“I never worked for an organization
but for a cause.”
Ella Baker (1968)
The people residing in the United States, across all
demographic classifications, are arousing from a deep sleep. The
ever increasing costs of health care premiums, co-pays, and prescription
drugs, the ever-diminishing quality of health insurance coverage,
the growing numbers of the uninsured and woefully under-insured,
and finally, the deep pain and misery from the inexorable rise in
premature deaths and illnesses due to a failed health care system,
have shaken the consciousness of ordinary folks from slumber to
grassroots political action.
Indeed, the severe health care crisis in the United
States has ignited a movement like nothing since the civil rights
movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s. Healthcare-Now is an expression
of that movement. We are ordinary folks organizing against health
care apartheid imposed on the poor, the middle-class, people of
color, and all people because of and in spite of their citizenship
and employment status. The absolute wall of separation is the inability
to pay for medically necessary health care. The draconian pass laws
are the rigid and irrational public and private regulations that
deny people access to adequate health insurance coverage and necessary
health care.
However, the people have spoken. The people want a
single-payer health care system in the United States that is an
expanded and improved Medicare program for all who reside in this
country. And they want it now.
Ajamu Sankofa foreground, moderating Harlem Community
Truth Hearing on December 19, 2006. In background from left to right,
are speakers Donn Mitchell and Jean Corbett Parker telling the truth
of their health trauma under the present failed health care system
in the United States.
But how do we organize to win such an historic new
health care system in the United States in a political climate where
the mass media is dominated by corporations, in a political climate
where the propaganda of fear reigns supreme, in a political climate
where, with a stroke of the pen, the foundations of the domestic
constitutional legal system are being eviscerated? And what do we
do in a political climate where the government commits, with impunity,
the highest international law violations known to humankind by slaughtering
thousands of innocent and defenseless people abroad for no other
reason than to steal their valuable natural resources?
What do we do?
We dig deep into our hearts and souls to prevent our
humanity from slipping away, find our self-confidence and courage,
and then pull up the fortitude to fight back for the cause of freedom,
justice, and peace. Remember we are not alone. The “power of the
people” is not a mere phrase; it is a reality.
As recently as 2006, credible professional national
polling organizations in the United States have shown that two thirds
of the public prefers a universal health insurance program in which
everyone is covered like Medicare, and that is run by the government
and financed by taxpayers, as opposed to the current employer-based
system.
In November 2006, a Gallup poll revealed that 69%
of the public agreed that it’s the responsibility of the federal
government to make sure that all Americans have health coverage.
Further, the national polls have recently revealed that 56% or more
of the U.S. population believe that the Iraq war was a mistake and
that 52% or more believe that the Iraq war has not made the people
of the United States safer. In February 2006, the Zogby International
polling organization revealed that 72% of the American troops serving
in Iraq thought that the U.S. should exit the country in 2007 and
more than one in four of these soldiers believed that they should
have left in 2006.
However, the power of the people does not rest in
the fact that a two thirds or more majority of the population agrees
with a position that the U.S. government opposes. Rather, the power
of the people rests in the people’s consciousness of its power and
in the people’s intelligent, strategic, and unrelenting political
application of that power through independent direct action to create
the change that it seeks. That is the simple lesson of the history
of social change.
The national movement for a single-payer national
health care system in the United States would make a grievous misstep
if it assumed that the increased power that the Democratic Party
will now wield in the 110th Congress assures it an advance in this
historic struggle for the fundamental, radical, and requisite transformation
of the health care system in the United States. The national movement
can not afford such naiveté.
The avoidance of that misstep is precisely why Healthcare-Now
does not weigh itself down with a self-made bureaucracy and overhead.
Healthcare-Now is fully decentralized and organizes from the “bottom
up” and not the “top down.” The people who are waking up to the
health care crisis are the bottom and totality of Healthcare-Now.
They are fully autonomous every-day people, exercising their inalienable
right to win health care now as a human right in the United States
as their God-given talents envision it.
The movement’s task is to neutralize, politically,
the power of the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries
to buy, sell and otherwise control, for their narrow profit-seeking
privilege, the federal elected officials, who are themselves members
of an already corporate dominated and controlled United States Congress.
Let’s look at the political perspectives of those who will hold
the three most powerful positions in the 110th House of Representatives:
The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D Cal.) signals
that she does not favor a single-payer system. This is her position,
despite the fact that in 2006, her State’s legislative body voted
in a single-payer Bill that would guarantee comprehensive health
insurance for all residents of California. The Bill was subsequently
vetoed by the Republican Governor. One of Congresswoman Pelosi’s
main campaign contributors is the American Hospital Association.
AHA pays huge sums of money for lobbyists and campaign contributions
to US Congresspersons for the explicit purpose of ensuring the status
quo of the present failed health care system.
