Tag Archives: nurses

This is your time…

We have asked a lot of our online community over the last 10 months. You have been there with us, and for us, every step of the way.

You helped us get the campaign started – donating 20 hours of volunteer time or $20 to the campaign through our 20/20 program.

You helped us put together coffees in every corner of the city so we could meet your friends and neighbors.

You packed the house at our campaign kick-off event in May.

You gathered so many signatures that we were the only campaign to file more than 10,000 signatures to get on the ballot.

You helped us earn the support of the Sierra Club, teachers, the CA Nurses, the SF Labor Council and over 46 other community organizations representing hundreds of thousands of our friends and neighbors.

Over 2,000 of you have donated to our cause.

We are right on the verge of winning this race and creating an independent City Hall for the next four years. We need your help now more than ever.

We have 3 days to go until the campaign fundraising deadline at midnight on Saturday. Our goal is 100 online donations by midnight on Saturday. Will you help us win this race by making a contribution before the deadline?

In the past two weeks, we released our 20-point plans for improving our public schools and continuing San Francisco’s environmental leadership. We have released more public plans with more detail than any other campaign.

We have received the endorsement of the teachers and the San Francisco Labor Council. Our volunteers just finished door knocking their 300th precinct!

You have helped build this campaign from the start.

We have seven weeks to go to change City Hall and take back our city. This is our time.

We have 3 days to go until the campaign fundraising deadline at midnight on Saturday. Our goal is 100 online donations by midnight on Saturday. Will you help us win this race by making a contribution before the deadline?

Thank you for everything that you have done.

Sincerely,

Leland Yee

PS – We are on the verge of winning this campaign and taking back City Hall from the inside power brokers. Please help put us over the top with a donation.

Nurses say: Come Join Us on September 1 on Main Street, Don’t Return to DC

Main Street, USA –  Nurses call their neighbors and  their elected officials  to come to Main Street on September 1, even as many of the elected officials continue chiding one another about returning to DC.

Main Street is where the damage has been done and is being felt most deeply; DC is where deals are cut to protect Wall Street with breath-taking regularity.  This is not a time when political posturing for some distant election cycle by those largely insulated from the harsh financial realities they helped create ought to take precedence over the real-time, real-life needs of millions.

Lives depend on it; jobs depend on it; communities depend on it.  170,000 Registered Nurse members of National Nurses United throughout America have come together to re-build Main Street. We need you on our side.

So, on Thursday, September 1, the nurses of National Nurses United will gather in more than 60 communities from Maine to Texas, and Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Michigan, Florida, Illinois, California and beyond to call on the nation’s elected officials to chose to protect and repair Main Street and stop cow-towing to Wall Street.   Find an action on a Main Street near you and join in.

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We’ll be asking something very specific of our elected officials, and that is not about where or whether or not they take an August or Labor Day vacation.  We want them to pledge their support for those who damaged Main Street so badly to pay to repair it.  Main Street is taxed enough, let’s establish a Wall Street Transaction Tax – it could raise $350 billion to rebuild our country – an amount sufficient enough to make a real difference on Main Street, where the emergency is felt most directly.

The Wall Street Transaction Tax is a sales tax on the stocks, bonds, debt and other trades carried out by the financial industry. That’s the place to start. Imagine a country in which workers have jobs at living wages to reinvest in America, where there is equal access to quality public education and guaranteed healthcare, a secure retirement, good housing, protection from hunger and a safe environment.

That’s the America our nurses not only imagine but, insist must be rebuilt.

   Join us on September 1st. Find an event near you.

   Watch and share our Sept. 1 promo video

   Sign our petition to Congress on Change.org

   On Twitter? Sign our Twitter petition here

Large banks and Wall Street firms wrecked our economy. They wiped out pensions and portfolios. Because of their greed, they threw us into a recession, cost us millions of jobs, and squandered American productivity. Yet nobody has paid the price for this wrongdoing. No one has gone to jail. In fact, they remain some of the most profitable businesses in America, doling out hundreds of millions of dollars in executive bonuses. And they pay some of the lowest tax rates in the country.

The nurses say it’s not time to call anyone back to Washington, D.C., unless and until those elected officials have properly surveyed the damage they wrought on Main Street and have made the commitment to fix that damage.  Even from their various vacation venues, few of the nation’s lawmakers are more than a short distance away from one of the nurses’ September 1 Main Street events.

