Can we save state-based single-payer? Yes...but we only have the weekend!
With all the talk about the public option opt-out...nurses and many trade unionists have been hoping for the opposite: a private option opt-out, also known as state-based single-payer. The idea is to allow individual states to implement single-payer reforms. This proposal had been alive in the House healthcare reform bill through the "Kucinich Amendment," and House leadership promised a vote on it.
As healthcare advocate Donna Smith explains, however, this amendment has been stripped by the House, and we’re in danger of losing it forever. We have 72 hours to get it back in the bill.
Dozens of nurses, labor union members, and healthcare activists did their part, and crowded into the office of Representative Henry Waxman this morning to demand he fulfill his promise of allowing a vote on this amendment.
Please help keep the pressure on Waxman so that he allows a vote on this important amendment.
You can call him at: DC 202-225-4099 - Los Angeles 323-651-1040
or fax him at 323.655.0502.
At the protest this morning, Geri Jenkins, RN, President of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, said, "There’s a reason that nurses are fighting for this private option opt-out. We see the harm and damage that private insurance companies wreak on our patients. This amendment is hope for guaranteed healthcare and we ask you to put it back into the bill."
The Kucinich Amendment could not be more straight-forward: it allows states to opt out of the national healthcare reform proposal and set up their own state-based single-payer systems. More background is here. And here you can read Rep. Kucinich’s thoughts on the situation.
Update: Here also is a letter from Kucinich and other leading House progressives to Speaker Pelosi.
The amendment was added to the bill in a bi-partisan committee vote, and trumps the objections of many moderate and conservatives that individual states are being forced into a national solution. In California, for one, is eager to act as a laboratory of democracy. Twice the state has passed single-payer systems only to see them vetoed by Gov. Schwarzenegger. Arnold will be gone soon—-but one more barrier remains in the way once he’s gone, which are a series of federal regulations. The Kucinich amendment would remove those barriers...and not just California, but other states like Maine and Pennsylvania would very seriously consider this private option opt-out
If the Kucinich amendment gets lifted, that means states can opt of the public option in favor of shuffling more of their residents into cruel for-profit insurers...but they can’t opt out in favor of guaranteed healthcare.
As Rep. Kucinich wrote yesterday, we are at a critical point for the healthcare debate. The reforms are being eviscerated from inside the Capitol. Progressives need a victory in this healthcare bill, one that can give us hope for turning around the lobbyist-driven bill. Nurses need to know their patients will be guaranteed healthcare. And patients need support from all of us.
Please call Henry Waxman and tell him that progressives and patients are tired of doing all the compromising on this bill—and we want the chance to bring single-payer systems to our states!