Guaranteed Healthcare

By Donna Smith

It has been an odd week for those of us who believe in an end to war and also believe in a progressively financed single standard of high quality care for all. 

Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio spearheaded an historic debate and vote on the House floor on Afghanistan war funding and then also announced he would vote “yes” on the current health reform bill he finds so flawed.  News reports on both issues are plentiful so no need to expound on the details again here, but the process in Washington, DC, is bruising and citizen activists are sometimes left confused.

But make no mistake, the deep convictions of those advocating “Healthcare Not Warfare” is growing in an ever-increasing wave of Brown Bag Vigils held on the third Wednesday of every month outside Congressional offices from coast-to-coast.  On St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, the number of vigils swelled to 89. 

In Washington, DC, the media turned out to film the Brown Bag team assembled across from the Rayburn House Office Building but seemed more interested in stirring anger toward Kucinich or toward the President or Congress or certainly toward the Tea Party efforts that the mainstream media has done so much to promote and encourage by its intense coverage since the dog days of summer when one right-wing screamer chased a Congressman across a parking lot following a town hall meeting. 

By Donna Smith, American SiCKO, National Co-Chair, Progressive Democrats of America Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign, and communications Specialist, CNA/NNOC

DAY 1:  Over the past three weeks, the road to the DNC convention in Denver has taken me from Cleveland to Pittsburgh and now on a drive from my home in Chicago to just outside of the Mile High City.  The history swirling around Barack Obama's nomination combined with the commitment to bring guaranteed publicly funded, privately delivered healthcare to every person in America is a powerful draw for me.  I want to compel the party of opportunity for all and equality for all to stand tall and firm and proud in this moment and right through the election in November. 

And who doesn't enjoy a good ol' road trip (except for the $4/gallon gasoline) every so often?  So off we went, leaving the Loop and bound for Denver via Iowa and Nebraska and through a wholeot of corn fields.

By Donna Smith, American SiCKO, communications specialist, CNA/NNOC 

While ad campaigns rolled out from some groups and the media focused themselves on -- well -- themselves, and their coverage of the presidential race, the champion of single payer healthcare reform rolled out his own plans and moved ever forward in the steady march toward victory.

Rep-John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary and primary sponsor of HR676, joined the national Healthcare Not Warfare campaign in seeking national platform status for true reform.  No wiggle, no waffle, no sequential silliness that allows some Americans in while holding others partially out of the plan.  Conyers knows that with 91 co-sponsors already on board and many more in the November election pool, the path to passage of HR676 is much more "politically feasable" than the convoluted and corrupt path to marginal change.

Awesomely simple and exquisitely responsible, single payer offers patients maximum flexibility in seeking quality healthcare, and it offers the nation maximum “bang for the buck” by removing the mark-ups for excessive profit necessary in the current for-profit, private health insurance markets.

The incremental health reform plans are quite convoluted and difficult to follow. Designed to protect all the corporate, for-profit entities currently making money in our system, it is nearly impossible to accomplish universal access to care while maintaining the status quo of our national corporate healthcare system.

Steady as we go, single payer friends, Conyers and his cohorts always remind us that our cause is just, the path is clear and we can win true, universal care for every American.  

I am blessed to be one of the four national co-chairs of this PDA campaign, along with Conyers, Soloman and Marilyn Clement of Healthcare-Now.  Read the attached article and jump in with us.

Sign on to this effort and spread the good word.  Single payer reform is on the agenda.