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Philadelphia City Council Votes to Support Single-Payer Healthcare

I, along with folks from PASNAP and Health Care for All–Philadelphia, organized to get this resolution passed. This is our press release.

Today, groups representing doctors, nurses, healthcare advocates and labor unions are applauding the Philadelphia City Council for passing a resolution in support of national, single payer health care (HR 676) and two state single payer bills.

The resolution, sponsored by Councilman Greenlee and Councilwoman Tasco, makes Philadelphia the 28th city and 46th local government to pass a resolution in favor of HR 676, the National Health Insurance Act, sponsored by John Conyers (D-Mich.). The resolution also calls for the enactment of the two single-payer state bills, SB 300 and HB 1660. Continue reading “Philadelphia City Council Votes to Support Single-Payer Healthcare”

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Published in Dollars and Sense

An article I wrote, titled “Passing On Single-Payer,” was published in the latest issue of Dollars and Sense magazine. It’s about how the leadership of unions like AFSCME and SEIU have ignored the popularity of single-payer healthcare in order to pursue a public-private health insurance system in the US.

Both AFSCME and SEIU were instrumental in creating Health Care for America Now (HCAN), a lobbying group whose chief objective is to support Barak Obama’s healthcare plan. HCAN is critical of private health insurance companies for their desire to put profit over the lives of their customers. But they won’t go as far as removing private insurance, as single-payer would, from the system completely.

Richard Kirsch, HCAN’s National Campaign Director writes, “One point of this approach [giving people the choice of private insurance or Medicare] was not to scare people away from reform or to make it easier for the opponents of reform to panic the public,” in his blog post “Why Not Single-Payer?“ Continue reading “Published in Dollars and Sense”