The Black Commentator - Single-Payer Healthcare

After the election, November 2006

The voters have spoken. They want healthcare now. They expect Congress to move quickly to fix the healthcare system in the United States. And they want something like a single-payer system, a plan where everybody gets the healthcare they need and where all of us pay into it on a sliding scale based on our income. Single payer is the way to pay for healthcare without providing insurance companies with hundreds of billions of our money providing them with hundreds of billions of dollars in profits. We just need healthcare. We don’t need health insurance companies. Health insurance companies don’t provide any healthcare.

In addition to profiting shamelessly from our illnesses, the health insurance industry is an irresponsible corporate citizen in other respects. A substantial part of their portfolio is invested in the tobacco industry and much of their original wealth was generated on writing health insurance policies on African people who were enslaved in the United States. In response, a national boycott of Aetna has been called because of its acknowledged role in chattel slavery. For more information on this national boycott, google the Restitution Study Group. Healthcare-Now is exposing the myths regarding the actual role of the health insurance industry presently and historically within the United States. We are simply revealing the facts and telling the truth.

Accordingly, during the coming two years, Healthcare-NOW will help to organize 1,000 TRUTH HEARINGS in Congressional Districts nationwide to give the voters a chance to tell their stories and to give Congress an opportunity to hear their constituents and respond to their desperation for healthcare. This will give everybody an opportunity to see whether our votes really count -- before the 2008 elections.

We expect there will be excuses from Congress and from Beltway analysts about how hard it is to put together a national healthcare system that would satisfy the voters and provide a 21st Century healthcare system in our country; but we know that an excellent plan has already been introduced into Congress, H.R. 676, written by Congressman John Conyers. The insurance companies are trying every which way to stop this movement so they are devising new ways to “cover the uninsured” while lining their own pockets with government money. But Congress has the power to make the change to single payer if they are appropriately challenged by their base.

It is not harder to create a national healthcare system than it is to end the war and the occupation of Iraq.

In fact, 79 thoughtful and committed Members of Congress endorsed the Conyers' bill in 2006. Now we must ask them to do it again. All Congressional bills are reintroduced at the beginning of a new session. We also have to reach out to another 100 or more members of Congress to help them understand the issue and get them to endorse. Some additional Congress members are coming forward to sign on since the election mandate, but it won’t happen massively unless a groundswell of citizens and residents in every Congressional District visits their Members and helps them understand what they need to do.

We have to remember (and remind our Members that we remember) that industry lobbyists for the corporate healthcare industry outnumber members of Congress. They will be all over Washington like white on rice, trying to save their mammoth profits and trying to stymie any forward movement toward the kind of single payer healthcare system, H.R. 676, that would cut their profits and instead provide those exact same billions to providing comprehensive healthcare for the uninsured and underinsured.

Some will say, “What if the President vetoes the bill?” So what? If the President vetoes it, his party will have to pay the consequences. If he signs it, the family values people (all of us); the Independents and Democrats and the Republicans who desperately need healthcare will be helped.

Others say, “This Congress is not yet good enough. We need to wait until we have more progressives in Congress and a progressive president.” We say, “Don’t hold your breath! This may be the best Congress we will have in the next 20 years. We cannot wait any longer.”

So there is no excuse. The time for Congress to act decisively for healthcare for all of our people is now.

HERE’s what you can do. Plan a hearing – or several hearings in your immediate vicinity. The first hearings can be small – just people telling their stories about the abuses of the current healthcare system, checking on the status of their Congress member on the issue, and moving quickly to insist that their Congress members commit to H.R. 676, endorse it and work for it.

The next Truth Hearings in your community and around the country should grow in size until Congress can no longer deny us quality affordable national healthcare coverage.

Since the lobbyists for the insurance and drug corporations will try to stop any progress, we should work with people toward passage of campaign finance reform too while we are at it. Let’s get corporate America out of control of our electoral system and our healthcare system at the same time.

Plan the actions you will take after your hearing including more hearings, make visits to your Congress person’s district office until he or she endorses H.R. 676.

Take actions in your community, in your neighborhood. Organize educational activities, invite a speaker. Get endorsements and sign-ons by organizations, cities, governors, labor and faith groups, chronic disease groups, and individuals; share information through the Internet, and every other creative means you can devise. A film festival in your community is a really good way to build your activist committee. (We suggest Denzel Washington’s “John Q” and other films listed on our website.) www.healthcare-now.org, or make your own film about the healthcare crisis. Put it on “You Tube” or show it in your community.

We have to disrupt the negative mantra that says, “We just can’t do this. It is too hard.” It is not harder than ending the Iraq war or providing a decent minimum wage or providing the means for our kids to go to college. It is a matter of political will. We can do this.

As Congressman John Conyers said last week in the national strategy meeting of Healthcare-NOW, “This is the Time. We’ve finally arrived. We’ve done it before and we can do it again.” He speaks from the wisdom of many winning victories in the Congress for the human needs of our country. We’ve lost many battles, and we’ve won a few. Now is the time to win – and to keep on winning. We don’t want to come up to 2008 having fallen short of our promises to the people who are DYING for healthcare.

If you are up for organizing a hearing in your neighborhood or other activities, be in touch with Healthcare-NOW. We are waiting to hear from YOU. 1-800-453-1305, www.healthcare-now.org.; email [email protected] If you’d like to be on our national mailing list, let us know. Marilyn Clement, National Coordinator, Healthcare-NOW. Click here to contact Ms. Clement and Healthcarde-NOW.

Click here to read any of the articles in this special BC series on Single-Payer Healthcare.