Californians will find this familiar, as the national political debate over healthcare reform might be coming down to giving up or selling out.  We’ll look at this and more in today’s guaranteed healthcare update, cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association’s Breakroom Blog, as we organize to make 2007 the Year of GUARANTEED healthcare on the single-payer model.

If today’s Washington Post is to be believed, Democratic Presidential Candidates are having internal debates about healthcare reform that can be summed up as: give up or sell out.  The sell out option—ripping up the safety net and letting every patient fend for themselves—seems to be losing so far. Instead, leading candidates are giving up, and choosing Mitt Romney-style plans that won’t solve the problem but will increase the role of the same private insurers who Michael Moore dimed out in Sicko.  Grrrr.  When did unworkable proposals become the “pragmatic” option?  Time for health care advocates to start pressuring candidates for real proposals.

Elsewhere, the San Francisco Chronicle compares the U.S. health care systems with single-payer systems around the world.  Hint: the U.S. doesn’t look too good 

In the same paper, Deborah Burger, RN, President of the National Nurses Organizing Committee & California Nurses Association, piles on with an op-ed about the ugly reality of waiting lines for treatment…in America, while author Ken Terry looks at how American employers are being disingenuous in their attempts to avoid the healthcare mess.

The healthcare blogosphere is loving Michael Moore’s smackdown of CNN, and is going Reagan-esque with demands to tear down the tottering symbols of the decrepit private health insurers. 

In Pennsylvania, Gov. Ed Rendell is trying to protect the profits of private insurance companies…and, of course, finds he isn’t left with enough money to tackle serious healthcare reform.  Coincidence or cautionary tale?

And finally, Tom Tomorrow dissects standard conservative responses to healthcare reform.

To join the fight for guaranteed healthcare (with a “Medicare for All” or SinglePayer financing), visit with GuaranteedHealthcare.org, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association.

(Let’s get this conversation on the front page (and in the RSS feed) – promoted by jsw)

Michael Moore’s SiCKO has now been out almost two weeks, and I’m beginning to find that for a number of us, it’s been a seminal event that has motivated people who were not previously involved in the issue to actually get up and raise some hell.

I like raising hell.  Don’t get me wrong, I really do.  But in cases like this, I like to win too.  And we need to win this one.

There are things we can learn from recent victories we’ve had that can be applied to the single payer health care fight.  On the flip, I’ll mention a few.

First, a few parameters for our discussion here.  There is a lot that traditional advocacy organizations and the unions have been doing, and should continue doing.  In particular, I am in awe of the California Nurses Association and its activities over the last month.  I’m going to assume that they will continue to do what they’re doing, and won’t discuss them much further.  I am much more interested in how we can harness the large progressive blogs and the new-wave net based organizations like DFA and MoveOn.

Second, I am both an activist and a technologist, and am most interested in what we will call “tech assisted local activism”.  The prototype of this was MeetUp: using web sites and related techniques to get people doing things in the real world with real people. We beat Pombo with tools like this.  I want a better understanding of what we did there that we can transfer to a more issue based campaign like this one.

Third, a lot of what we need to do I see already.  There are diaries just about every day on Kos and MyDD — typically, more than one.  I know for a fact that the many of the people who write them read Calitics.  On the whole, none of these diaries are getting the play I’d like to see them have.  Based upon things I’ve seen done by folks like Eden out of McNerney’s people, I know that it’s possible to get a lot more bang from our diaries than what we’ve been getting.  I’d like to see the group of us working together more closely to make that happen.

Forth, we need to get this going before the presidential silly season sucks all of the oxygen out of the issue, and while SiCKO is still drawing crowds.  That means training, and it probably also means making sure some of us start meeting with one another on a regular basis, and soon.

Those are the terms of reference, folks.  Now, what should we be doing about this?

You can’t really blame Lauren Turner the Google-ista who breathlessly begged HMO’s to let Google help them fight back against SiCKO and block that horrific push for universal healthcare.

But you can blame Google.

“Do no evil, Google?”

Let’s see how you can make your motto true…after the jump.

Cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee’s Breakroom Blog, as we organize to make 2007 the Year of GUARANTEED Healthcare.
 

When Google backed off from Turner’s  blog, your official spokesperson wrote:

In fact, Google does share many of the concerns that Mr. Moore expresses about the cost and availability of health care in America. Indeed, we think these issues are sufficiently important that we invited our employees to attend his film (nearly 1,000 people did so). We believe that it will fall to many entities — businesses, government, educational institutions, individuals — to work together to solve the current system’s shortcomings. This is one reason we’re deploying our technology and our expertise with the hope of improving health system information for everyone who is or will become a patient.

So, you are the largest corporation in the world, with progressive employees, incredible financial independence, and a corporate motto to “do no evil.”

And you take on the nation’s largest, life-and-death problem by:

a) sending 1,000 employees to a movie and
b) doing a little categorizing of health information???

Sorry, Google, this does not “demonstrate corporate responsibility on a major issue of our time.” 

But here’s how you can.

1. Realize you don’t live online—you live off-line.  You do business in a nation where thousands are killed each year by a broken healthcare system.  Your customers are hurting, and so are your employees and your family.  From a business angle, the American economy is at a major competitive disadvantage with every other nation because we are funding an unnecessary health insurance sector.  Get serious about this issue, and I’m not talking about selling more ads to health insurance corporations.

2. Become the business that changes everything—you have the chance to make money *and* make a better country.  Use your famed lobbying prowess to change the culture and bring guaranteed health care to all Americans. 

Yep, you might step on the toes of a few right-wing think tanks, and some ideologically-driven conservative businessmen.  But this could also be the biggest PR/branding gift your company has ever gotten–and you could actually  demonstrate corporate responsibility and live up to your motto.

Here’s where we are right now: a coalition of big businesses are blocking health care reform, or are proposing health care reform that might pad their bottom line a little, but won’t really help customers. 

Meanwhile, other companies like Ford are just throwing their hands in the air and moving to Canada because they can’t afford our broken healthcare system. 

The irony is, that there is a proven solution to the health care crisis, but no one in the business world has the guts to stand up and say it. 

Except, that is, for BusinessWeek which admits that, “France, Britain, and most other Old World countries long ago took the plunge into universal health insurance and have made it work, with varying degrees of success.”  Other than them, there are a few CEO’s here and there who support guaranteeing healthcare on the single-payer model, but no one has shown leadership on this issue.

So why don’t you?  What’s the alternative?

According to E-commerce Times:

… Google’s bottom line, in large part, has to do with its street cred. In other words, it may act like a big business, but it doesn’t necessarily want to look like one. The current uproar — as silly at it may seem in the eyes of some in the business community — could have a negative impact on Google.

“Google is making a very tricky transition from a relatively young company to an established company, Jeffrey Johnson, partner at Pryor Cashman, told the E-Commerce Times.

“This transition is risky: If they do not handle the transition well, Google may go from being perceived as an “upstart” company with cutting-edge technology that helped bring Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT)  and other corporate bullies down to earth, to a bully that is no better than Microsoft,” he remarked.

Sounds like a brand disaster in the making.  Or a revolutionary and profitable business strategy in the making.  Your choice.

To join the fight for guaranteed healthcare (with a “Medicare for All” or SinglePayer financing), visit with GuaranteedHealthcare.org, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee.

(Events of the weekend… – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

Think that SiCKO isn’t already changing healthcare politics in this country?

Just through the California Nurses Association & National Nurses Organizing Committee, 15,000 nurses from across the country have signed up to help organize on the opening night of SiCKO, as part of the “Scrubs for Sicko” campaign to drive one million nurses to see the film.  .  More are signing up every day.  Even more caregivers and patients have mobilized through Healthcare Now, Physicians for a National Health Program, the Massachusetts Nurses Association, and an unprecedented coalition of activist nurse groups from around the country.  Real energy on behalf of guaranteeing healthcare on the single-payer model.

We’ll take a look, below, at what it all means.  But first, we need you to  Go here, download some flyers, and hit your theater Friday night (warning: pdf).  Say hi if you see any nurses in their red “Scrubs for Sicko” scrubs.

