OntheWilderSide

It’s time to take action again for SINGLE-PAYER NATIONAL HEALTH CARE!  We asked you to do this a few weeks ago.  We need you to send a message again.  It’s easy and it just takes a few minutes.

Republicans call it “socialized medicine.”  Democrats call it the “public option”.  We call it “insurance industry life-support”.  HR 3962, the recently-passed Democratic health care reform bill, barely passed the House and the Senate version is facing a tough sell.  Despite increasingly bitter partisanship, both sides of the Congressional aisle – progressives like Dennis Kucinich and conservatives like Michele Bachmann – can agree that the there is something in this bill to offend everyone.

The Green Party supports a universal, single-payer “Medicare for All” plan.  Greens called HR 3962 “a program to subsidize the insurance industry,” and we continue to urge the Senate to bring a sinlge-payer plan to the table.  We believe this is the only way to give American citizens the health care and coverage that they need – not the premiums, red tape and exclusions insurance company executives want.

Amendments to allow states to create their own single-payer coverage systems – local, small-government solutions that liberals and conservatives both could have approved of – were stripped from consideration of the House bill.  In the end, the only amendment considered – the Stupak Amendment – would ban federal subsidies from being used to fund elective abortions.  After arguing that their plan would not “ration” care by setting up government panels to determine coverage, Democrats conceded to a single amendment that would effectively outlaw private medical decisions, without even the benefit of a “women’s rights” panel!

The Green Party supports both expanded education and access to reproductive knowledge – for women and men – in order to prevent unintended pregnancies, and the right to abortion if a women chooses one.  Feminism is one of the key values of the Green Party.  A women’s choice of medical responses to an unintended pregnancy should be a non-negotiable right.

Since the passage of HR 3962 and the Stupak Amendment, several House and Senate members have promised to work against a Senate version of the health reform plan with a similar provision, and work to block a conference committee version of the final bill with a Stupak-like exclusion.  We urge our supporters to continue to work against the Democratic “insurance industry bailout” bill, especially one that would deny so many women the right to legal abortions through private, though federally-subsidized insurance.

Please take a few moments to send an email urging your Congressional representatives to drop support for the Democratic bill – particularly any anti-choice amendments that might come before the Senate or full Congress later this year – and work for a universal, single-payer “Medicare for All” system.

Don’t forget to take a few seconds to personalize your email letter.  Make reference to any local health insurance corporations who would profit if HR 3962 became law, and add your own reasons why you oppose the so-called “public option.”

Filed under: Action Alert!, activism, Green Party, health care, Healthcare | Tagged: single-payer universal healthcare | 1 Comment »