Keep your doc, ditch Wall Street

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http://www.concordmonitor.com/article/20100111/OPINION/1110334

"Republican strategist Bob Luntz wrote it's not what you say but what people hear. He was correct. I keep hearing the phrase, "government-run health care," which is purposely vague and undefined. However, it frightens people who think that they will be forced to leave their current doctor and report to a dull gray building where they will receive poor treatment from a government doctor who graduated at the bottom of the class.

There is no bill proposing this. There is, however, a bill that addresses America's health care issues at a price we can afford, individually and as a nation. It provides universal full health care coverage for all medically necessary treatment, mental health, vision, prescription drugs, long-term care, dental, substance abuse and other services, and it pays your doctor fairly. A poll by the New Hampshire Medical Society found that over 80 percent of primary care physicians favor such a bill. However, Congress is not even actively considering the bill, the United States National Health Care Act, H.R. 676, although it is significantly cheaper and provides far greater benefits than what is being proposed. Proposed instead is a bill favorable not to you but to the Wall Street-owned corporations who pay our legislators to continue using these corporations to process the payments for health care.

Contact your legislators, have them fairly evaluate H.R. 676, which covers everyone, is affordable, comprehensive and sustainable. Keep your doctor, ditch Wall Street. Speak up or suffer for generations to come."

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1. The future of healthcare reform came to Sacramento yesterday

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/1/12/824274/-The-future-of-healthcare-reform-came-to-Sacramento-yesterday

The supporters of SB 810, the most vetted and mature Single Payer legislation in America, marched and rallied at the Capitol in Sacramento yesterday.

The action in the front lines of the movement that WILL succeed in doing what DC politics could not do, pass legislation for the ONLY public option healthcare that pays for itself, were glorious.

Here is a YouTube with some highlights;

...These were University of California Irvine(UCI)students. Students from every medical school in California came in buses the night before. I was impressed by their enthusiastic support of SB 810 and their ability to explain the advantages of Single Payer and this pivotal legislation which will be re-introduced at the Senate floor next month.

We then marched about a mile toward the Capitol building..."

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2. Thanks for the recs - Minnesota Gubernatorial Candidate john Marty on SP

http://firedoglake.com/2010/01/16/blue-american-welcomes-single-payer-mn-gubernatorial-candidate-john-marty/

"...State Senator John Marty is currently running for governor of Minnesota in 2010, and he is the author of the Minnesota Health Plan, a single-payer system he’s been fighting for:

In the last three years, Marty has pushed a bill that would set up the Minnesota Health Plan, essentially a single-payer plan that would shift the premiums we and/or our employers now pay for health insurance to a public entity that would cover necessary health services from cradle to grave.

Hasn’t he heard that a single-payer plan isn’t politically realistic, as they’re saying in Washington? Does he ever feel lonely being in the minority? “Yeah,” the seven-term senator chuckles during our Q&A. “I’ve felt in the minority about a lot of things.”

As Senator Marty has written over at The Seminal, he now has 70 co-authors on the bill – over a third of the legislature. He wrote about it in an op-ed entitled The Courage of Our Convictions..."