Questions and comments from the Healthcare for All IOT pages get emailed to me. I respond to all of them. An email I got last week had the subject, “single payer supporter needs support in the face of so much apathy.” It was the shortest but most profound question I’ve received: “How can we get single payer?”

Here’s my answer.

Apathy grows where there’s no activity. We have to keep our voices raised and correct every lie we hear. He have to remind everyone—or tell them for the first time—that the ONLY healthcare program that will cover everybody, pay doctors fairly, cost less than we’re paying now for leaving 50,000,000 out, and boost the economy is single payer.

You need to become so conversant in the facts and figures about single payer and HR 676, that they trip off your tongue effortlessly at the mere mention of a “public option” or some kind of “healthcare exchange.”

You need to tell people that the REAL choice in healthcare doesn’t come from where you buy your insurance; it comes from being able to go to any doctor anywhere in the country, work in any job or any state and still have healthcare coverage, and have your health decisions made between you, your doctor, and no one else. And ONLY single payer gives this to you.

You need to shout to the rooftops that single payer is NOT socialism. Canada’s healthcare system is paid for by the government but provided privately, and that’s the plan for HR 676. The only reason that ANY of the myths about Canadian healthcare have any validity (very few of them do, and those are utterly exaggerated by the Conservatives) is that Canada’s system is underfunded. Any Canadian doctor will tell you that. But you also need to let everyone know that no matter what small problems there are with Canada’s Medicare (what they call it), there would be a revolution in Canada if anyone tried to take it from them.

Speaking of Medicare, you need to be loud, clear, and firm about the bad rap Medicare in our country is getting. If Medicare is running out of money (and there’s a lot of disagreement about that), it’s because the Republicans handed it over to the insurance and pharmaceutical companies with the 2003 Medicare “Improvement” Act. Medicare Part B—Medicare Advantage—puts the private insurers in between Medicare beneficiaries and Medicare itself. And those insurers take a lot off the top for the very little they provide.
And Medicare Part D—the drug plan—has been a boon only to the pharmaceutical industry. All you need do to deflate an argument that the government can’t run a Medical program is to bring up the 2003 Act—and tell them that the Act was written by the private insurance and pharmaceutical industries, not the Congress. It was a Congress with its pockets full of money that passed it, and those of us on Medicare have suffered for it ever since.

Yet administrative costs for Medicare run from 3% to 6% (the high figure being what the critics say), while administrative costs right off the top of private insurance is 30%. Well, it’s not all administrative: Some of that goes to marketing, executive salaries and bonuses, and stock dividends. But that’s 30% of every dollar each of us shells out for premiums and copayments.

You can find all of the data I’ve quoted you and lots more by clicking on Resources on the Healthcare for All IOT pages. You can see the legislation and read analyses of it by clicking the Legislation button. And you can keep up with actions for and against single payer, and what people are saying about single payer and healthcare reform, by checking in frequently with Recent News, which is updated almost daily. And for what you can do on a national level, take every action shown on the Actions You Can Take page.

And something else you can do is to crash every MoveOn, DFA, ODA, and HCAN meeting and ask them why they’re so worried about the future of private insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry, for-profit hospitals, and doctors that own and refer patients to their own labs and test centers, when they should be concerned about the future of Americans, who are one illness away from bankruptcy and losing their homes. Ask them why don’t they support the REAL healthcare reform that benefits people, not corporations and stockholders—single payer.

One last thing you can do is to become a PDA sustainer through Change Makes Change or give a one-time donation. PDA is the most grassroots organization you’ll ever find. There are no corporate sponsors and no superstars lending their names and giving their money to PDA. Instead, a small percentage of the membership gives what they can when they can to keep this lean operation going. Every penny PDA receives goes back into Progressive activism, with the very few paid staff getting what I figure must be less than minimum wage, factoring the hours they put in. And you can join the dedicated volunteers who give their time and talents to keeping PDA up and running. For instance, I’m a volunteer with PDA. I give about 40 hours a week to the Healthcare for All IOT, clerical and administrative tasks, and whatever else I’m asked to do. And that’s in addition to work for my own congressional district and state coordination.

I hope I’ve given you enough of an answer so that you can go out help us all get single payer.

In solidarity,

Roberta McNair
PDA Healthcare for All IOT Coordinator