By Betty Brown
This is being written as the big health care policy debate continues in Washington. It is also written from the perspective of a retired School Public Health Nurse actively engaged in the grassroots campaign for the California Universal Health Care Act (SB 810). This act has been consistently endorsed by No. CA CCDS as it is a single-payer or “Medicare for All” approach to health care reform.
The national debate has provided an opening for serious health care reform discussion, but it has taken intense grassroots lobbying efforts including threats of health professionals picketing to get single payer advocates acknowledged by the Obama Administration.
Advances for a single payer solution have been made by members of the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care. Key members include the California Nurses Assn./National Nurses Organizing Committee and Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP). PNHP testified in support of an improved Medicare (HR 676) and against mandating Americans to buy health insurance from the corporations who are responsible for our health care crisis.
An ongoing debate has been between those who accept the public option as inferior to single payer, but justified as a step in building a movement that can make more advanced demands in the future. In contrast, PNHP leaders see that path as failing to provide universal health care and leading toward segregation of patients with profitable ones in private plans and unprofitable ones in the public plan. They support Senator Bernie Sanders’ S703 plus Senator Dennis Kucinich’s amendment allowing state trials of single payer and Congressman Anthony Weiner’s amendment supporting HR 676.
Insurance industry campaign donations and corporate media’s pattern of shutting off discussion of the popular single payer plan have strengthened the hand of insurance lobbyists. Journalism that fails to explain how something that is popularly supported is politically impossible has led a UC Berkeley instructor in the Graduate School of Journalism to promote a combined master’s program in public health and journalism. Civil disobedience led by doctors and nurses has finally received some press coverage.
There are at least 10 states with active single payer efforts in their legislatures. California’s latest effort started in 1996 under the leadership of Health Care for All California (HCA). Single payer legislation passed twice only to be vetoed by the governor.
The movement has grown steadily via the OneCareNow campaign. Collaboration with HCA led to the formation of the State Strategy Group which has grown from 14 to 23 groups. The breadth of support varies from the nurses, teachers and retiree organizations to the Dolores Huerta Foundation, Labor Task Force for Universal Health Care—Los Angeles and the latest additions of Vision y Compromiso and the Screen Actors Guild Foundation.
Once the federal picture is resolved, a web strategy for CaliforniaOneCare.org will be launched. SB 810 will resume its legislative path with the 2010 session and as lead author, Senator Leno, has said “We will bring this issue back again and again until everyone in California has access to high quality affordable health care that puts people before insurance company profits.”
Betty Brown is a member of the Northern California CCDS Coordinating Committee and the CCDS Contra Costa Country chapter.
This article appeared in the Jan-Mar 2010 issue of the Northern California CCDS Newsletter, the final print issue.
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