Cross-posted at GuaranteedHealthcare Blog.

*Update*  As of this morning, 17,000 nurses are volunteering at the SiCKO opening night, and pledging to help us reach our million nurse goal.

Here’s how SiCKO is changing our country:

1. The healthcare movement finally is a mass, on-the-ground movement  Not since the days of Act Up have we actually had a critical mass of healthcare activists on the ground, working for change.  Now we do: tens of thousands of activists talking to hundreds of thousands of people.  Powerful.

2. Caregivers finally have a voice.  For years, groups such as the American Medical Association purported to be the voice of caregivers.  Unfortunately, they have been all too willing to throw patient interests under the bus so they can line their own pockets.  Now with the rise of the nurses’ movement, allied with PNHP docs, we finally have healthcare providers taking their patient advocacy to the streets…and the statehouse.

3. The media finally has to cover the issue of guaranteeing healthcare—and force political leaders to do the same.  Take a look at some examples below here.

And now to the SiCKO/Guaranteed Healthcare Update

*The Nation notes the nurse uprising and, like us, wonders what happens after SiCKO.

(In the same issue, Liza Featherstone looks at the movement by nurses for guaranteeing healthcare on the single-payer model, despite those looking to compromise with the insurance industry.}

*Clarence Page at the Chicago Tribune lays out the new conventional wisdom: America’s got a terrific health care system, as long as you don’t get sick.  That much, at least, seems to be conceded even by lobbyists for the nation’s health insurance industry.

*Last night Bill O’Reilly was in the unenviable position of debating a kids’ cancer nurse.  The point is—when was the last time O’Reilly did a segment on whether we should move to guaranteed healthcare on the single-payer model?  (And ended up kind of having to agree…)

*Coverage like this Washington Post story reminds us about what’s really happening out there:

As for government-funded health insurance, it would be enlightening if those who so reflexively assert that the public has already rejected it would just ask—well—the public. In a May CNN poll, 64 percent said they thought the government should “provide a national health insurance program for all Americans, even if this would require higher taxes.”

*Health Insurance companies are running scared.

The natural next question is, what now?  How do we extend the impact of SiCKO?  At a minimum level, nurses will continue to put pressure on politicians to answer one question: are you with patients—or insurance companies?  At the same time, we are on the verge of announcing a strategy to pressure health insurance corporations themselves.

But what else? It’s a movement in development.  Your thoughts are needed.

Yes I timed it.

After yesterday’s national debut of SiCKO, 1,000 nurses from the California Nurses Association and across the country rose as one, roared, and continued roaring for 8 full minutes.  I had goosebumps and tears in my eyes at the same time, and so did everyone else in the theater.

It was an emotional conclusion to a historic day: the campaign kick off for an extraordinary month of health care activism that aims to cure our nation of the health insurance corporations who are doing so much damage to all of us. 

The media, nurses and doctors, Moore, and healthcare activists gathered together because this—-this-—is our opportunity to finally change the healthcare system in this country.  We’ll recap what happened and plans going forward below…

Cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee’s Breakroom Blog, as we organize to make 2007 the Year of GUARANTEED Healthcare–thanks to SiCKO.

I won’t review the film here—nyceve, among others, has already done a better job than I could.

But this film is a masterpiece—and one told from the nurses’ point of view.  Those of us who aren’t RNs tend to think of the healthcare crisis in terms of numbers: infant mortality, deaths of uninsured, murder by insurance, record insurance industry profits, etc.  Nurses, however, are on the front lines fighting the “denial of care” industry (alias: private insurance corporations) and are used to seeing the tragic stories SiCKO uncovers.

That’s why yesterday was so exciting for them.  CNN, CNBC, USA Today, AP, The Wall St. Journal were all there, doing live stand-ups, shouting out questions, finally giving the silent genocide that is our healthcare system the attention it deserves.  Already Moore has changed everything—and we need to keep that change rolling. 

