2. Send a fax:
Baucus a few days ago: 'Everything BUT single payer is on the table. Single payer if off the table'
Pelosi: "In our caucus, over and over again, we hear single payer, single payer, single payer. Well, it's not going to be a single payer."
Pelosi's aide: "Where are the phone calls, e-mails and faxes in support of single-payer? Speaker Pelosi has been in favor of single-payer for a long time. Now make us do it."
Nancy Pelosi wants faxes? Fax her.
A copy of your efax will go to Nancy Pelosi, Dan Bernal (Legislative Aide to Representative Pelosi), Joel Segal (Aide to Representative Conyers), Senatory Max Baucus and The White Office of Health Reform.
3. Send them another fax.
Tell them to expand and improve Medicare.
Fill out the following form to send this letter and your comments as an electronic fax to the White House Office of Health Reform, Senator Edward Kennedy, Senator Max Baucus, Senator Chuck Grassley, Senator John D. Rockefeller, Representative Fortney H. "Pete" Stark.
4. Send them yet another fax.
Tell them to stop threatening Medicare and obstructing health care reform.
A copy of your eFax will go to Senator Baucus and the White House, too.
5. Send $$.
TODAY. Srsly. We need to get these ads on TV. If you can't afford to give them $50, round up 10 people to send $5 each.
6. after you've done all that, call the White House.
1-800-578-4171
Tell them Yes we do want single payer!
7. Sign the petition.
No more secret meetings with insurance companies!
8. Link, link, link.
Here's the Health Justice website. Here's their YouTube channel.
9. And Dr Jess will be on the radio too.
[thanks be to lambert]
--------------------------------------
YAY! [but keep sending faxes anyway]
WIPEOUT!! WE SUCCEEDED
By cnewhall on Sun, 04/26/2009 - 10:04pm
I am happy to tell you that as of 17.56.21 mst, the last remaining fax machine that was receiving gave up the ghost. It was the White House fax that lasted the longest and it was up again in an hour -- all set to receive the 514 more faxes that were queued for sending when it went down.
![[PDA - Heathcare NOT Warfare - Sign the Petition.]](http://pdamerica.org/images/ads/HealthNotWar_final.jpg)
9 comments:
Why is single payer preferable to open enrollment Medicare for all?
hey, good buddy!! good to see you!
'single payer' and 'medicare for all' and 'open enrollment medicare for all' are all the same thing, just slightly different terminologies.
single payer: the government collects taxes, sets up the payment system, and writes the checks to the doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, clinics, etc when we, the taxpayers, get sick and need health care.
we already have 3 different single-payer systems here in the u.s. -- the veterans health administration, medicare, and the indian health service. the govt collects taxes from us and then uses that money to provide health care for veterans, old people, and native americans.
canada, australia, england, spain, and some other countries are all single payer systems. england and spain have national health services, which are special kinds of single payer, in that the govt both pays for health care and owns the hospitals directly and employs the doctors and nurses, etc directly. in most single payer countries though [such as canada and australia], the govt only takes care of the financing part of it; doctors, nurses, hospitals, clinics, etc, are not govt owned or employed, they're in private practice.
our present medicare system is the second kind, where the govt takes care of the payments, but doctors and hospitals are in private practice. our vha and indian health system are more like england and spain: the govt owns the hospitals and clinics and employs the doctors, nurses, etc.
open enrollment medicare for all: this would allow the rest of us to enroll in medicare, and we'd pay for it either by paying premiums like we do for private insurance now only we'd pay them to the govt and not to insurance companies, or by paying more in taxes.
hr 676, expanded and improved medicare for all: medicare as it exists now is great, but it's only for old people [and a small percentage of disabled people] and it still has some gaps in it, in part because it's been pieced together over the past 40+ years. hr 676 would fix those gaps, automatically enroll all of us in medicare, and pay for it through taxes [no premiums or copays or deductibles or in-network/out-of-network nonsense].
under hr 676, this expanded medicare for all would continue to operate as it does now [and much like canada's medicare]: govt payment system, with the doctors, hospitals, nurses, clinics, etc in private practice.
also, hr 676 would probably eventually fold the va system and the indian health system into medicare for all, so that all of us would have the exact same access to exactly the same health care.
i should add that dr jess, in the video here, is a member of physicians for a national health program, and that pnhp is supporting hr 676, expanded and improved medicare for all.
and here is some good basic information on single payer, medicare for all, hr 676, from 1payer.net [producers of the above video, and other videos too].
Excellent, excellent girl.
Baucus has been a sh$t about single-payer forever.
Thanks for the explanations, hipparchia. If we're all in agreement on the goal but using different terms, I'm inclined to use the approach that is easiest to understand and most acceptable to the public.
Everyone needs health care. Anyone who does not have private insurance or access to private insurance should be automatically given Medicare upon voluntary enrollment. It should be without regard to means but those who can afford to pay premiums or taxes to fund it should be required to do so.
Those who have private coverage should not be forced to change, however it would be ideal if the insurers would themselves be participants in Medicare and pass through everything that Medicare covers.
What does this leave for the private carriers? They could offer more services, alternative health care, etc. They will have to find a way to justify their premiums. Those which cannot will certainly lose subscribers, but that's the free market.
i have to admit, andante, that i'd never paid any attention to max baucus until recently, so i'm completely clueless on his past.
he's certainly no friend of single payer now, that's evident.
mahakal,
on the terminology, irl i use different terms depending on my audience. when talking to or emailing congresscritters, i specifically mention hr 676. when talking to friends and neighbors and other real people, i usually talk about medicare and medicare-for-all. in blogospheric and rl activist circles, i usually use single payer.
as for how we get there, whether as an optional buy-in or by passing a law that raises everyone's taxes and automatically enrolls everyone whether they want it or not...
i used to think that the first option was a good one, but after lots and lots of reading on the subject, i'm convinced we should go the second route.
that's how britain enacted their nhs, it's how canada enacted their medicare, and it's also basically how we enacted ours too, so it's not like the world would stop spinning on its axis if we did it again.
and yes, the private carriers wouldn't necessarily go out of business, they'd be free to cover anything medicare did not -- that's how canadian private insurance works.
Les meilleurs sites élus meilleurs sites de la chirurgie esthétique en Tunisie :
medespoir.ch
medpasteur.com
chirurgie-geneve.com
medecine-esthetique-paris.net
chirurgiedunez.org
Post a Comment