Without thinking about it, Healthcare-NOW created a petition to Congress on our website with an extra space next to the form where people signed their names.  It was an innocuous mistake, but it turned out to be a great bonus, because it meant that we took much more than a list of NAMES to Congress last week.

We put the petition to Congress on the website of Healthcare-NOW.  We asked people to sign it, and thousands did so.  But in addition to signing it, many people added, alongside their names, their heartfelt pleas for help. In many cases, they actually told of their poignant and enraging healthcare experiences – stories of needless death and loss and poverty, induced by healthcare crises, including devastating fear and suffering in this U.S. healthcare system.

For example: 

These are just a few of the thousands of pleas and petitions on our website begging Congress to take action.  Congressman John Conyers of Michigan has now taken copies of that book of petitions that we printed out, and is sending them with a “Dear Colleague” letter to every member of Congress.

The Institute of Medicine, the prestigious and respected non-partisan research institute, says that 18,000 people die each year simply for lack of health coverage. We believe that figure to be way low.  It may be in the way one counts the deaths and their causes.  However, the number could come to as many as 18,000 per year, in just one State alone, because there are so many people who are forced to put off a doctor’s visit until it is too late.

One idea for challenging the heartless response to the suffering of those who are sick and dying is for people reading this column is to organize Healthcare Memorial Services in your churches and synagogues and mosques, remembering these unnecessary deaths.  Many faith communities could join together to carry the 18,000 caskets or even the 144,000 caskets memorializing the people who officially will have died for lack of coverage by the time the Bush administration is ended. Carry them through the streets or carry signs with torches or candles.  You or your pastor or other clergy could create a special liturgy about the issue of denial of healthcare.

Another issue we need to talk about in our communities is “the privatized rape of Medicare.” We should talk about the Medicare Advantage plans that have now stolen 19% of the participants from traditional Medicare.  The way it works is that some people are enticed to sign up for these so-called advantage privatized plans that may provide an additional service such as optical or dental. However, if you have diabetes or high cholesterol or something that might cost these profiteers some real money, you need not apply. In addition to taking the Medicare money that is a legacy for all Americans, these private companies with high CEO salaries and marketing bills also require a 12% additional subsidy from the government, provided by the Bush administration. To put the icing on the cake, if you are dissatisfied with the policy, you are not allowed to drop it and change back to traditional Medicare, for a whole year. 

As we move forward in the debate about the possibility of a single payer, Medicare for All healthcare plan in the United States, a plan that would provide equal quality healthcare to all, we need to be wise to these profiteers and their intentional goal of the destruction of Medicare.

What about the Federal Employees program that supplies an insurance program for the hundreds of thousands of federal employees?  The truth is, we subsidize that program to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars and, not surprisingly, given the corruption in the current government, those dollars are also going to private insurance companies such as United Health and Aetna, Anchor and Blue Cross. We, the tax-payers, pay for Bush’s healthcare coverage and all of the other federal employees, but the private companies get a bounty of tax-payer dollars for TV advertising and high CEO salaries. 

Study the United Health Care Insurance company as just one example: The CEO, in 2005, received 122.7 million, plus stock options, bringing his compensation to almost $1 billion. His salary alone would have covered 34,000 people who are uninsured.  Last week, United Health Care and their cohorts at AARP, announced a new partnership to get more tax-payer dollars into their coffers.

John Conyers’ healthcare bill, H.R. 676 is the best plan in the current healthcare debate, and would cover everybody for an amazingly good healthcare system.  However, every other day or so, we hear about yet another plan that is supposed to heal the healthcare system.

One of the most recent is the Kennedy Dingell bill that came out last Thursday, calling for Medicare for All – unfortunately Medicare for All with exceptions – You can buy into Medicare, yes. Or you can buy into the federal health program, or depend on ever more expensive employer plans if any of them remain, or you can even buy private insurance for yourself if you can afford it or get a government subsidy to pay for it.  All of these options are a part of the Kennedy/Dingell bill.  This bill would cost an additional $600 Billion in federal funding – assumedly to subsidize everyone who can’t afford private insurance, so they will have enough money to purchase it from insurance companies, who will continue to pocket enormous profits.