The day opened with a press conference with California Speaker Fabian Nunez.  Nunez is the perfect candidate to see the film: he has taken tens of thousands of dollars from the insurance corporations, and is carrying their water with bills to expand their customer base (and customer abuse).  He is emblematic of weak-kneed politicians across the country who won’t do the right thing—and who must be forced to. 

Michael Moore then went under the dome of the California Senate, and gave a rip-roaring defense of him film.  “I believe these insurance companies are an illegal racket and should be forced out of business.”  High drama.

From there Moore proceeded to rally the troops of 1,000 nurses and doctors outside, who gave him a hero’s welcome.  Finally, a media star who uses his celebrity to make a difference!

The nurses escorted him to the film’s screening in a sea of red scrubs, an image that appeared on the front pages of papers across California.  During the film, nurses alternated between laughing and crying, shock, horror and hope as the story of their battles was unfolded on the big screen.

There was much discussion afterwards about how to help this movie have the maximum impact.  Moore stressed that we must have a great opening week so that more theaters across the country will pick it up.  He also gave everyone blanket permission to call up local theaters, say they are close personal friends of his, and ask for help in setting up a discussion or handing out literature.  If you’re unsure if you can talk to the audience as they leave this film in tears ready for action, use this rule of thumb: it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.

And of course—calling all nurses, doctors, and other healthcare professionals.  We need you to join the “Scrubs for SiCKO” campaign.  Sign up with us, we’ll send you literature to hand out opening night June 29th.  Bring a buddy, and help solve this healthcare crisis by advocating for guaranteed healthcare on the single-payer model.

Please post additional suggestions on how to maximize SiCKO’s impact in the comments.

And now, let’s check out the SiCKO coverage from yesterday:

Great San Francisco Chronicle article here.

Fun stuff from CNN.

Here’s a nice Huffington Post.

And the AP did their usual good work.

To join the fight for guaranteed healthcare (with a “Medicare for All” or SinglePayer financing), visit with GuaranteedHealthcare.org, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee. 

The day after America’s nursing movement announced its plans to use the tragedy and horror of SiCKO to spur people to action, the attacks are already beginning.

Fortunately, for you, me, and most people the attacks are best described as unintentionally hilarious.  What moviemaker doesn’t want crazy anti-patient Web sites pumping our press releases about their product?

Cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee’s Breakroom Blog, as we organize to make 2007 the Year of GUARANTEED Healthcare–thanks to SiCKO.

You might have seen the plans: An unprecedented coalition of over a dozen activist nurse organizations will serve as the co-hosts of SiCKO, sponsoring screenings and premiers around the country, all of which will culminate on opening night, June 29th, when 3,000 RNs, doctors and other healthcare providers will fan out to every opening night around the country to talk with the audiences about how to transform their emotions into change.  Many of them will be in red scrubs–keep an eye out.  We have one goal: guaranteed healthcare now.

Well today we have this:

Robert Helms, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute told Cybercast News Service {said}…”what is sicko about both the California Nurses Association statement and the Michael Moore movie is the low level of understanding of our health care system that both reveal.

It is hilarious to me that the think tank who provided the intellectual architecture of a failed presidency would claim that nurses don’t understand the healthcare system.  I mean…it’s who nurses are.  Right?

Mr. Helms, however, seems a little shaky:

“Instead of destroying our system and copying the failed systems in Europe and Canada, we should attempt to reform both U.S. tax policy and Medicare and Medicaid payment policies so that consumers and providers have stronger incentives to compete on the basis of quality and cost effectiveness,”

So now he is bravely standing in opposition to nurses, Europe, Canada…the three horsepersons of the socialized medicine apocalypse.  For the record, Europe and Canada both have superior healthcare systems. 

I give Mr. Helms credit for understanding something: his corporate bosses have reason to be worried.  SiCKO will change everything.  The debate will become, “How are we going to deal with those out-of-control insurance companies?”  And of course, we will have energized nurses, doctors, healthcare activisits, and patients from around the country working to answer that question with guaranteed healthcare on the single-payer model….like in Canada, Europe, and the rest of the industrialized world.