Find an event near you, ask your elected officials to attend and insist that they pledge to be a part of healing Main Street, and then stay tuned as the nurses keep up the kind of pressure needed to hold those who pledge to keep their promises and those who do not to stand to account.  It’s time for a little reality check – and that won’t happen on Pennsylvania Avenue or on Capital Hill.   It will happen back home on our Main Streets of America.

Nurses Take On Wall Street

More than a thousand RNs and other activists marched on Wall Street Wednesday, chanting “Wall Street got bailed out! We got sold out!”

They stood on the steps of Federal Hall across from the New York Stock Exchange and held signs – “Take it Back! Tax Wall Street” and “Heal America! Tax Wall Street” – so crowds of curious passersby got the message.  

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It’s time to make Wall Street high rollers who created our economic crisis pay its fair share.

Hundreds of nurses from across the country gathered in the heart of our nation’s financial center on June 22, an International Day of Action, to make that message crystal clear.    

“It’s time for their shared sacrifice. They haven’t had any of that. They have been making billions and trillions in profit and they are not giving anything back to our community,” said Deborah Burger, RN and member of the National Nurses United Council of Presidents.

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The protest is part of the National Nurses United’s Main Street Contract for the American People’s campaign, which aims to reclaim an economy with good jobs at living wages, healthcare for all, quality education, good housing, protection from hunger, a safe environment, and a secure retirement for everyone.

The mainstream media is ignoring the real stories — the stories of people suffering from budget cuts, homelessness, and lack of healthcare.

Representatives from other community and labor organizations stood with the nurses Wednesday to show their support.

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“We are calling for a more fair and just economy,” said Karen Higgins, RN and member National Nurses United Council of Presidents.

That’s why NNU, with the support from dozens of community and labor organizations, such as the AFL-CIO, United Auto Workers, and Transport Workers Union Local 100, are calling for a Wall Street tax on financial transactions.

“It’s very American…Just like working people pay taxes on all of their purchases. These corporate speculators who buy and sell and buy and sell our country should pay a minimum tax on that,” NNU executive director RoseAnn DeMoro explained to the crowd. “A very minimum tax could amount to at least $350 billion every year that can go back to our communities and go back to jobs and go back to healthcare.”

Similar events, called by the European Trade Union Confederation, were taking place in 35 other countries in support of a similar tax there. The nurses led the protest in America.

The hour-long rally ended with songs of solidarity.  The nurses and fellow community activists left Wall Street — waving their signs and yelling “This is what democracy looks like!”

Bystanders joined in the chant as the sea of red scrubs moved down the street.

S915/HR1200 – The Healthcare Wisdom We Can Trust

Today, it is official.  Two amazing and courageous elected officials stood with nurses and patients to introduce legislation that moves beyond the current health reform effort and forward to a healthy system for all.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, and Rep. Jim McDermott, D-WA, have been allies in the cause for decades.  There are not young fellows in terms of legislative or life experience.  

Both stood together to introduce the American Health Security Act of 2011 – single-payer, Medicare for All style coverage that would be administered by the states.  S915 and HR 1200. Sound policy.  Sound thinking.  Perfect timing.  

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Rep. McDermott (D-WA) on the left and Sen. Sanders (I-VT) on the right.

We can all look at the statistics and the motivations of those who offer the numbers, but these two elected officials stand with us — the patients, the nurses, the workers, the people — as surely as night follows day.  It is rare to see moments when the people’s business intersects with the political moment.  And it is even more rare to see those elected officials who look to the needs of their constituents and the nation and stand up for policy that uplifts – even if some powerful financial interests see things another way.

The work ahead may be daunting, but with advocates like National Nurse United, and co-president Jean Ross, RN, standing in support of AHSA of 2011, S915/HR1200, the path seems navigable, if challenging.  Jean was convincing and committed today as she mentioned her own son and his struggle to secure healthcare in the midst of the current for-profit system that often leaves patients left behind and nurses holding hands and hearts.  “We hear the stories,” said Ross, “We hear what others do not.”

