Single Payer

As the bill from Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus makes its debut without even as much as a public option, a new study finds that 45,000 Americans die every year due to a lack of health insurance--one person every 12 minutes.  Now is time to take action for single-payer, says Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program. 

In an interview with Democracy Now!, Woolhandler challenges the idea that Baucus's bill represents any kind of reform.  "This bill is a dream for the insurance industry....Our Congress and Senate needs to confront our private health insurance industry...We need to get rid of the insurance industry, take that administrative savings and use it in a medicare for all plan that would cover all necessary services."  And what about the co-ops, that are supposed to serve as a substitute for the already-anemic public option?  Wollhandler says the notion that the co-ops can compete with the health insurance industry is like "sending a pee-wee football league in with the NFL." 

Woolhandler calls supporters of single-payer to take action.  "This is still a democracy, and we need to be holding our representatives' feet to the fire."

Here are some resources to learn more about legislation that introduces single-payer health care, including calls to action to support single-payer:

• From PNHP, more information about Rep. Weiner's single-payer amendment to HR 3200, and ways to contact your representatives to support this amendment.  Rep. Weiner's amendment would replace the language of the House bill with the language of Conyers's HR 676.
  


• From PNHP's blog, more info about the Senate's single-payer bill by Sen. Bernie  Sanders.
  

• From Democracy Now!, an interview with Rep. Kucinich about Rep. Kucinich's amendment that would allow states to implement their own single-payer systems.