Finally, the silly Cato Institute gets their chance to try to tee off and whack the nurses.  Michael Tanner swings and misses:

“The public is not going to see both sides of it when they see this movie, so I think it’s going to be effective from their point-of-view,” he told Cybercast News Service. “It’s designed to tug at the heart strings, not have a serious public policy debate.”

Tanner noted that we are likely to see other health care providers praising the movie.

“There is a great deal of interest in universal health insurance among some providers. It guarantees someone to provide their product,” said Tanner. “I’ve never known businesses yet that aren’t happy to have the government pay for what they sell.”

Those darn nurses again!  They’re out there working for more healthcare for people.  It’s a conspiracy!

Thanks for the pub guys.

And everyone else: go sign up to help on June 29th.  Be one of the red scrubs–whether you’re a nurse, doctor, patient, friend, family, or healthcare activist.  We need you to help capture this incredible historical moment and change healthcare history.  Details to come…

Bring your red scrubs to SiCKO’s opening night and help the nurses turn this movie masterpiece into a social movement—this pop culture into political change.

The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee is acting as co-host of the opening night of SiCKO at 3,000 theaters around the country.  We are working with an unprecedented national coalition of nurse and doctor and health care activist groups to ensure SiCKO has a long-term impact on our nation’s healthcare system and politics. It’s an incredible opportunity for patient advocates and it’s only missing one element: you.  What are you doing the evening of Friday June 29th?

Here’s the plan:  Friday night, June 29th, we aim to have a registered nurse, doctor, patient, or other patient advocate at every SiCKO opening night around the country.  They’ll be there to greet the audience, hand out flyers as they leave, perhaps testify to the tragedies witnessed on the front lines of America’s healthcare meltdown.  Most of all, they’ll be there to convince the moviegoers that we can make change happen starting now. Please go here to sign up.

Plan on wearing red scrubs that night if you have them.  If not, wear red, and as the event draws near, we’ll send you links to download “red scrub” buttons, fans, and handouts.  Once the movie schedule is announced, we’ll send you everything you need.  All you have to do is round up a couple buddies and, when possible, buy your tickets online.

This call for 3,000 SiCKO patient advocates for June 29th is the first activity in a national campaign that includes screenings, premiers, marches, protests, legislative briefings, and press conferences around the country. The fun kicks off in California June 12, when Moore will give a special legislative briefing to the California Senate before being escorted by 1,000 registered nurses to an exclusive screening of SiCKO for healthcare providers and activists. 

Why SiCKO?  Because it puts on the big screen what nurses see every day: a healthcare industry that has abandoned its caring mission in favor of the pursuit of profit at any cost.  For the first time, patients and caregivers have a voice, and we need to use it to demand an end to these abusive healthcare corporations.  SiCKO changes everything.

And that’s why we have a chance to change healthcare politics in this nation.  The insurance industry and drug companies are already worried.  All we need now is for you to help us make SiCKO’s opening night a truly transformative event.  There has never been a national moment like these simultaneous 3,000 screenings.  This is our chance to change the world.  Let’s take it.

And in the meantime, we encourage you to take a look at some of the bills that would guaranteed healthcare for all Americans on the single-payer model-—John Conyers’ HR 676 in California and Sheila Kuehl’s SB 840 in California.

( – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee is going to be hosting premiers for SiCKO across the country next June.  We’re so excited that I’ve read every single review published.  The consensus: book the Oscar suite, it’s a masterpiece.  More importantly, the reviewers are stressing the non-partisan nature of the film and saying it will appeal to R’s and D’s; are treating health corporations as the pariahs they should be; and are examining the possibilities for action, organizing and change that this film contains. The film is already changing our national debate about healthcare and re-aligning healthcare politics—and it doesn’t open FOR A MONTH.

The lone dissenter? Rupert Murdoch’s Times o’ London. 

Let’s take a look after the flip…

Cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee’s Breakroom Blog, as we organize to make 2007 the Year of GUARANTEED Healthcare.

Time sums it up: Sicko is Socko.

