This diary was previously about Senator Sanders' speech on the Senate floor in favor of single payer. Thanks for reccing it up, check out more about single payer and Senator Sanders' position on the bill below the fold (H/T to greendem).
Senate health care debate: http://www.c-span.org/...
His speech is over, so if you find a transcript and/or video of it, please post it in the comments. This diary is being updated to include more info as I see it.
I should mention that the reason Sanders was speaking (he no longer is) is that he took the amendment out of consideration - I'm not sure what that's officially called - so that debate on the health care bill could continue. Before that, Senator Coburn (a Republican) demanded that the whole amendment be read into the Senate record, and it supposedly would have lasted twelve hours.
Also - if you want something much more instantly gratifying then our health care mess, check out this diary about helping a soup kitchen that burned down.
Senator Sanders is speaking now. His Medicare For All bill was just read into the record. He is basically saying that the time for single payer is not now, but it WILL happen.
Sanders is talking about the huge amount of support for single payer. The California state legislature has done so, he said. So did the New York state legislature. It didn't make it into law, though. He also cited organizations that support it, like the NAACP. He cited a poll in which 56% of Americans supported it. He talked about people that are suffering from our current system, too.
If you're interested in really getting single payer passed in the near future, check out the effort in Pennsylvania that is supported by governor Rendell to pass statewide single payer. There was a state senate hearing on that bill today.
Several representatives of the health care industry told a Pennsylvania Senate committee that its bill to create a single-payer system in the state does not control costs or guarantee more people get health care.
Taking the first step
Before testimony began, White said the "information hearing" was designed to explore Ferlo’s bill and other reform measures, but most of the discussion focused on the single-payer proposal.
Chuck Pennacchio, head of the Healthcare for All Pennsylvania, a group with about 10,000 members, called on the state legislature to lead national reform efforts by passing the bill. No state has approved a single-payer system, and Pennacchio said Pennsylvania is uniquely poised to complete the reform because Gov. Ed Rendell has voiced support for the measure and 68% of state residents in a 2008 poll favored the approach.
"This is not only the first significant step in an evidence-based process designed not only to cure Pennsylvania’s health care system, but also to inspire the adoption, across each of America’s individual states, the only proven, uniquely American, centrist health care reform," he said, generating applause from supporters.
And here's some info from Bernie Sanders' website (H/T Turkana - and there are some action item links on that page):
The Senate on Wednesday debated for the first time in American history a proposal to create a single-payer, Medicare-for-all health care system. The Sanders Amendment would provide health care and dental coverage for every American, save money, and improve health care results."In my view, the single-payer approach is the only way we will ever have a cost-effective, comprehensive health care system in this country," said Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose amendment will come before the Senate. WATCH THE DEBATE LIVE
The 1,300 profit-making private insurance companies administer thousands of separate plans and waste about $400 billion a year on administrative costs, profiteering, high CEO compensation packages, and advertising. Health care providers spend another $210 billion on administrative costs, mostly to deal with insurance paperwork. As a result, the United States spends $7,129 per person on health care, almost double the amount spent by nearly any other industrialized country. Nevertheless, 46 million Americans lack health insurance, 100 million Americans cannot access dental care, and 60 million Americans do not have access to primary care.
"One of the reasons our current health care system is so expensive, so wasteful, so bureaucratic, so inefficient is that it is heavily dominated by private health insurance companies whose only goal in life is to make as much money as they can," Sanders said.
Thanks for the rec list! If you have a similar effort going on in your state, please tell us about it in the comments. Real health care reform like Sanders' Medicare for All amendment will not come from the national government, but from local and state governments. In Canada, Saskatchewan had single payer before the rest of the nation did.
Here's some info about California from Shockwave:
DC is dysfunctional.
Here in California, now that DC based healthcare reform has collapsed, we are going to crank up the campaign to support SB 810 for Single Payer.
Check out http://www.CaliforniaOneCare.org
I am heavily involved with this campaign which is the tip of an iceberg formed by many committed organizations like Healtcare for All and the California Nurses Association.
When CaliforniaOneCaresucceeds, other states will follow.
Volunteer, blog, contribute and we will win.
Senator Sanders' current position on the Senate bill:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), one of the Senate's leading proponents of creating a government-run public option health insurance program, has not yet decided whether he can support a compromise version of healthcare reform legislation.
"I have real concerns with this bill as it stands right now," Sanders told reporters Wednesday. "So I’m not on board yet. At this moment, I am an undecided," he said. "We’re working hard to try to make this bill be a better bill. I would like to support it but I’m not there yet."
Sanders's chief complaint is that Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) stripped the public option from the bill in order to placate a handful of centrist senators who had withheld their support for the bill, a maneuver that simultaneously threw into doubt the support of several liberals.