PHIMG Coalition - Grassroot voices demanding Medicare For All!

This is from Medicare for All supporter "Faryn Balyncd" at Democratic Underground :

Despite 65% to 72% of voters supporting "a public plan like Medicare" for all, by January only 34% supported the emerging Frankenstein's monster of perpetual MANDATED enslavement to a cartel, a mutant creation whose only likeness to the promise of "reform" was in its now misleading name.

The message is loud & clear:

Americans continue to support for the president's campaign principles of healthcare reform:
- - - (1.) a public plan open to all
- - - (2.) no mandates
- - - (3.) no middles class tax hikes, specifically no John McCain-esque taxation of healthcare benefits

But as voters saw the Senate Finance hearing begin with the banning and literal arrest of the doctors and nurses supporting Single Payer, the selling of principle to Big Pharma and Big Insurance, finally the spectacle of the White House pressuring the Senate to bow to Joe Lieberman and crush the last remnant of a public option (the Medicare Buy-In Option), their anger grew.

So if the only bill we "can pass now" is a corporate mandate that will destroy us at the polls, not to mention making future transition to Medicare-for-All more difficult, if not impossible, what is the alternative?

Perhaps we can regroup and try listening to the people:

(1) Kill the mandate now! (Are you listening, Nancy?)

(2) Stand on principle, and fight unwaveringly for Medicare-for-All.

(3) Give no quarter: Force the obstructionists to actually physically filibuster (let them stand up and drone on, with their urine bags in place, until the American people see them for the corporate tools that they are).

(4) If they are to defeat the plan Americans desire, Medicare-for-All, force them to publicly vote down an uncorrupted bill, and make them pay for it at the polls in November.

The Republican game plan was for us to pass an unpopular corporate give-away while they kept their hands clean, and let us self destruct in November.

But they have no defense if we stand on principle for the American people.

"If Barack Obama’s bill gets changed to exclude the public entities, it is not health insurance reform…it rises and falls on whether the public is allowed to choose Medicare if they’re under 65 or not. If they are allowed to choose Medicare as an option, this bill will be real health care reform...."

- Howard Dean

1. The health care crisis has worsened. Over 46 million Americans lack health insurance. A comparable number are underinsured. Those with insurance are paying more and more of the premiums and more out-of-pocket as well. And even the insured face bankruptcy if they get sick. Many have to choose between paying for medicine and paying for food and housing. And with the recent economic downturn, the ranks of those without insurance are growing.

2. A majority of physicians (59 percent) and an even higher proportion of Americans (62 percent or more) support single-payer national health insurance or “Medicare for All.” In spite of this, all we are hearing about today are mandate plans that would require everyone to buy the same private insurance that is already failing us. These proposals don’t regulate insurance premiums, they don’t keep the insurance companies from refusing to pay many of our bills, and they don’t improve the insurance we now have. Some offer a “public option,” but this will quickly become too expensive as the sick flee to the public sector because private insurers avoid them, abandon them, or make it too difficult for them to get their bills paid.

3. These mandate proposals won’t work, either to expand coverage or to contain costs. Plans like these have been tried in many states over the past two decades (Massachusetts, Tennessee, Washington State, Oregon, Minnesota, Vermont, Maine). They have all failed to durably reduce the number of uninsured or to contain costs.

4. These mandate plans will add hundreds of billions of dollars to the nation’s health care costs. In this economic downturn, we need to assure health care for all without adding to the nation’s cost and the government’s deficit. The bottom line is: these proposals don’t reform our fragmented, inefficient system, they just add to its complexity and costs.

5. As long as we continue to rely on private for-profit insurers, universal coverage will be unaffordable. Their administrative costs consume nearly one-third of our health care dollar. We will never have enough money to provide everyone with decent care until we eliminate private insurance with its enormous waste and inadequate coverage. And we will never be able to keep costs down and get the care we need as long as the wasteful and unnecessary insurance companies stand between us and our doctors.

6. Every other industrialized country has some form of universal health care. None uses profit-making, investor-owned insurance companies like ours to provide health care for all their people.

7. We have an American system that works. It’s Medicare. It’s not perfect, but Americans with Medicare are far happier than those with private insurance. Doctors face fewer hassles in getting paid, and Medicare has been a leader in keeping costs down. And keep in mind that Medicare insures people with the greatest health care needs: people over 65 and the disabled. We should improve and expand Medicare to cover everyone.