The American Health Security Act is also backed by the AFL-CIO and its 13 million members.  Arlene Holt-Baker, executive vice president, spoke on behalf of the national AFL-CIO at today’s press conference.

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Jean Ross, RN, NNU co-president

This was not an effort to criticize or condemn the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, said Sanders and McDermott, but the opportunity to move beyond and to finally realize the goal of workers all over this nation to provide healthcare as a basic human right to all.

As a patient and as someone who went broke (though supposedly fully insured), I watched today’s events with a combination of wonder and worry and praise.  I continue to believe – even in the face of all evidence to the contrary – that with the help of the nurses we will achieve healthcare as a human right and we will do so without outright revolution because of lawmakers like Sen. Sanders and Rep. McDermott.  We can do it if we stand together with enough clarity and enough solidarity.  

My worry related more to the wonderful man I married who is in every way my partner in this struggle and who was at the moment of the press conference in consultation about his own most recent health crisis.  Even with full coverage, it is still up to his supplemental insurance carrier to determine if the care his doctor wants to give will be approved.  My worry for him would be so very much different if we would change the motivations from profit first to healthcare first.  The American Health Security Act of 2011 reaches ever closer to that day.

Finally, I stood with labor leaders – and I am not one of their stature – who have worked so hard to advance anything related to healthcare reform and with whom I have sometimes had differences.  But today, we stood as Americans who believe that working class people and our kids and our grandkids deserve the right to healthcare as a human right provided under the social insurance model and not as some privilege granted only to the wealthy and the powerful.

Great day.  A celebration of life.  The American health Security Act of 2011.  

S915/HR1200 – Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Jim McDermott.  We can do this.

Read the AFL-CIO blog

Read about the event in The Nation

“Wheel of Misfortune”

Vanna White can’t help these “Public Servants” – they’re the 10 worst Governors in the U.S., and they’re unraveling America.

Who called Social Security a “ponzi scheme?”  Which state leader wants to take almost $1 billion from state schools?  Which Governor claimed Mexican immigrants were beheading Americans in the Arizona desert?

Find out. Play the game. Spin the wheel. And share the misfortune with all.

www.GovernorsOfMisfortune.com

wheel_misfortune

Brought to you by National Nurses United.

Keep the Momentum Going!

Just a few minutes ago, the California Nurses Association (CNA) endorsed my campaign for Mayor of San Francisco!

The endorsement from CNA, which has over 5,000 members in San Francisco, follows major endorsements in the last few weeks from the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)and Communication Workers of America Local 9410.

I am deeply honored to have their support.

Will you help us build on the momentum by joining our 20/20 advisory group today and donation $20 or volunteering 20 hours of your time to the campaign?  Donate.  Volunteer.

I will continue to work to ensure San Franciscan has affordable health care.  Our city has led the nation with important health reforms.  As insurance companies across California continue to raise rates and limit care – it’s essential that we do more, especially for our children and families.

To make these policy goals a reality, we need your support.

I’m inviting you to join our 20/20 advisory group.  Here’s how it works:

We are asking supporters to volunteer 20 hours of their time or donate $20 to help build a clear vision for San Francisco’s future.  Donate. Volunteer.

You’ll be invited to a small coffee conversation with me to discuss issues we all face as San Franciscans.  How do we improve our schools?  Make it easier for people to raise a family in the city.  What are the best ways to grow our economy?  How do we improve Muni?

Will you help us build on the momentum of the last few weeks and join our 20/20 advisory group?  Donate. Volunteer.

Thanks for your time and support.  I hope to see you on the campaign train for a cup of coffee!

Sincerely,

Leland Yee

@ProtestInTheUSA: from Madison to America…from Workers to All People

Is this the protest that wakes up America and starts the push-back to big business and their anti-human agenda?

National Nurses United, and the California Nurses Association, sure hope so, and we’re doing our part to move that along.  Please join our efforts by following @ProtestInTheUsa, our new national newsline of reports, notices, and videos about specific protests in the USA concerning democracy, healthcare, workers’ rights, and human rights.  @ProtestInTheUSA is starting as a twitter feed, and a hashtag #ProtestInTheUSA, and will be expanded from there.  Find it at www.twitter.com/ProtestInTheUSA.

