Labor Campaign for Single-Payer Sends Letters to Selected Members of the House of Representatives

Upon their return from the Memorial Day recess, over 100 Democratic Members of Congress received one of two letters detailing the Campaign’s position and grassroots involvement.  All of the Representatives were from traditionally strong labor districts where our LCS-P supporters are mobilizing for HR 676.  One letter was specifically addressed to current co-sponsors of HR 676, thanking them for their continued support and encouraging them to lead the fight for Single-Payer throughout the upcoming Congressional health care reform debates this Summer. (See list of HR 676 co-sponsors.)

The other letter was addressed to 36 Representatives who have been consistently progressive allies and members of one or more of the three key House Caucuses, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Hispanic Caucus, or the Progressive Caucus but, who have not to date become co-sponsors of HR 676.  (See list of Members receiving this letter.)

Mark Dudzic, LCS-P National Coordinator, who hand delivered most of the letters to House member’s offices, described the effort as a way of reminding the Representatives of the support Single-Payer enjoys among a majority of labor organizations throughout the country and majority support it has with the general public and calling on them to be that majority’s voice in the upcoming Congressional debate.  In the letters the Representatives were asked not to join with those seeking to placate the agents of our current system’s dysfunction and that “[f]ear of a Single-Payer, Medicare for All system is gripping Wall Street and K Street, not the majority of the folks on Main Street.”

This initiative is also designed to encourage LCS-P supporters and other HR 676 supporting allies to be even more proactive in the home districts of the House members who received the letters as well as others.  The follow-up in the district is what makes this a grassroots campaign and only the ‘grassroots’ can defeat the enemies of the Single-Payer solution.  Also regularly check www.laborforsinglepayer for more news and updates.

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119 Million Americans Want a Public Health Option

-- Why Aren't Politicians Listening?

By Robert Parry, Consortium News
Posted on June 8, 2009, Printed on June 8, 2009

As the health insurance industry and its defenders in Congress lay out their case against permitting a public option in a reform bill, perhaps their most curious argument is that some 119 million Americans are ready to dump their private plans and jump to something more like Medicare – and that's why the choice can't be permitted.

In other words, the industry and its backers are acknowledging that more than one-third of the American people are so dissatisfied with their private health insurance that they trust the U.S. government to give them a fairer shake on health care. The industry says its allies in Congress must prevent that.

The peculiar argument that 119 million Americans must be denied the public option that they prefer has been made most notably by Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, which is one of two panels that has jurisdiction over the health insurance bill. (read more)

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Physicians to Congressional Progressive Caucus:

“Hold out for single payer”

The following remarks were presented to the Congressional Progressive Caucus on June 4.

Today the Congressional Progressive Caucus faces a choice. That choice is whether Members should maintain their unflinching support for single-payer, or to accede to intense political pressure to support the plan currently being developed in Congress under the direction of President Obama: a mandate for Americans to purchase an insurance plan from a massive new regulatory “exchange,” with one plan potentially being a “public option.”

The difference between these choices could not be more stark: single-payer has at its core the elimination of U.S.-style private insurance, using huge administrative savings and inherent cost control mechanisms to provide comprehensive, sustainable universal coverage.

The “public option” preserves all of the systemic defects inherent in reliance on a patchwork of private insurance companies to finance health care, a system which has been a miserable failure both in providing health coverage and controlling costs. (read more)

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