Single-Payer: What is the best way to promote state-level efforts?

[eridani]

Hi folks,

Several weeks ago, during one my car-pooling trips with fellow HCFA-WA (Health Care for All - Washington) board member Don B, I brought up an idea about where our single-payer advocacy efforts could be best spent. The question: "Are our efforts best spent on actions in our own state, or should we focus efforts on a state -- like Pennsylvania or California -- that is so close to being the first state to enact single-payer?" On reflection, I think a better question would be: "Should we redirect some of our limited resources to help other states that are so close to success?"

Imagine if all the state-level SP-advocacy organizations, and all the PNHP chapters, in all 48 states that are not PA and CA would get behind efforts in those two states. Isn't it most important at the state level to have some state enact a strong SP program, to be the "Saskatchewan" leading the way? I am convinced that, as with Saskatchewan in Canada, once one state (province) leads the way, many other states will join the bandwagon quickly.

What would it mean for "outsiders" to support PA and CA? We're not constituents, so legislators would (rightly) not give us much credence. We don't know the "lay of the land" -- demographics, legislative history, etc. -- as we do with our own states. Would local people -- those who are not fellow SP advocates -- resent efforts from "outside agitators?"

I know our own funds are meager, but what if all the other states did what they could for financial support of efforts in PA or CA? What if there were blogs we could write to with our letters of support to those in PA or CA, pointing out how much it would mean to the rest of the country if their state were the first to implement SP?

Leaders of SP efforts in PA and CA know best what they need to get SP passed in their states, and how "outsiders" can help best. I encourage the leadership of efforts in the other 48 states, and leaders of national efforts, to reach out to the PA and CA leaders to tell us how we can help.

As a complement to the above, I would like to refer you to the report from February 9 from Jerry Policoff, regarding many of the great SP successes in Pennsylvania. I know that many of you have seen this report, but it is so inspiring and informative that i want to help its distribution. Some excerpts...

In October more than a thousand people -- primarily from all over Pennsylvania, but augmented by advocates from Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Delaware, Ohio and even Washington State who journeyed to Harrisburg in a show of solidarity -- gathered in the Capitol Rotunda on a Tuesday workday morning to demonstrate for the passage of our bill.
...

The setting was the Winter Meeting of the Pennsylvania Democratic Committee, hardly a glamorous affair, but this weekend held out the possibility for an historic breakthrough in the long and often frustrating (critics and naysayers might even say futile) battle to bring universal healthcare to Pennsylvania, and after that to the entire United States of America. Tommy Douglas had pulled it off for our neighbors to the North more than a half a century earlier en route to being voted the "greatest Canadian" of all time for bringing single-payer healthcare to Canada, beginning with his home Province of Saskatchewan. The United States remains the only advanced industrialized nation in the world without universal healthcare for its citizens. Why not make it unanimous, and why not start in Pennsylvania where our very democracy was born? Those were the kinds of thoughts circulating through the heads of many of the people gathered in Lancaster last weekend.

...

HealthCare4ALLPA Executive Director Chuck Pennacchio said "Not only does Pennsylvania now have the Democratic Party on board with Single Payer healthcare for all. "We also have the promised signature of our governor and the active support of Republican and Democratic leaders in both the State Senate and State House." He added: "Pennsylvania is clearly "ground zero' for cost-saving, life-enhancing, job-creating, quality, comprehensive, publicly-funded, privately-delivered, healthcare for all. Once PA adopts the proven single payer solution, our neighboring states will move rapidly to adopt the same answer, and congress will quickly follow suit."

There can be little doubt that this was a huge step forward toward the passage of single-payer, comprehensive healthcare in Pennsylvania. The passage of HB 1660/SB 400 is now in sight.

What is in doubt is when the media, which was present in substantial numbers at the Committee meetings in Lancaster, will decide that single-payer healthcare is news. The endorsement by the Gubernatorial candidates and the unanimous vote of the State Committee was conspicuously absent from virtually all mainstream coverage of the State Committee Meetings.

Read all of this great report here:
www.opednews.com/articles/Single-Payer-Healthcare-Go-by-Jerry-Policoff-100209-270.html

Note the lament in the final paragraph of the excerpt above: in spite of all the great, truly bipartisan, ground-breaking efforts towards implementing SP in PA, the MSM coverage was abysmal. Perhaps helping to remedy that problem is one area in which we "outsiders" could make a contribution.

Finally: Most of you have been to the outstanding California OneCare website. http://californiaonecare.org/ But have you checked out the Health Care for All Pennsylvania website? If not, go there now. Don Bunger and I have both gushed over what a great job they've done with the site...they have set a great example. www.healthcare4allpa.org

Roger F

My comment (cross-posted in CA and PA forums)--

I would give a qualified "yes" to that, with the caveat that we take our lead from local organizations. One thing that outsiders can do effectively is volunteer to phonebank. Another is to use vacation or other time out to travel to volunteer to help single payer organizations in those states in whatever way they want you to. We could consider raising "scholarship" money for people who could not afford to go on their own.

[midnight]

1. K&R

[Oregone]

2. Hint: promote it for a state that isn't bankrupt

Doctors don't like IOUs as much as state employees

[customerserviceguy]

3. Good point

but the states with the healthiest economies (at the state government level) are those that are energy rich, other places end up bearing the burden of supporting their governments through severance taxes on their fossil fuels. They also tend to be states that are quite distrustful of big new government spending programs.

Places like Alaska and Wyoming come to mind, if anyone can think of a place that doesn't fit the criteria above, let me know.

[eridani]

6. Remember Britain after WW II?

Broke and blown to smithereens. That was why NHS was able to get started--they needed health care and had to have it as cheaply as possible.

[customerserviceguy]

7. Again, a good point

But there is the question of citizenship to consider. I'm pretty sure no one could just up and move to the UK to get NHS coverage, and anyone could move to any state that started single payer. You'd eventually see a steady exodus of people who were quite chronically ill moving to the first one or two states to attempt any form of universal coverage.

[eridani]

9. True, but that can be gotten around by residency requirements n/t

[eridani]

5. Why the assumption that the funds have to come from existing funds?

Putting the money people pay towards premiums into the hands of a single payer board is an excellent way of helping CA overcome its financial problems.

[inna]

4. kr

[ericinne]

8. I guess I look at it this way.

What else does California have to lose by going single payer? Everybody seems to be laughing at California's economic situation, I wonder how much right wingers would be laughing if a single payer system in California brought the state back to life.

I don't know the situation with PA, I don't honestly pay much attention. But I am also in favor of a single payer system over a public option.

Guess that makes me one of them socialists. :sarcasm: