Why Don’t MoveOn and Democracy for America Support Single-Payer Healthcare?
I’ve received an email from MoveOn asking me to join a phone briefing with Howard Dean to discuss the private healthcare corporation/public option health reform plan currently touted as the solution to our healthcare crisis. There are no details on the public option besides it would be “like Medicare.” I have to wonder why the public option is not just plain old Medicare, and why both Democracy for America and MoveOn, who claim to be progressive, are not supporting single-payer healthcare, specifically the “Medicare for All” bill, HR 676. (The bill improves and expands Medicare to everyone and eliminates private healthcare corporations, saving Americans 400 billion dollars a year.)
So, I decided to ask them why they don’t support single-payer healthcare when the majority of people do.
I wrote to MoveOn here: http://pol.moveon.org/feedback/fb/form.html?tp=suggest and to DFA here: http://www.democracyforamerica.com/contact_messages/new
I imagine I’ll get a response that says because it is the politically expedient thing to do. Well, women didn’t say that in the suffrage movement, nor did African Americans in the Civil rights movement. Healthcare is a human right, not to be bought and sold by greedy healthcare corporations who created this crisis in the first place, and they were helped by powerful members of Congress, who have and do benefit greatly from their generous campaign contributions. These are the same members of Congress who have taken single-payer “off the table,” or say, “Americans don’t want it.”
I urge you to ask MoveOn and Democracy for America the same question: Why do you not support single-payer healthcare when the majority of Americans do? While promoting the unknown public option, they are unintentionally but effectively promoting the sale of a basic human right and ensuring the further enrichment of incredibly wealthy healthcare corporation CEOs with our hard earned dollars.
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I am not that familiar with Democracy for America. However MoveOn did organize meetings in San Antonio last November that were supposed to be follow up in January. To my surprise our group leader never returned e-mails, never shared the list of those in attendance and just disappeared. I decided then it was time to sever my ties with MoveOn.
Why did this occur? It is anyone's guess, but my personal feeling is that they were not too happy with the positions we took at our meeting. We called for the President to end the war in Iraq, passage of the Employee Free Choice Act and passage of single payer healthcare.
It's too bad that some so-called progressives conduct themselves no different than the bad guys. No wonder folks in our country are so pessimistic!
After the last PDA Health Care conference call I did write to Moveon, expressing my great disappointment with their backing off single payer. No response at all.
MoveOn and Democray for America (DFA) are front groups for the Dem. Party aimed to divert us away from the from single-payer “real” healthcare…doing so by organizing an internet grassroots healthcare campaign framing it as a fight against the corporate-anti-healthcare Republicans. The aim is to manipulate us into supporting the Dems. Public Option healthcare choice. However, Bill Moyers PBS program moderated a discussion comparing the Public Option with Single Payer and the latter proved superior in everyway.
Why doesn't MoveOn support Single Payer? Interesting question. Why don't they? The answer seems simple, though:
Because there's a gigantic health insurance cabal ranged against it. Because a politician's job is to convince the voters that they want what they don't really want. Because corporations pay politicians to do just that. Money. Money. And more money.
What I'd really like to know is why don't any of the progressive organizations out there support voting reform? I get emails from a lot of progressive organizations, including this one, asking me to sign one progressive petition after another, which I'm happy to do. But I can't remember ever getting an email asking me to sign a petition for voting reform, like IRV voting for example.
It seems to me that the only way we're ever going to get any real change in American politics is if we can get some serious voting reform so we can elect a third party to keep both the dems and repubs honest. Right now the dems don't have to be very progressive to garner the votes of progressives. All they have to be is a little more progressive than the repubs, and that's not saying much.
I'm new to this board, though, so maybe I was sent just such a petition, and missed it. Does anyone know if there's a real movement anywhere (here, hopefully?) to push for serious voting reform?
Thank you.
I agree with you 1000 %. But with the health care industrial complex spending $1.4 Million a day to buy each of the 535 members of Congress votes and Obama's signature, it is no surprise.
I will keep fighting until we see HR 676 and SB 703 pass and are fully funded. As Dr. Martin Luther King once said “..the arc of history is on our side”. Gandi also said that first they ignore you, then the say you are crazy, arrest you (the Baucus 13) and then you win. It is going to take a lot of civil disobedience, teachins, lobbying and I hope massive demonstrations and sit ins in the Capital and the home offices, K Street lobbyists and health care industrial offices before we see it pass. Don't give up the fight. Petitioning, letter writing, faxing, e-mail and phoning are not enough. You have to put your body on the line like the Baucus 13 have done to really move the tipping point. Running against and replacing the DINO's like Baucus is also needed.
Additionally, the public does not distinguish between public option & single payer. When public option fails, as it surely will, it will poison single payer in the minds of the public as well. It is essential that we differentiate the 2 systems & not support public option.
I asked the Democratic Party to issue the following challenge to legislators opposed to—or in favor of—Single Payer Health Insurance: Challenge Republicans (and also Dems) opposed to Single Payer, or at least a strong Public Option, to back up their claims by renouncing their own “government-run, socialist” health insurance, giving examples of how expensive it is to themselves and/or taxpayers, how little choice they have of providers, how much bureaucrats interfere with or overrule their doctors, and how long they have to wait for treatment. Let them explain why they'd rather switch to the “free market” as they want us to, where they can enjoy the wide choice of many complicated plans with fine print, or if they find it too confusing, have a government-run exchange help them in 4 years. Further, those in Congress who refuse to give up their “government-run” health insurance, should give their reasons why they want the same for the rest of the country—or not. If we challenge EVERYONE in Congress publicly, with full media attention, it might expose their game in a way no mere argument can.
Why do any of you hold out your respect for DFA or MoveOn. They have shown repeatedly they are not interested in supporting progressives issues. Once people admit that hope for change lies in their own actions, they can discard their reliance on self serving organizations like MoveOn to advance the progressive agenda. The Clinton strategy of the Democratic Leadership Council had failed and we need to shout this out to Obama. It is time the people took back the helm and worked for the justice for all. It is okay to call the corporations greedy. It is okay to declare that reform is needed in all areas of this country: education, housing, healthcare, war and peace, employment, and the arts. We can all contribute to this effort if we believe that we can make a difference both as individuals and joined together. If not now, then when. Look around you. Who are you expecting to do this for you. I am lived too long as an angry idealist and have been called a cynic. It did not get me very far. I have decided that hope and making action is far more constructive. Other people's efforts inspire me, I hope that my words encourage someone who is reading this. Thank you.
Health care reform without a federal run insurance company is a MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, since the for profit insurance companies will sabotage and water down any attempt of reform. Their monopoly on health care insurance must be broken. The best way would be to open up Medicare for all the uninsured 47 million Americans and anybody else who wants to join it. Since Medicare is working well and trusted by everybody it would attract people with its lower premiums that it could maintain with an overhead of about 3% as compared with the 20 – 30% of the for profit companies that have to satisfy their shareholders, excessive CEO bonuses, advertisements. For every 5 people who switch over to Medicare there would be a saving of 100% in premiums (20%x5), that for 250 million people would comfortably cover the the 47 million now uninsured. Gradually the people now insured by the for profit companies would realize the savings they would have in joining the ” Medicare for All” and
their exodus would make the greedy and immoral present companies whiter away.
That's very true! Single payer healthcare is what most americans want but it's being pushed aside by the arguments of medicare and no medicare in the media.