Most of the current bills require everybody to purchase private insurance. They are “hybrid” bills – because they tip a hat to some public funding of healthcare, but basically have only one choice: either 1.) single payer (Conyers’ bill that removes profits from the system) or 2.) mandated individual or employer policies with lots of additional subsidies, to provide partial coverage or stripped-down healthcare plans, for those who cannot afford the gold-plated plans.

Senator Obama’s failure to embrace single payer was a great disappointment.  He said last weekend that the insurance companies “must be at the table.”  However, he is only one of the plethora of presidential candidates, virtually all of whose plans fall short of a real, publicly funded, privately delivered, single payer system.  It is a long 18 months from here to the presidential election.  We have a long difficult period to go before the election, and now is the time to do some work.

The people of this country must rise up as the people in Taiwan did a few years ago and say we do not want expensive privatized and poorly delivered healthcare.  We want a single payer national healthcare system for all, a system that will provide equality and justice for all (to paraphrase a few words from the pledge of allegiance to the flag.)  The people themselves demanded and  got a single payer system in Taiwan and it is working quite well.  But the leaders didn’t bring it to the country. It was the people’s demands that won this victory.

We are taking a hard line against allowing any profiteers to remain inside the healthcare industry. We believe that calling for a non-profit system is the only position that will provide for excellent healthcare for every single man woman and child in the United States with the money we are now spending. No additional money will need to be raised. We will use the money we now spend, for healthcare, instead of giving it to insurance companies.

Dr. Don McCann, former president of the Physicians for National Health Program says this about our task.  “Here are the roles of those of us involved:  John Dingell and Ted Kennedy and all of the other politicians are politicians.  Their role is to negotiate the political process, carefully traversing minefields, to make reform a reality. 

The role of those of us in the policy community is quite different.  We advocate for the most effective policies that will bring about high quality, comprehensive healthcare services to everyone. Policy and politics frequently clash.  The political process involves compromise so that the perfect doesn’t become the enemy of the good. The policy community advocates for the perfect, unrelentingly so, so that the good does not become the enemy of the perfect.  The policy community informs, but does not compromise."

Here’s what we are talking about.  It is: H.R. 676, an excellent bill.  It provides for a national system like Medicare for All without the profiteers taking any money away from it.  Corruption and ill-gotten gains will not be a thing of the past, of course.  We will have to guard a non-profit system against the undermining of those who have made such enormous profits and want to continue to do so. Such a system must have strong protections – protection for the consumers – protections that we have been forbidden, under the Bush administration programs such as Medicare Part D, that will not allow for negotiating the prices of drugs. 

H.R. 676, John Conyers’ excellent bill provides for….

When you think about it, It is almost incomprehensible to believe, but the insurance companies are allowed to turn people down for healthcare under the rubric of pre-existing conditions. They only want healthy people who will give them money, but not require any care. 

They promote the idea of our covering all of the children for example, the cheapest group of insured people, (and the most profitable) because they are generally the healthiest. They love it as long as the insurance companies get the money. In some states, however, the insurance companies don’t get the money.  For example, New York State does not provide the money to insurance companies, but just covers everybody without insurance company profits taking away about 1/3^rd of the money.  This allows New York to cover a lot more children – up to 400% of poverty. 

In any event, we all agree that all children must be covered.  But we must take it farther. What about the rest of their families?  How can a child be truly healthy if his or her parents are unable to be healthy – cannot work, can’t get their prescription drugs, can’t get mental healthcare or treatment for high cholesterol or so many other healthcare needs. Everybody in; nobody out.  Healthcare for Everybody! 

To sign the petition and make your comments online, go to www.healthcare-now.org/petition.php.  If you tell your story, you’ll be in the next people’s petition to Congress. If you would like a copy of the petition book we took to Congress last week, please give us a call or send an email.  For more information, call Healthcare-NOW, 1-800-453-1305.

Marilyn Clement is the National Coordinator of Healthcare-NOW. Click here to contact Ms. Clement and Healthcare-NOW.

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