Hardly anyone would deny that…the HMOs and pharmaceutical companies have made billions while Americans have health care below the standard of other industrialized countries, and pay more for it. (Even the flacks for HMOs acknowledge that the system needs reform.) Or that patients are routinely denied procedures they should be entitled to. “You’re not slipping through the cracks,” a claims adjuster, since reformed, tells Moore. “They made the crack and are sweeping you toward it.”

Moore isn’t the first to say that the health care system is sick – that it’s riddled with inequities and iniquities…he’s the one who does it the noisiest, with the highest entertainment value, mixing muckraking with showmanship, Ida Tarbell with P.T. Barnum. … As both harangue and movie tragicomedy, Sicko is socko.

While hardly anyone would deny what the  healthcare corporations have done to their patients, people aren’t shouting it from the rooftops…or big screen.  Until now.

FOX News (!) notes:

Filmmaker Michael Moore’s brilliant and uplifting new documentary, “Sicko,” deals with the failings of the U.S. healthcare system, both real and perceived. But this time around, the controversial documentarian seems to be letting the subject matter do the talking, and in the process shows a new maturity.

Unlike many of his previous films (“Roger and Me,” “Bowling for Columbine,” “Fahrenheit 9-11”), “Sicko” works because in this one there are no confrontations. Moore smartly lets very articulate average Americans tell their personal horror stories at the hands of insurance companies. The film never talks down or baits the audience.
“This film is a call to action,” Moore said at a press conference on Saturday. “It’s also not a partisan film.”

The Hollywood Reporter finds Moore in the mainstream

This is the movie where Michael Moore gets a few Michael Moore haters off his back. “Sicko” posits an uncontroversial, if not incontrovertible, proposition: The health care system in the U.S. is sick. Even a right-wing Republican, when denied care by his HMO or stuck with an astronomical bill, is going to agree. Disagreement may come over the prescription Dr. Moore suggests.  But he makes so much damn sense in his arguments that the discussion could be civilized except for the heat coming from the health care industry, with billions of dollars in profits at stake, and certain politicians whose pockets are lined with industry campaign donations.

And Salon thinks the insurance corps have very few friends left:

there is no mistaking the passion and political intelligence at work in “Sicko.” It’s both a more finely calibrated film and one with more far-reaching consequences than any he’s made before. Moore is trying to rouse Americans to action on an issue most of us agree about, at least superficially. You may know people who will still defend the Iraq war (although they’re less and less eager to talk about it). But who do you know who will defend the current method of healthcare delivery, administered by insurance companies whose central task is to minimize cost and maximize shareholder return? Americans of many different political stripes would probably share Moore’s conclusions at the press conference: “It’s wrong and it’s immoral. We have to take the profit motive out of healthcare. It’s as simple as that.”

Variety thinks the movie rocks and only Rupert Murdoch’s fallen rag, the Times of London, doesn’t like the movie, arguing that “Moore can’t resist…revelling in the absurd.”

When you’re looking at American healthcare, if you’re not revelling in the absurd, you’re just not trying hard enough.

See you in line June 29!

To join the fight for guaranteed healthcare (with a “Medicare for All” or SinglePayer financing), visit with GuaranteedHealthcare.org, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee.  You can help the fight by sharing your story about surviving the healthcare industry here.

(Ain’t that the truth? – promoted by atdleft)

I guess it’s true there are lies, dang lies, and Wall St. Journal editorials.  Now they’re aiming at the healthcare debate-which might be good news if it means they’re worried about progress.  The Journal looks at the demise of Illinois’ terrible healthcare plan and sees the death of universal healthcare and of healthcare guaranteed with single-payer financing.  Both not true.  We’ll look at what they say and why-and point out a couple of much more honest assessments after the flip…

Brought to you by the National Nurses Organizing Committee as we organize to make 2007 the Year of GUARANTEED Healthcare.

And they start….

“Universal” government health care has once again returned as a political cause, with many Democrats believing it’s the key to White House victory in 2008. They might want to study last week’s news from Illinois, where Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich’s tax increase to finance health care became the political rout of the year.

First of all, let’s realize why Blagojevich needed a tax cut: because his lame plan is built on increasing public subsidies to the same private, for-profit insurance companies that are destroying healthcare in this country.

