Payer New York

On Saturday, September 13, 2008, single payer advocates from across New York will meet in Albany to form a new statewide organization. Our aim: to build an unbeatable movement for a single payer public system that would fully fund comprehensive health care, including prescription drugs, for all. We invite all single-payer supporters to join us!

Private insurance has no legitimate role to play in the care of patients. We believe it must be replaced by a public program of health financing. Under a single-payer healthcare system, we'll spend our healthcare dollars on care, not on bureaucratic waste, profit-making and corporate gain.

Our grassroots movement has gained momentum in 2008. Healthcare-NOW and other groups organized a nationwide protest on June 19 in support of single-payer healthcare. The U.S. Conference of Mayors, the New York State Assembly, and a growing number of unions and central labor bodies have all endorsed HR 676, the National Health Insurance Act. New studies found that a majority of physicians support national health insurance. And there is renewed support for single-payer among important groups like the League of Women Voters, the Unitarian Universalist Association and the Presbyterian Church USA.

Looking ahead, healthcare will continue to be a central issue in the presidential election. And New York State, with a new governor and a changing Senate, has initiated an official evaluation and discussion of proposals for universal healthcare. Now is the time to strengthen grassroots activism in support of a single national, publicly-financed healthcare plan.

Already a wide diversity of groups and individuals across New York are working for HR 676, and also for a New York state-based single payer system. We have worked together spontaneously, organically, and successfully. We also work with many other groups that promote "universal healthcare" or "affordable healthcare," but not necessarily single payer. We are appreciative of their efforts. But the evidence is convincing that single payer reform is crucial for our state and our nation.

A formal statewide grassroots coalition will allow us to share resources, local news, publications, speakers and more. We have much to learn from one another--and from other successful state-based single payer organizations. Together we can build a vigorous single payer voice in every county in New York State—and, ultimately, a new healthcare system.

Please join us!

New York State Nurses Association ~ Mike Keenan, President, Troy Area Labor Council, AFL-CIO ~ Kathleen Scales, Executive Director, Capital District Area Labor Federation, AFL-CIO ~ Healthcare-NOW ~ Health Care Work Group of Otsego, Delaware & Chenango Counties ~ Mark Dunlea, Executive Director, Hunger Action Network of New York State ~ Tompkins County Health Care Task Force ~ Solidarity Committee of the Capital District ~ Senior Legislative Action Committee of Sullivan County ~ League of Women Voters of Saratoga County ~ Patricia Friedland, member, Healthcare-NOW ~ Rev. Cass Shaw, Albany Presbytery ~ Long Island Coalition for a National Health Plan ~ Citizens for Universal Healthcare, Kingston ~ Joel Schwartz, President, CSEA Local 446, Staten Island Council ~ Christy Staats, Clifton Park Single Payer Committee ~ Barbara Warren, Executive Director, Citizens' Environmental Coalition ~ Jeff Vogel, Delegate Assembly member, 1199 United Healthcare Workers East / SEIU ~ New York Metro, Syracuse, Ithaca, Capital District, and Finger Lakes chapters of Physicians for a National Health Program ~ Douglas Delong, MD, Physicians for a National Health Program, Cooperstown ~ Richard Propp, MD, Capital District Alliance for Universal Healthcare, Inc. ~ Doug Bullock, 8th District Representative, Albany County Legislature ~ Dr. Mo Therese Hannah Professor of Psychology, Siena College ~ Tompkins County Religious Task Force for a Living Wage ~ Gloria Mattera and Peter LaVenia, Co-Chairs, Green Party of NYS ~ Tompkins County Workers' Center ~ Rochester Interfaith Health Care Coalition ~ Justin Cunningham, Executive Director, New York Statewide Senior Action

SINGLE PAYER NEW YORK
Albany Medical College - Saturday September 13th
10am to Noon – Healthcare-NOW Roadshow, featuring Donna Smith of “Sicko"
Noon – lunch, please RSVP if you would like a box lunch
1pm to 4pm - organizing and strategy meeting

To join Single Payer New York or for further information, send an email.
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Thursday, August 07, 2008

Keep Medicare as a family

By RICHARD PROPP
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Times Union, Albany, NY


Dear Medicare:

Happy birthday!

