Tag: H.R. 676

In early June, a universal healthcare bill in the California Legislature  (SB 562), backed by enormous popular support, was heading to its first committee vote. It passed the committee and the full California Senate, but only because it didn’t include any description of funding. By June 30, the bill had been shelved in the Assembly for the year. It will be taken up again early next year. The major concern by both Democrats and Republicans? How will we pay for it?

In other countries, people enjoy better healthcare at lower cost. Everyone has access to healthcare and average life expectancy is greater. In Canada, with their version of Medicare for All, no one goes bankrupt because of healthcare expenses. In the U.S., healthcare bankrupts more than a million every year. In a recent Kaiser poll, 81 percent of Democrats and 58 percent of all voters supported an Improved and Expanded Medicare for All. What is being done to move us in that direction?

Less than a month after 13 single payer advocates were arrested protesting the exclusion of single payer, it is at the table in both Houses, making progress while the multi-payer pro-insurance reform is faltering.

The California Universal Health Care Organizing Project wants President Obama to support congressional legislation authored by Rep. John Conyers that will stop the private health care insurance industry from denying claims, neglecting the sick and wasting 31 cents of every health care dollar.

A group of over 15,000 U.S. physicians has called on President-elect Barack Obama and the new Congress to "do the right thing" and enact a single-payer national health insurance plan, "an improved Medicare for all."