Already @ProtestInTheUSA is helping document our national wave of protests-the upcoming mass rally of women in New York, the workers protesting in Ohio and Indiana for their rights, indigenous protests in Alaska and nurse protests in California.  We simply have got to find a way to bring all these protests together and amplify each others’ voices.  We’re many people–but one cause.

Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of NNU explained why she’s hopeful for social change and , “With so many families and working people in America in trouble, with the recession, healthcare crisis, staggering disparity in income, and the ongoing corporate chokehold of our economic and political structure, more and more people will be taking to the streets calling for real change.  If you’re not protesting, you’re not paying attention. It’s up to all of us to help spread the fire.”

1. Email Scott Walker-tell him to take a hike; [email protected]

2. Phone him: (608) 266-1212

3. Fax him: (608) 267-7888

4. Follow @ProtestInTheUSA (It will be #FollowFriday, after all)

And in case you missed it, check out Thunderdome: http://twitpic.com/40tax9

Oh,and when America’s nurses lead protests, some in the corporate media actually ask them, “why nurses”?  Karen Higgins, an RN from Massachusetts and co-President of National Nurses United, lays it out: “The answer is simple: it is our professional and ethical obligation.  Our patients, and democracy, are under attack, working people are hurting, and the ability of the RN to provide appropriate levels of care for patients is weakened.  The Code of Ethics for Nursing tells us, ‘The nurse promotes, advocates for, and strives to protect the health, safety, and rights of the patient…(and) is responsible for articulating nursing values…(and) for shaping social policy.'”

Right now that means doing everything we can to help build and grow this national wave of protests!

What the Democrats could be saying to the Joe Miller Republicans

Republican candidates from coast to coast are fond of branding their opponents the Nancy Pelosi Democrats. Maybe it’s time to talk about the Joe Miller Republicans.

Miller is the Sarah Palin-backed Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from Alaska who toppled incumbent Republican Lisa Murkowski because she was not conservative enough.  Miller gained notoriety, in part, by proposing elimination of two of the most popular reforms in U.S. history, Social Security and Medicare, and calling unemployment insurance “unconstitutional”.

Even after his primary upset, Miller did not change his tune. Asked by CNN’s John King September 1 if someone born today should “grow up in an America where there is not a federal Social Security program if you got your way,” Miller replied, “absolutely.”

Though Miller is dismissed by some as an anomaly among Republicans, along with fellow tea party candidates Rand Paul in Kentucky and Sharon Angle in Nevada, his views parallel the more convention wing of the party, such as the Republican leaders in Congress boasting about plans to shut down the government rather than allow any funding for the new healthcare law.

Or Meg Whitman who wants to slash pensions in California earned by public employees. Or Carly Fiorina, who in her Senate debate September 1 praised the business practices of China, with its prohibitions on independent unions, mandated  low-wage, long hour labor contracts, inadequate health care coverage and access, locked factory doors, and tainted food products,  and where she shipped thousands of jobs while CEO of Hewlett Packard.

The Miller-Whitman-Fiorina mantra is that “government” is the problem, not just “big government,” any government. That’s the not so subliminal message that underlines Whitman’s promises for deeper cuts in California’s budget, or Carly Fiorina’s attack on the federal stimulus program, or the House Republicans who are giddy over a governmental shutdown that would enable them to stop all checks.

Is government really the problem here? Would we be better off with no paved roads, no bridges, no street lights, no police and fire departments, no libraries, no public schools, nobody trying to keep salmonella out of our eggs or pesticides out of our food, no limits on air and water pollution, no sewage systems, no safety requirements for hospitals or nursing homes, no limits on HMO abuses, no inspections of unsafe mines or other workplaces? And no Social Security or Medicare?

Because that is the ultimate program of the Miller Republicans who would dismantle decades of federal programs and shift even more resources to the robber barons and the have mores. As if the income chasm were not already wide enough, in a country where 61 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck while the average CEO makes 350 times the pay of the average worker, up from 40 times more 30 years ago.

That’s the class warfare that Wall Street and the candidates they elect in Congress and the statehouses, of both parties, have practiced for years. So when the Miller-Whitman-Fiorina Republicans say the way to create jobs is to give the biggest corporations and wealthy even more tax shelters and loopholes, and extend the Bush tax cuts for the rich, someone should be asking, what’s stopped those businesses from creating jobs now?  At a time when, as Bob Herbert pointed out in the New York Times in July, nonfinancial corporations alone have seen a jump of 27 percent in on hand cash, reaching a level not seen in five decades, all while cutting jobs in hopes of getting more tax breaks.

In its September, 2010 Index, Harper’s noted that 31 states face a 2011 budget shortfall, yet in the projected decline in money the states receive from corporate taxes just since last year is a whopping $2.5 billion.  The 3 million richest Americans today have combined investible assets – money readily available to invest, excluding their homes and consumables – of about $12 trillion. A one time wealth surcharge of 15 percent on those assets could wipe out the current U.S. national deficit, fund a year of AIDS medication for 142 million patients or create 34 million jobs paying $50,000 a year, calculates the Institute for Health and Socio-Economic Policy, research arm of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United.

A program like that would be the best antidote to the Miller Republicans.

National Union of RNs is Founded!

Below David Welch, an RN from Chico California, gives his first-person account of traveling to Phoenix for the historic duty of founding the nation’s first union of, by, and for RNs.

You can read a good Reuters overview here and see the release here.

This is obviously a great day for labor, as we have a progressive/rapidly-growing/important new union in a key industry and social issue.  Also a great day for California nurses who will be able to take their efforts national…

On to David…

I’m writing from Phoenix Arizona where I just spent the morning with hundreds of nurses from around the country  finalizing the creation of the new nurses union that will transform health care in America: National Nurses United.  Nurses and leaders from The California Nurses Assn./National Nurses Organizing Committee, the United American Nurses and the Massachusetts Nurses Assn are meeting to create a new union that will stretch from coast to coast and unite 150,000 nurses into a powerful force for our profession and our patients.

At the opening reception last night the excitement was palpable as nurses from many states shared their happiness at the step we were about to take.  Here are just a few quotes:

From Jean Ross of the UAN and now co-president of the new NNU:

This is where we need to be, together as one, moving across the country.  some of us have been waiting our whole careers for this

From Karen Higgins of the Massachusetts Nurses Associaton and another new co-president:

This is a dream come true for all of us.  I believe staff nurses are the voice for patients and nurses across this country.

From Deborah Burger of CNA/NNOC and the third co-president:

We have got our work cut out for us when this convention is over, to make sure we organize evry single direct care RN in this country.  RNs and our patients deserve to have a national nurses movement that can advocate for them.  

We still have a long way to go before we can bring all nurses into a single organization and a single political force, but today we took the first giant step in that direction.  Today we brought 150,000 nurses under one organizational umbrella with a single goal and philosophy: National Nurses United.

The business meeting this morning became more of a festival as the delegates from across the country voted unanimously to establish our constitution, confirm our officers and declare the existence of our new organization.  We had the thrilling experience of hearing from one of the greatest speakers in the American Labor movement: Stewart Acuff of the AFL/CIO.  Stewart’s speaking style comes out of the great tradition of southern church oratory and he outdid himself today.  He had that room full of nurses on our feet over and over, chanting, roaring approval and often with tears in our eyes.  He exhorted us to set our sights high – not only to organizing nurses for collective bargaining, but to pass the Employee Free Choice Act:

The greatest economic stimulus would to be restore to the working men and women of America the right to bargain collectively for their fair share of the fruits of their labor

And to continue to work for real health care reform:

so that access to quality health care is a human right, not an investment opportunity for the rich

After Stewart, our neighbors to the north, in the person of Linda Silas, president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses, also came to show their support and offer their help.  Linda is a great speaker in any normal company, but had the unenviable task of following Stewart.  She rose to the occasion and left us on our feet and dancing.

And tonight, we’ll finish the night with a great party.  Tomorrow, setting the tone for the new organization, we will be demonstrating outside the Arizona Hospital Association.  We’re serving notice to our employers that we are here with new force, new strength, new energy and that we will be spreading out across America in the weeks and months to come, organizing thousands of nurses with the very clear goal of transforming healthcare in America.

We nurses know as well as anyone that whatever is passed in the next few weeks in Washington is not going to be the final answer to America’s healthcare crisis.  At best, it will make some improvements and be a step on the road.  The overriding goal of our new organization is to reach the day when every patient has equal access to quality care, every nurse can advocate for their patients’ needs without fear and American health care is controlled by care givers, not bean counters.