8. A single-payer “Medicare for All” system is embodied in H.R. 676, sponsored by Rep. John Conyers. It would have:
* Automatic enrollment for everyone
* Comprehensive services covering all medically necessary care and drugs
* Free choice of doctor and hospital, who remain independent and negotiate their fees and budgets with a public or nonprofit agency
* Public or nonprofit agency processes and pays the bills
* Entire system financed through progressive taxes
* Help job growth and the entire U.S. economy by removing the burden of health costs from business
* Cover everyone without spending any more than we are now.

9. The growth in health care costs must be addressed if any proposal is to succeed.
* Single payer offers real tools to contain costs: budgeting, especially for hospitals, planning of capital investments, and an emphasis on primary care and coordination of care.
* Mandate plans offer only hopes: competition among insurance companies, computerization, chronic disease management. Competition among the shrinking number of insurance companies has already failed to contain costs and, in the absence of single payer and reformed primary care, computerization and chronic disease management will raise costs, not lower them.

10. Single-payer Medicare for All is the right answer:
* It is right on choice. It provides free choice of doctor and hospital, the choice Americans want and value. In mandate plans, we lose those choices.
* It is right on efficiency. Single payer would slash administrative costs and promote efficient primary care. It would also enhance evidence-based quality assurance.
* It is right on accountability. It will be a public, nonprofit system that will respond to what doctors and their patients need, not what corporate executives and their stockholders want.

First there was Medicare for all 300 million of us. But that was a non-starter because private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn't hear of it, and Republicans and "centrists" thought it was too much like what they have up in Canada -- which, by the way, cost Canadians only 10 percent of their GDP and covers every Canadian. (Our current system of private for-profit insurers costs 16 percent of GDP and leaves out 45 million people.)

So the compromise was to give all Americans the option of buying into a "Medicare-like plan" that competed with private insurers. Who could be against freedom of choice? Fully 70 percent of Americans polled supported the idea. Open to all Americans, such a plan would have the scale and authority to negotiate low prices with drug companies and other providers, and force private insurers to provide better service at lower costs. But private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn't hear of it, and Republicans and "centrists" thought it would end up too much like what they have up in Canada.

So the compromise was to give the public option only to Americans who wouldn't be covered either by their employers or by Medicaid. And give them coverage pegged to Medicare rates. But private insurers and ... you know the rest.

So the compromise that ended up in the House bill is to have a mere public option, open only to the 6 million Americans not otherwise covered. The Congressional Budget Office warns this shrunken public option will have no real bargaining leverage and would attract mainly people who need lots of medical care to begin with. So it will actually cost more than it saves.

But even the House's shrunken and costly little public option is too much for private insurers, Big Pharma, Republicans, and "centrists" in the Senate. So Harry Reid has proposed an even tinier public option, which states can decide not to offer their citizens. According to the CBO, it would attract no more than 4 million Americans.

It's a token public option, an ersatz public option, a fleeting gesture toward the idea of a public option, so small and desiccated as to be barely worth mentioning except for the fact that it still (gasp) contains the word "public."

And yet Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson mumble darkly that they may not even vote to allow debate on the floor of the Senate about the bill if it contains this paltry public option. And Republicans predict a "holy war."

But what more can possibly be compromised? Take away the word "public?" Make it available to only twelve people?

Our private, for-profit health insurance system, designed to fatten the profits of private health insurers and Big Pharma, is about to be turned over to ... our private, for-profit health care system. Except that now private health insurers and Big Pharma will be getting some 30 million additional customers, paid for by the rest of us.

Upbeat policy wonks and political spinners who tend to see only portions of cups that are full will point out some good things: no pre-existing conditions, insurance exchanges, 30 million more Americans covered. But in reality, the cup is 90 percent empty. Most of us will remain stuck with little or no choice -- dependent on private insurers who care only about the bottom line, who deny our claims, who charge us more and more for co-payments and deductibles, who bury us in forms, who don't take our calls.

I'm still not giving up. I want every Senator who's not in the pocket of the private insurers or Big Pharma to introduce and vote for a "Ted Kennedy Medicare for All" amendment to whatever bill Reid takes to the floor. And if this fails, a "Ted Kennedy Real Public Option for All" amendment. Let every Senate Democratic who doesn't have the guts to vote for either of them be known and counted.