“This is truly a global movement,” said Dr. Julio Frenk, a former health minister in Mexico and dean of the Harvard School of Public Health. “As countries advance, they are realizing that creating universal healthcare systems is a necessity for long-term economic development.”

…

But the international drive to provide healthcare for everyone is increasingly leaving America behind.

“We are really an outlier,” said David De Ferranti, a former World Bank vice president who heads the Results for Development Institute, an international nonprofit based in Washington.

This situation is increasingly becoming an international embarrassment for the U.S., as well as an impediment to our nation’s economic progress. Developing countries know they cannot compete globally with an unhealthy workforce. Yet, the U.S. continues to limp along, wasting resources on an inefficient for-profit healthcare system, and seeing its global economic dominance erode. Americans are throwing their hard-earned money down a health insurance rat-hole, leaving them unable to put that money toward paying off mortgages, financing education, or buying cars or other consumer products.

America’s inability to expand affordable coverage to all really comes down to a toxic combination of political dysfunction, corporate greed and a troubling lack of social solidarity, which fuels appeals to selfishness and bigoted attitudes toward the poor and vulnerable. We have one major political party refusing to extend health care as a right to all Americans, while the other major party will not fight for, let alone consider, the best option to our healthcare crisis – single payer. And we have a Supreme Court that next month could undo programs that provide health care to the poorest Americans. While we’re fighting amongst ourselves over an issue that should bring all Americans together, the rest of the world is passing us by.

Sylvia@CaliforniaOneCare.org

Sylvia@CaliforniaOneCare.org

We can ALL have decent Health Care without a huge price tag.

Join the movement for Health Care for All

This event is part of the city-wide May 1 demonstration. The East LA area will be tackling the issue of health care in this city, state and country.
The event will take time to

• talk about the broken health care system

• educate about the alternatives

• have opportunities to get your blood pressure and blood sugar checked

• Puppets, music, celebration & more to highlight the solution: SINGLE-PAYER!

Come One, Come all! Giant Puppet Battle and Health Fair Hosted by Health Care for All, The Campaign for a Healthy California, OLA-Wellness/East Wind and the Healthcare for the 99% Affinity Group! Watch as the California Family takes punch after punch from the for-profit Health Insurance Industry Giant! Amazing rebound by embattled Family as they conquer the Giant with Universal Healthcare! Then converge joyously with Occupy LA through the rest of the afternoon in support of the Rights of Everyone!

Tuesday, May 1, 12:00pm-2:00pm
Mariachi Plaza, East 1st Street & Boyle Avenue, Los Angeles

http://ow.ly/aw3t2

Big turn-out for support of Single-Payer is needed! Take public transportation or carpool.

Sponsored by:
Health Care for All-California
The Campaign for a Healthy California
Occupy LA
Occupy LA Wellness

However, some single payer advocates, are siding with the ACA’s Republican opponents, arguing that the public shouldn’t be forced to buy private health insurance. Unlike GOP critics who want the ACA replaced with either vouchers or health savings accounts, single payer advocates instead want Medicare immediately expanded to all Americans. Fifty doctors and two non-profit groups – Single Payer Action and It’s Our Economy – have filed a friend-of-the-court brief in favor of striking down the individual mandate.

“It is not necessary to force Americans to buy private health insurance to achieve universal coverage,” said Russell Mokhiber of Single Payer Action. “There is a proven alternative that Congress didn’t seriously consider, and that alternative is a single payer national health insurance system.”

The national arm of the Green Party has also called for the justices to strike down the individual mandate.

“America needs real universal health care, not a direct public subsidy in the form of a health insurance mandate to sustain the private insurance industry,” said Barry Hermanson, Green candidate for Congress in California’s 12th District (San Francisco) (http://www.barryhermanson.org). “President Obama and Democrats in Congress could have introduced a Medicare For All bill, which would cover every American and drastically reduce medical costs by removing insurance companies from control over our health care. Instead they acted in the interests of insurance and other corporate lobbies. Even with the mandate, the ACA leaves 23 million Americans without coverage and many millions more with inadequate health care.”

If the Supreme Court overturns the individual mandate, thus crippling a key provision of the ACA, or strikes down the law entirely, could we see a renewed demand from the public to expand Medicare? Would the United States be forced to adopt single payer sooner rather than later? Single payer advocates who oppose the ACA certainly hope so. It’s possible that the public will give national health insurance another look, especially since Republican alternatives like vouchers and health savings accounts don’t lead to universal coverage and don’t control costs. The cost of health care will continue to spiral out of control. Thousands of people will continue to die prematurely. Thousands more will continue to go bankrupt. This much is clear: expanding Medicare to all doesn’t involve a mandate and threat of a fine. Membership is automatic. Should the ACA be repealed, the case for national health insurance will be stronger than ever and lawmakers will have to listen.