So…What about single-payer and SB 810?

( – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

Does passage of a bill that funnels millions of additional Americans into the private insurance system, and the decision of House leaders to shut down debate on one single payer amendment and scuttle another, mean the end of the years of efforts by single payer activists to win the most comprehensive reform of all?

Does it mean the end of SB 810, even once Governor Schwarzenegger has wandered off the stage?

For the nation’s nurses and the many grassroots activists, the answer is clearly no.  And we’ve got work to do.

In discussions and organizing, now occurring coast to coast, including a strategy conference this weekend in St. Louis hosted by Healthcare-NOW, many are charting a new course that turns next to the U.S. Senate, to the Senate-House Conference Committee, and then to state capitols from Sacramento to Harrisburg where vibrant single payer movements and campaigns continue to grow.

Most single payer advocates acknowledge some important reforms in the House bill, especially the expansion of Medicaid to millions of low income adults, increased regulation of the insurance industry, expanded public health funding for community programs for low income families, and a more progressive tax plan than the onerous tax on middle income health benefits proposed in the Senate.

But those who dismiss the weaknesses, coupled with the overhyped rhetoric comparing the bill to the civil rights legislation of the 1960s or passage of Social Security and Medicare, should be wary of the backlash when millions of Americans continue to face health insecurity and potential bankruptcy as their healthcare costs rise largely unabated and continue to experience denials of medical treatment insurance companies don’t want to pay for.  

As California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro has written

Social Security and Medicare were both federal programs guaranteeing respectively pensions and health care for our nation’s seniors, paid for and administered by the federal government with public oversight and public accountability

By contrast, the main provision of the House bill, and its Senate counterpart, is to expand health care coverage by requiring everyone to “have insurance” — mostly buying private insurance (since the public option is open to so few). Ultimately whether some want to admit it or not, a massive bailout worth tens of billions of dollars to the insurance industry.

Further, while Social Security and Medicare were both significant expansions of public protection, the House bill actually reduces public protection for a substantial segment of the population, women, with its unconscionable rollback of reproductive rights in the anti-abortion amendment.

To that end, tempering some of the triumphalism would be advisable. Equally unfathomable is the threat by some liberal groups to target single payer proponents Dennis Kucinich and Eric Massa who voted against the anti-choice amendment as well as the full bill. (Massa, in particular, was elected with active support from the single payer community and took a principled stand in a swing district.)

Those who start down this road would do well to remember the nurses, physicians, and thousands of single payer grassroots activists who have carried the flame of genuine healthcare reform for years, and will certainly continue to make their voices heard, especially as employers continue to shift skyrocketing healthcare costs to workers and out-of-pocket costs eat up, by some accounts, 15 percent to 19 percent of family incomes.  

One of those suggesting that work must continue, even prior to the vote, was House Whip James Clyburn who told the Associated Press November 5:  

“I didn’t want anyone to think that if you don’t get everything you want in this health care bill right now, that’s the end of the game. What we need to do is lay a foundation. Get passed what we can pass that will have a meaningful impact on people’s lives – not put too many of our people in jeopardy – and then build upon it later. It’s a long road.”

For single payer proponents, the construction on that long road begins in the Senate now where Sen. Bernie Sanders plans to introduce single payer language. As he said on Vermont Public Radio this week:

“I believe that a single payer system is the most effective way to provide comprehensive, universal, cost-effective health care. … (Without single payer) that ain’t going to happen. The health insurance industry and the drug companies are too powerful.”

Sanders is also proposing a federal exemption of legal barriers for states that opt to establish single payer systems, similar to the Kucinich amendment that was stripped out of the House bill by House leaders in the hours leading up to its final vote.

The reason for the amendment, Sanders notes:

“So that if states like Vermont or California or Pennsylvania – states that are strong in a single payer movement – want to move in that direction that they will be able to do so. And I think … what you will probably end up seeing is we will move toward a Medicare for all program when one state does it and does it well. And other states say, ‘You know what? That looks like the most cost effective, fairest way to provide quality care to all people.'”

You can help. Contact your Senator, (202) 224-312, and urge them to join Sanders in supporting this important amendment. That’s what a lot of us will be working on next.