By contrast, guaranteeing healthcare with the single-payer model that has succeeded in every other country would save us hundreds of millions of dollars a year.  So Blogojevich screwed up here by following the herd of other politicians. 

That said, you won’t find the Journal crusading against insurance industry bloat, denial of care, and malfeasance, will you?  Instead they’re hoping to Hillarycare this issue: attack politicians who cut deals with the insurance industry, and hope to kill all healthcare reform along the way. 

The good news is that plans built on increasing insurance company revenues will never work and will leave America eager for genuine solutions to the problem.  So it’s going to be much harder for the Journal to stall genuine reform again.

But a funny thing happened on this road to Canadian health care. The state’s more rational Democrats revolted, arguing it would drive businesses out of Illinois.

Ah, the big lie.

Frankly we could stand to learn a little something from Canada, as their people lead longer, healthier lives than we do in a demonstrably better and chaeaper healthcare system.

But this plan isn’t Canada.  It’s much more of the same: throw more money at the insurers and hope to do it in a decisive way.

The Journal knows that’s true but they got greedy. First they wanted to kill all healthcare reform, now they’re trying to kill the guaranteed healthcare or “single-payer” proposals specifically, by pretending that is what is being rejected.  It’s a non-sequiter.

But what’s bizarre is that businesses are fleeing the U.S. because we saddle them with such a huge competitive disadvantage.  Any employer would rather operate in Canada and never have to worry about worker healthcare than operate in the U.S. and watch insurance premiums gobble up all the profits.

Why aren’t our business leaders jumping up and down to get everyone covered with a simple, straightforward system?  They’re losing gobs money to increasing premiums…but they don’t seem to care.  Why not?  Lack of courage?  Lack of insight?  Herd mentality?  Something else?  It’s one of the great mysteries of this debate

As for national Democrats, Presidential candidate John Edwards has already proposed a huge tax increase to pay for national health care. At least he’s honest about what such promises require, but we doubt it will help his Presidential prospects. Illinois Senator Barack Obama has been silent on his Governor’s tax implosion, but someone should get him on the record. And Hillary Clinton, well, we can’t wait to see how “universal” her promises will be.

And here’s the game.  The Journal is also preparing for 2009, and trying to shut down healthcare reform.

Those of us who care about the issue need to be organizing now, so that when George Bush is finally replaced we have the political heft to force our new President to act boldly and decisively about healthcare.  This struggle will be won or lost by what we do over the next year and a half-not IN a year and a half. 

For a refreshing breath of healthy fresh air, check out this column about Illinois from the Physicians for a National Health Program, and this column about Massachusetts from Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association.

To join the fight for guaranteed healthcare (with a “Medicare for All” or SinglePayer financing), sign up with GuaranteedHealthcare.org, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee.  You can help the fight by sharing your story about surviving the healthcare industry here.

(Horray for people power! : ) – promoted by atdleft)

Over 1,000 nurses and patients marched on the California State Capitol today to demand guaranteed healthcare, at an event sponsored by the National Nurse Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association. 

This is why we’re going to have genuine healthcare reform: because we have a beloved, engaged constituency pushing for it.  What do the insurers have? A bunch of mercenary lobbyists.  We’re linking to some pictures here…take a look.

Why are we calling it guaranteed healthcare?  Because today, no matter what insurance  you have, you can be denied care for any reason.  No other nation in the world has their healthcare set up this way, and neither should ours.  State Senator Sheila Kuehl has proposed SB840,  a guaranteed healthcare bill with single-payer financing: patients choose a private caregiver who is paid from a non-profit, statewide fund.  And here’s what a health care hero looks like:

We also debuted a new Web site at this rally, devoted to one simple thing: letting people upload videos telling the story of their mis-treatment at the hands of the healthcare insurance industry.  We all know it’s a crisis-but we need to see the faces behind the crisis to be moved to action.  Go visit GauranteedHealthcare.org and upload your story.

Oh…and those “individual” and “employer mandate” plans pushed from Massachusetts to California?  A Trojan horse for the insurance industry…and more cruel denials of care.