Sylvia@californiaonecare.org

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

O’Donnell is absolutely correct. Neither the health care of women, nor of anyone, should be up for debate. What Americans are witnessing is yet another limitation of our inefficient and unfair employer-based healthcare system. The entire idea of employer-based health coverage is unraveling before us. All workers should ask themselves: Why should my boss decide what kind of health care I receive? Why should anyone’s health care be subordinate to another’s religious or political ideology? Health care decisions should be made between oneself and one’s health provider – not between one’s company and the clergy.

There is a way to ensure that religious institutions can continue to operate based on their beliefs, and to protect women’s right to comprehensive health coverage. We must decouple health coverage from the workplace, and establish a publicly-financed national health care system in the United States. This way, faith-based employers can get out of the business of providing health coverage, and have their religious beliefs respected, while women can obtain the health care they need.

Sylvia@californiaonecare.org

The California Senate was only two votes short of passing SB 810 last week. But six Democrats refused to support the bill when it was put to a vote in the California Senate. You may have been one of the thousands of Californians who called these senators urging them to change their minds and vote for the people of California. You showed them what real democracy looks like. They didn’t listen.

It turns out their allegiance was not to us, their constituents.
It was to those who are profiting from our current broken health care system.

Follow the Money

*Insurance Industry may include auto, life and other insurance

Together, you and I and others like us can turn this around.

Go to the ACT! page on the California OneCare website to see how you can get involved in building a movement for single payer that cannot be ignored. There you will find activities, materials and projects to help educate people in your community about single payer, raise money for the campaign, plan actions with friends, and get endorsements from your community leaders.

Let’s reach every Californian with the message that a single payer health care system will give all of us access to the health care we need at a cost we can all afford.

Become a monthly donor and help us to help you spread the word!

Over the next months we will continue to improve our website. We need your help to become a fully interactive site that will allow supporters like you to communicate and plan activities with others in your community. Your monthly contribution in whatever amount you choose will help make this happen.

Thank you for your continuing support for single payer and our work.

Sincerely,

Jeanne Ertle
Vice Chair, California OneCare

I haven’t yet seen Escape Fire – other than the trailer – but I’m hoping that the film goes beyond the usual Band-Aid solutions for cutting costs, and explores the need for systemic change, like implementing a national public health insurance program.

Escape Fire‘s premiere in Park City comes amid the sad irony surrounding the tragic death of Canadian freestyle skier and Olympic hopeful, Sarah Burke. Burke was killed in a training accident at the Park City Mountain resort. She was in a coma for several days before her death. But because the accident happened in the U.S., and not in Burke’s native Canada, her family is now saddled with over half a million dollars in medical bills. Healthcare advocate Wendell Potter wrote about the Burke tragedy in a poignant blog post, which includes information on where to send donations to the family.

Sylvia@californiaonecare.org

Healthcare Reform 2.0

By Steffie Woolhandler, MD, MPH and David Himmelstein, MD

CUNY School of Public Health, Social Research, Fall 2011

So while the American people want an expanded and improved Medicare for All — that is, a single-payer system — corporations dead-set against single-payer reform have come to dictate the agendas of both political parties. Hence, the only way to win national health insurance is to build a popular movement to counter corporate power.

http://www1.cuny.edu/mu/forum/2011/11/09/dr-steffie-woolhandler-and-dr-david-himmelstein-on-their-recent-publication-“healthcare-reform-2-0″-in-the-fall-2011-issue-of-social-research/

Healthcare Reform 2.0 (12 pages):
http://www1.cuny.edu/mu/sph/files/2011/11/783_Woolhandler-Himmelstein_719-730.pdf

Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

This brief primer (9 short pages plus references) on Healthcare Reform 2.0 will provide little new information for those who have followed the research and educational efforts of the leadership of Physicians for a National Health Program. Nevertheless, it should be downloaded to be used as an advocacy piece to explain to others why Healthcare Reform 1.0 (Affordable Care Act) will remain a failure, and why we have to move on to Healthcare Reform 2.0 (expanded and improved Medicare for All). By distributing this, electronically or in hard copy, you can become a part of the popular movement to counter corporate power.

Re-posted with permission from pnhp.org.

L.A. County expands no-cost healthcare

By Anna Gorman

Los Angeles Times, October 9, 2011

In one of the largest expansions of health coverage to the uninsured, Los Angeles County is enrolling hundreds of thousands of residents in a publicly funded treatment program and setting the stage for the national healthcare overhaul.

