Guaranteed Healthcare

In Canada, it took the dogged determination of one province, Saskatchewan, and a visionary leader Tommy Douglas, to pave the path to a national health care system, which they call Medicare.

For all the detractors of the Canadian system in the studios of Fox News and the board rooms of rightwing think tanks, consider this one note: In 2004, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation conducted a national poll to select the greatest Canadian of all time. The winner in a landslide -- Tommy Douglas. 

Hundreds of people, nurses, doctors, medical students, grassroots activists, and California School Employees Association members gathered in downtown Los Angeles Monday to deliver an unequivocal message about the nature of the healthcare reform Americans so desperately need.

For those inside the tightly scripted White House Forum or anyone watching the live feed on line, that message was blacked out. Inside the pre-selected speakers kept within the accepted framework: we need reform, costs are out of control, Americans are hurting, and preventive care will solve all our problems ('fraid not). Unfortunately nothing proposed in the forum is likely to cure this crisis.

With the final White House Forum on healthcare scheduled Monday, April 6 in downtown Los Angeles, advocates of single payer/guaranteed healthcare have one more opportunity to shake up what has become a dreary conventional wisdom about the presumed acceptable parameters of the debate.

Hundreds of nurses, doctors, healthcare and labor activists will rally at 9 a.m. outside the California Endowment, 1000 North Alameda St., Los Angeles.

It will mark the fifth time, at all five White House regional forums, that the single payer/Medicare for all message will come to the stage, outside and inside the forum.  You can extend that to the town hall meeting at the White House last week where the President was asked why we can't have a national healthcare system like they have in other industrialized nations.

Haven't we heard this song before? It sure looks like the people who already control our healthcare system are framing the biggest issues of the present healthcare reform debate.

From the back rooms to the committee hearings to the White House summits to the front pages of the newspapers, the demands of the insurance industry are given enormous deference and accommodation.

Is it fear of Harry and Louise, the insurance campaign that some believe torpedoed the muddled Clinton health proposal? Is it the considerable influence of insurance industry contributions in the pockets of many legislators?

It's time to lay to rest the myth that spending billions on more high tech is the salvation for rising healthcare costs. Some people will peddle any notion to avoid addressing the best way to rein in costs, pushing the insurance companies out of the way with a single payer system.

It's become an article of faith that a national system of electronic medical records would produce huge savings.  President Obama made it a centerpiece of his healthcare plan during the campaign (as did Sen. John McCain), and has emphasized it repeatedly in legislation and speeches.

As a first step, the stimulus bill allotted $17 billion in incentives to prod doctors and hospitals to get on board during a five year period beginning in 2011, along with financial penalties if they don't.

Hours after President Obama's speech to Congress in which he laid down a marker for achieving "comprehensive" healthcare reform, and getting it done this year, top administration aides have outlined the goals of what they want to achieve.

What Politico called "the 8 keys to his health plan,"  certainly reflect a bold determination for action and a grand vision.

There's only one problem. Virtually all the proposals being bandied about in various Congressional committees -- and the administration made it clear this week they will let Congress figure out the details -- fail to meet the test of those "8 keys."

Sen. John McCain spent most of the last week trying to live down his pronouncement on the day of the stock market implosion that the "fundamentals of the economy are strong." 

Looks like he has a new task for this coming week.

John McCain's selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, writes CNA/NNOC co-president Deborah Burger,  offers a vivid glimpse of the philosophical leanings of a Presidential candidate who bears little resemblance to the media's rapturous portrait of an independent maverick, and provides a window into the policies that a McCain presidency would promote.

Here's what Burger had to say today about Palin -- and McCain

Registered nurses, doctors, labor leaders, elected officials, and political activists sounded a call Tuesday at the Democratic Convention Tuesday for a broad national movement to enact comprehensive, single-payer Medicare for all in 2009.

With one important caveat, "we've got to win the election," Congressman John Conyers author of the single payer bill HR 676  told a large gathering at an event sponsored by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, Physicians for a National Health Program, and Progressive Democrats for America.

With the Democrats convening in Denver for their national convention that begins Monday, a lot of people Sunday were talking about the arc of history and the civil rights movement that has led to the pending nomination of Sen. Barack Obama as the Democratic Party nominee for President.

But as we were reminded Sunday, our collapsing healthcare system is one of the key areas of unfinished business for the civil rights of all Americans.

Sen. McCain ought to spend less time talking about Paris Hilton and how many magazine covers feature Sen. Obama and pay more attention to our healthcare nightmare.

What's wrong with this picture? Sen. John McCain, who has implicitly criticized his opponent in the Presidential campaign for inadequate support for the troops, now wants to limit veterans' healthcare benefits to those with combat injuries.

McCain's latest scheme, in fact, mirrors his overhall antipathy to anything that smacks of "government" health care, mirroring the views of the Bush administration. But is that the humane system our veterans deserve?

California's landmark single-payer bill, SB 840, is moving forward in the state legislature. It's not only critical for fixing our broken healthcare system, but also needed for the millions of families struggling with the escalating economic crisis -- as evidenced by a new survey out Wednesday.

Sen. John McCain Thursday tried to distance himself from the embarrassing statement of one of his top economic advisers ex-Sen. Phil Gramm that the financial distress felt by so many Americans was simply a "mental recession."

But, the presumptive Republican nominee for President has his own disconnect with the American public with the inadequate healthcare plan he has proposed.