Fight the Media Blackout on Guaranteed Single Payer Healthcare

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) recently published a study "Media Blackout on Single-Payer Healthcare". 

We encourage everyone to please contact your local media and demand fair reporting. It's easy, just use PDA's media contact tool.  Click here
(http://capwiz.com/pdamerica/dbq/media/). 

Under "Local Media" enter your zip code. Be sure to select Tribune Media Services and WGN 720 AM Radio  (WGN broadcasting studio are located on the round floor of the Tribune building).

The following is a suggested letter to the editor:

Dear Editor,

According to a New York Times-CBS poll, 72% of Americans favor a government-run health plan comparable to Medicare - a Medicare-for-All (a Single-Payer Plan) - to replace our current system of private health insurance. 

Private insurance fragments healthcare deliver, is enormously wasteful and expensive, and delivers the poorest quality outcomes at twice the price of any other developed nation.  Further, it contributes to up to 20,000 deaths and 750,000 medical bankruptcies in the US annually--the collateral damage of a flawed system.

Unfortunately, wealthy interest groups have lobbied Congress and the President against Senator Conyers's H.R. 676 (Medicare-for-All/Single Payer bill, now sponsored by 83 Congressmen).  

Instead of the simplicity, morality, and cost effectiveness of Single Payer, the Democrats are offering a plan that incluces a big role for private insurers and a public option. 

This public option will maintain the status quo of profits for insurance companies and failure of the public option because insurance companies will continue to cherry pick the young and healthy leaving the sickest to bankrupt the public option.

Mainstream media have not given fair attention to Single Payer in the debate.  Instead you provide misinformation as well as little to no information. "A robust democracy requires informed citizens and dialogue on all sides of an issue. I invite you to interview Dr. Quentin Young, a supporter of Single Payer and advisor to Gov. Pat Quinn, and the California Nurses/National Nurses Organizing Committee. Both have offices in downtown Chicago, and can provide key factual information regarding the healthcare debate.  Our democracy deserves no less from its journalists.

Testimony of Quentin D. Young, M.D., M.A.C.P., national coordinator, Physicians for a National Health Program

Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, thank you for giving me the opportunity to comment on the proposal that has emerged from the three key House committees and to articulate the single-payer alternative. I am national coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program, an organization of 16,000 American physicians who support single-payer national health insurance. Our organization represents the views of the majority of U.S. physicians, 59 percent of whom support national health insurance.

I wish to make two points to the Members of this Committee.

Quick Quiz for Progressives:

Uniquely American:
PDA and HCAN, 
Single Payer and the Public Option

There’s at least one thing PDA and HCAN (Health Care for America Now) agree on: for-profit private insurers are at the root of our health care crisis.

Twenty thousand Americans lose their lives each year due to lack of access to care and an estimated $400 billion of our money is squandered on private insurance administrative costs annually. Our “uniquely American” tribute to big insurance brings with it lethal collateral damage.

This is, unfortunately, where the agreement ends.

PDA-Chicago is one of 20+ co-sponsors of the:

New New Deal: How we Make it Happen
An organizing workshop to build the movement for change based on human needs.  

PDA Chicago will hold its monthly meeting Monday, May 11th, 7:00 p.m.,
(6:30 socialize) at Brehon's Pub, 731 N. Wells (Superior and Wells).
On the table that evening will be:

Which Way to Universal Health Care:
'Public Option' or Single Payer?

Health care reformers within the Democratic Party say that Single Payer is "off the table". They point instead to a proposed 'public option' that promises many benefits and lower cost.

What is the public option? How does it compare to a Single Payer solution?  What are its chances of being passed, and why is it being offered?

John Gaudette of Citizen Action Illinois and Health Care for America Now joins us Monday night as an advocate of the public option, and PDA member Dr. Anne Scheetz will explain the merits of a single payer solution in a frank and open discussion of the politics and policy of health care reform.

If you're concerned about health care and health care reform, plan on attending.

April PDA-Chicago Meeting NOTES -- 4/13/09

¨   Motion passed to support call for hearings on the Illinois Reform Commission
     recommendation. Bill Bianchi will write a letter to the Commission
¨   Number of PDA-Chicago voting members, 25 (?).
¨   Point Person recruitment. Four people signed up for point person
     responsibilities in CD 2, 5, 4, and 7

¨  Following Larry Spivak’s presentation on EFCA and Q and A,. approximately 15 letters were sent to Senators Durbin and Burris