The county hopes to register as many as 550,000 patients and is assigning them to medical clinics for services at no cost to them.

Under President Obama’s controversial healthcare overhaul, millions more uninsured Californians will be eligible for Medicaid — the healthcare program for the poor — beginning in 2014. Even as the debate over the law continues in Washington, California is starting that expansion now and using federal dollars to do so. Altogether, the state expects to receive $2.3 billion to expand and modernize its Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal, now available only to certain low-income residents.

In L.A. County, the stakes are high. In 2014, the newly insured county residents will be able to seek treatment wherever they want. To keep them with the county, health leaders recognize that they must make the system one of choice rather than of last resort. Otherwise, the only patients left will be illegal immigrants and others still ineligible for public coverage.

“Our survival depends on it,” said Mitchell Katz, director of the county Department of Health Services. Unless the healthcare system improves, he said, “if people have choice, they won’t choose us and the system will implode.”

Health workers began signing patients up for a program called Healthy Way L.A. in July and so far have enrolled 24,000, many of whom are receiving services. County residents are eligible if they are between the ages of 19 and 64, citizens or permanent residents of five years and earn less than 133% of the federal poverty level (about $14,500 for an individual and $29,700 for a family of four).

The coverage is not insurance and cannot be used outside of L.A. County, but it does give patients the ability to receive free primary and specialty care, mental health services, chronic disease management, medication and emergency treatment. Most of the enrollment is being done when patients go to the county’s network of hospitals and clinics.

Over the next two years, the county will pay half the cost for Healthy Way L.A. — or about $300 million — and the federal government will pay the other half. By 2014, when the patients become eligible for Medi-Cal, the federal government will pick up the entire tab, which will help bolster the financially strapped county’s health system.

http://www.latimes.com/health/la-me-health-reform-la-20111010,0,4242519.story

Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

This admirable effort in Los Angeles County to include more uninsured adults in its health services programs demonstrates some of the complexities that arise in trying to coordinate health care financing and health care delivery under our current dysfunctional, fragmented system that is being expanded by the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Traditionally, the county has been the health care provider of last resort. If we had a financing system that covered everyone, there would be no need to support separate financing of a welfare program for low-income individuals, though there would still be a need to be sure that adequate facilities were available in areas with high rates of poverty that might not attract private health care providers.

Between this need to ensure adequate capacity in underserved areas, and the anticipation that there will still be tens of millions of uninsured individuals, forward thinking county health administrators are wise to try to work within the current system, with the anticipated changes under the Affordable Care Act, to be sure that care will be available for these underserved populations. The efforts in Los Angeles County can serve as a model for other counties throughout the nation, though the task is difficult because of the budget constraints that states and counties now face.

So how is Los Angeles County going to finance the safety-net in an unstable environment during the health reform transition? The first phase is to expand the safety-net to cover uninsured low-income adults. This is not an insurance program, but it relies on a contribution of federal funds that would pay about half of the expansion in clinic services for this population. Thus it expands the traditional role of the county as the provider of last resort, with the addition of much needed federal funds.

By providing these patients with a primary care medical home now, the transition to a program financed completely by the expansion of Medicaid will be much smoother.

But then what? The 100 percent federal financing of the Medicaid program applies only to the expansion of coverage for these newly enrolled low-income adults, and it is only temporary, designed as an enticement to states to roll out their Medicaid expansions under ACA. States are already facing severe fiscal problems in trying to finance their Medicaid programs, so what will they do when the extra federal subsidies end for these state programs with greatly expanded enrollments?

This policy nightmare was created by our politicians who decided above all to protect the markets for the private insurance industry catering to all of the population sectors that are above poverty levels. For those in poverty, they decided to use chum money to get the states to expand their Medicaid programs, but then revert to the chronic underfunding that characterizes this program, but which would now be compounded by expanded enrollment.

What would have happened had our legislators instead enacted a single payer national health program? Full federal funding would have been provided for these low-income individuals on an equal basis as with everyone else. Income would play no role in a person’s ability to clear the financial barriers to health care. The safety-net facilities provided by the counties would be fully funded by the program.

Because of a lack of interest by the private health care sector in serving regions with high poverty levels, it is likely that the counties would continue as administrators of these institutions, but they would do so knowing that adequate federal funding would always be there through the single payer national health program.

Think of how much easier the task would be, under a single payer system, for Mitchell Katz, the director of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, to prevent the implosion of the county administered health facilities, which we will need regardless of whatever financing system we end up with. But then, Mitchell Katz isn’t looking for a way to make his job easier; he is looking for a way to be sure that health care will always be there for everyone who needs it.

Re-posted with permission from pnhp.org.