Since I first met you on July 31, 1965, I have been smitten with your looks, your fairness, your support of the elderly without regard to social or economic status, skin color, ethnicity, intellectual IQ, emotional IQ, address, clubs, choice of transportation, hobbies, reading list, or favorite restaurant. You took care of our grandparents, our parents, and now you are taking care of us!

Your birth was not without pain. Some of the Southern congressmen could not stand the idea of people with differing skin colors being in the same hospital room. Eventually President Lyndon Johnson, his staff, and senior citizen groups, wore down Congress, the insurance industry, the unions, and the American Medical Association, and Medicare, health care for all Americans aged 65 and over, became law. It was implemented in July of 1966. Health care was not just a necessity, it was now a right for these folks.

In July of 1965, I was moonlighting as a substitute physician in Ravena in southern Albany County with Dr. John Mosher and Dr. Ira Lefevre while I was chief resident at Albany Hospital, now known, of course, as Albany Medical Center Hospital. (Dr. Richard T. Beebe was chief of medicine at Albany Hospital and allowed us to make ends meet in this way.) More than half of our patients in Ravena who were over 65 couldn't pay for their needed medical care and instead left vegetables and chickens at Mrs. Mosher's back door. When Medicare came in, it allowed older folks to be treated as paying patients, restoring their dignity and their ability to be diagnosed and treated at an early stage of their illness. Countless lives were saved and diseases prevented. Practitioners and hospitals flourished.

Through the years, dear Medicare, you have been declared broke and broken, and somehow in response to pressure by physicians and patients, wise and compassionate politicians have patched you up and you carry on.

In 2003 you were "modernized" by radical conservatives and the drug and insurance companies, and, frankly, you were exploited. We are just now waking up to the fact that the real goal of this "modernization" was privatization. We are now paying private insurance companies 13 percent more to deliver benefits to those 65 and older through these private Medicare Advantage plans than through traditional Medicare. This wasteful and unnecessary payment scheme was highlighted in the recent struggle over Medicare physician reimbursement rates and hopefully will be addressed through the political process over the next year.

Those of us who believe health care is not just a necessity, but should become a right for all, hope that sometime soon you will have a baby and expand your family!

That baby is already in gestation stage as HR676, Expanded and Improved Medicare for All.

More than 90 members of Congress have signed on in support of this legislation, and there is a strong and growing wave of grass-roots support, as well as in the medical community, local governmental entities, and the labor movement. Your overhead of 4 percent, dear Medicare, is one-sixth that of private insurance plans, and one third that of not-for-profit plans.

Among its many benefits, socially and economically, single payer improved and expanded Medicare for all would eliminate the huge administrative expense in time and staff to deal with myriad insurance company plan requirements and reduce overhead. Hospitals would have a guaranteed budget, and rural and urban physicians and other practitioners will have patients for whom they will get full reimbursement. At least 22,000 lives will be saved and over 500,000 medical bankruptcies will be avoided each year. Job mobility and the economy will improve as health insurance becomes separated from employment.

New opposition groups are arising, however, who are very clever about espousing "universal health care", but, upon scrutiny, what they are really supporting are private insurance-based plans and the status quo.

This is really like putting lipstick on a pig. Even with lipstick, pigs are still pigs.

Forcing everyone into private insurance plans is not the solution to our health care crisis for anyone except the insurance industry. We, your family, dear Medicare, seek to expose these efforts as the cynical delay and denial tactics they represent. We will not let your estimable reputation and outstanding 43 years of success be besmirched, or curtailed by your undermining and privatizing adversaries.

Medicare, we still love you.

Happy birthday, and many more!

Dr. Richard Propp is chair of the Capital District Alliance for Universal Healthcare, Inc. and a leader of the Capital District Chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program.
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