The House Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer (D Md.), asserts
that in the long run, the Democratic Party supports a system that
provides universal health insurance to all “Americans.” He offers
no definitions of what “universal” or “long term” means. He has
not signed on to any single-payer legislation. His position essentially
co-opts the language of the Healthcare-Now movement while casting
aside its substance.
The incoming chair of the powerful House Ways and
Means Committee, Charles Rangel (D NY), supported Congressman John
Conyers’ (D. Mich.) single-payer Bill in the 109th Congress. But
it remains to be seen what he will do in the 110th Congress. His
Committee has jurisdiction over health. However, absent strident
pressure from below, Rangel is expected to defer to Pelosi, his
boss.
Indeed, pundits expect that the 2007and 2008 health
reform agenda(s) of the Democratic Party will be, notwithstanding
its hot air, essentially an attempt to limit its actions to giving
government the power to negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical
industry, to increase stem cell research, and to tweak Medicare.
To paraphrase Malcolm X, this is like having someone thrust a nine
inch dagger fully into your gut, pull it out only one inch, and
then to expect you to survive.
Accordingly, the Democratic Party’s present political
trajectory is justifiably expected to ensure the continuation of
the failed health care system where the prerogatives of the health
insurance and the pharmaceutical companies trump the will of the
people. Further, Pelosi and Hoyer oppose the immediate withdrawal
of troops from Iraq. They also refuse to use the constitutional
“power of the purse” to end this barbarous war and will undoubtedly
not prevent the sending of more troops to Iraq during the last two
years of the Bush Regime. In fact, they both affirmatively support
some degree of US troop presence in Iraq for the indefinite future.
Startlingly, Rangel is urging the reintroduction of the draft. He
just might get his wish as US saber rattling with Iran continues
to heat up. Don’t be shocked if the United States becomes more deeply
enmeshed in a dangerous multi-nation regional war of its own making
in what it calls the “Middle East” within the next two years.
The contemporary political culture of frontier violence
and wanton greed among the elite of the United States, nurtured
by both national political parties, stunts the growth of a political
culture seeking to embrace health care as a human right. The illegal
war in Iraq is a bipartisan policy of the United States government.
However, the policy to undermine single-payer has also been a bipartisan
policy of the United States government.
The legacy of the leadership of the Democratic Party
regarding health care as a human right has been clear. From 1993
to 1994, during the Bill Clinton-Al Gore Administration, the executive
branch rejected a single-payer health care system in spite of the
fact that more congressional Democrats supported a single-payer
system than supported the Clinton plan-the one that kept the insurance
industry profiting off people’s dependence, desperation, and illness.
This week, congressman John Conyers (D Mich.) reintroduced
the United States Health Insurance Act (or the Expanded and Improved
Medicare for All Act), HR 676. He must start over getting congressional
support for this Bill that would create a single-payer health care
system and that also recognizes health care to be a human right.
However, the 2008 Presidential election campaign has begun. Hence,
he may have a much tougher time getting support in this election
season because the putative Democratic Party leading presidential
contender, Senator Hillary Clinton (D NY), the architect of the
1993-94 Clinton-Gore plan, categorically rejects single-payer in
any form. Interestingly, former Presidential candidate, Al Gore,
is now a firm supporter of single-payer.
Vigilantly, the healthcare-now movement recognizes
that it has a narrow but enormously fruitful window of opportunity
to pull out all of its stops to mobilize the people before the historically
spineless Democratic Party bends down to kiss the feet of the newest
heir apparent representative of the interests of the health insurance
industry, Senator Hillary Clinton (D NY). If the Democratic Party
endorses Clinton’s health insurance industry-centered health care
policy and if she wins the US Presidency, the window shuts, setting
the movement back a bit. So, we all must boldly seize this moment
now and up the ante, despite whatever windows of opportunity close
in the future.
We shall seize this moment permanently until we are
victorious by assisting an aroused population across this country
to appreciate fully its human right to health care; we shall build
self-confidence and courage. Our historic struggle for full health
care security must continue.
We shall expose, for all to see, the actual harmful
roles of the health insurance and the pharmaceutical industries.
We shall also expose the complicit roles of the elected officials
who represent the corporate interests above those of people seeking
adequate health insurance coverage and access to adequate health
care. Finally, we shall help to organize and mobilize the people
politically to de-throne these scoundrels permanently from their
capacity to deny a fundamental human right recognized by all the
nations in the industrialized world.
Nothing is more powerful than to have more and more
informed people share, on a non-ending basis, their real life stories
of health care insecurity and injury, to each other across the country
and to elected officials. Healthcare-Now is convinced that truth
is power. We shall no longer be misinformed, misdirected, and mislead.
Once we withdraw our consent to the tyranny of health care apartheid,
its house of cards will fall. Power has always been in the hands
of the people; it is just that too many of us have forgotten that
unassailable fact.
Healthcare-Now is launching 1000 Truth Hearings across
the United States that are helping folks to remember history and
take charge of their destiny. On December 19, 2006, at the Harlem
State Office building in New York City, over 100 people gathered
to tell their truth and build the movement to exercise the political
muscle to win a single-payer health care system in this country.
The event was one of the movements’ 1000+ Truth Hearings emerging
all over the United States.
Will Gand, an African-American man, could not personally
attend the Harlem Community Truth Hearing because he was being dialyzed.
However, he submitted the following testimony that was typical of
the dozens of folks from all walks of life who shared their life
experiences that night:
In the spring of 2000, I was employed by the Department
of Social Services and HIP was my health carrier. I was already
being treated for arthritis but started to feel very weak and
just not well at all. I went to my HIP center several times during
May and June. They took blood every time I came to the center;
my ankles were always swollen. Swollen ankles are a classic symptom
that there may be a problem with my kidneys. What HIP told me
was that I should stop taking Vioxx for arthritis and come back
in ten days.
I did this three times and every time I came back
I felt worse. I sought help at emergency rooms but HIP would not
authorize them to treat me. Finally, I became so weak that I could
hardly get out of bed. A friend of mine visited me and took me
to his doctor that he had been seeing for 15 years. His doctor
examined me and sent me to an area hospital where he was a consultant.
They examined me and determined that my kidneys had failed.
They dialyzed me and my recovery process began;
but it was a long and strenuous process. The doctors told me that
if I had waited more than a couple of more days, I would not have
made it. My initial hospital stay was five weeks and during that
time I lost 50 pounds. I had no health insurance except HIP and
they stopped paying for my treatment after 8 days. The doctors
determined that I needed to be hospitalized for [those] 5 weeks
in order to save my life in spite of the fact that I had no medical
insurance.
Will Gand speaks for all of us. We are millions all
over this country and we are responding loudly, “Healthcare not
Warfare, Pass HR 676” The Truth Hearings are a key organizing and
mobilizing vehicle of this human rights grassroots work. We are
also sending delegations of ordinary people to meet in the district
offices of federal, state, and municipal elected officials so that
they can see, first hand, the faces and the pain of the health care
crisis in this country. We shall be blasting elected officials on
a regular basis with faxes and emails. They may run but we will
not permit them to hide.
We intend to construct a compelling political strategy
that will force the US Congress to hold an official congressional
hearing on comprehensive health care reform that examines all options,
during the week of April 4, the anniversary of the assassination
of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
We are also borrowing from the best of the direct
action tactics and strategies of the movement that dismantled Jim
Crow in the United States. Our experiences give renewed and very
specific meaning to Fannie Lou Hamer’s famous plaintiff cry, “I
am sick and tired of being sick and tired.” We give Ms. Hamer’s
plea more power today as we heed the brilliant organizing strategies
of Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, and so many unsung heroes and sheroes
of movements past. Frankly, this means the shelving of the “politics
of respectability” as Ella Baker counseled the civil rights activists
throughout the United States.
If you desire to hold a Community Health Truth Hearing,
contact us. We will offer you technical assistance, contacts, and
speakers at your request and we will assist you in translating your
emerging awareness into effective grassroots political action according
to your autonomous efforts.
Focus on fighting for the cause based on truth and
courage; the brilliant diversity of organizational forms will emerge
in your community along with the indomitable human spirit that runs
through them. This is how Jim Crow was defeated. We always kept
our eyes on the prize then.
Ms. Desiree Mingo, a diabetic, tells her truth of
economic loss and severe health care insecurity caused by the failed
health care system in the United States at the Harlem Community
Health Truth Hearing on December 19, 2006.
Today, more than two-thirds of the general public
see the health care crisis more clearly than ever before in the
history of this country. We are not alone; and we are growing every
day. Indeed, we have the moral authority and the awesome power to
the same extent as our foremothers and forefathers had who braved
dogs, fire hoses, vigilantes, and union busters.
Together we will win. Fear not. Our cause is one whose
time has come. We will not be stopped.
Now, we want to hear from you.
Call Healthcare-Now at 212- 475-8350 or 800-453-1305
for more information. We will assist you in organizing your community
for passage of HR 676. Together we have the power to prevail. Please
go to Healthcare-Now.org
for a full description and analysis of HR 676 and suggestions on
how you can help us to make HR 676 the law of the land.
Mr. Sankofa is a human rights public policy specialist
and community organizer. He is a national organizer for Healthcare-Now.
He is also the strategic planning consultant for the National Coalition
of Blacks for Reparations in America, Legal Defense, Research, and
Education Fund. As a former trial attorney, specializing in complex
institutional reform litigation, Mr. Sankofa, directed the AIDS
Project of the National Prison Project of the ACLU Foundation. He
is a graduate of Bowdoin College in Brunswick Maine and the Antioch
School of Law. Raised in Washington, DC, Mr. Sankofa now lives in
Brooklyn, New York. Click
here to contact Ajamu K. Sankofa, Esq. and Healthcare-NOW.
Click
here to read any of the articles in this special BC
series on Single-Payer Healthcare.
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