Health Care

By David Swanson

On Friday morning at 9:45 a.m. ET in the House Committee on Education and Labor, the committee members voted 25 to 19 to pass Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s amendment to the healthcare reform bill. This amendment, if it survives the full House, the Senate, the conference, and the President, will not alter the federal legislation except to allow states to create single-payer healthcare systems if they choose to. If this change to the bill makes news, it will pass the Senate, read more

By David Swanson

The healthcare legislation under consideration in Congress would prevent states from improving on what Congress creates. An amendment is under consideration right now in a House committee that would change that, leaving the federal initiative as is but permitting states to do better. This battle pits states’ rights against the much less spoken of insurance company rights. And it calls the bluff of every individual or group who opposes single-payer healthcare at the federal read more

Charlottesville, VA
Saturday, July 18, 2009, at noon

Cindy Sheehan, one of the best known peace and justice activists in the United States, will be joined by other speakers in support of public healthcare at a cookout open to the public and the media. Please join Cindy for lunch at noon on Saturday, July, 18, 2009, rain or shine, at 707 Gillespie Ave, Charlottesville, VA, 22902. Cindy will talk about her new book and the need for an expanded public healthcare system.

RSVP: read more

Listen here to Lila Garrett’s latest show, with David Swanson and other guests. From http://www.kpfk.org

By David Swanson, t r u t h o u t | Report

Single-payer health care supporters rally in Los Angeles in April. (Photo: Getty Images)

    Health care reform plans are being drafted and passed around on both sides of Capitol Hill, but the plan with the greatest number of Congress members behind it was first introduced as a bill six years ago. With two new co-sponsors having just signed on, Congressman John Conyers’s single-payer health care plan, HR 676, now has 80 Congress read more

By David Swanson

In a far better than usual, and very encouraging, conference, held by the Campaign for America’s Future last week, the low point was the complete white-out of single-payer healthcare.  Rather than apologizing, which even Max Baucus has done sort of, CAF decided to put forth a bunch of insultingly false reasons why single-payer is a terrible idea.  These are not read more

By David Swanson

Senator Max Baucus met Wednesday with advocates for single-payer healthcare, including Senator Bernie Sanders, and told them that he might drop criminal charges against 13 people arrested for speaking up in his hearings, but that he would not include any supporters of single-payer health coverage in any future hearings. According to one report, Baucus suggested that he’d been mistaken to exclude single-payer but asserted that the process of creating healthcare reform legislation read more

By David Swanson

Dr. Margaret Flowers, who was arrested along with seven others at the first Senate Finance Committee hearing on healthcare, just phoned me from the second one. As Chairman Max Baucus called the hearing to order, about 20 members of the California Nurses Association (CNA) stood and turned their backs on the committee. Pasted on their backs were signs reading: “Nurses Say: Patients First,” “Stop AHIP,” (referring to health insurance lobbyists), “Pass read more

By David Swanson

I can’t recall a better corporate news video segment in at least the past decade than the story that Ed Schultz just aired on MSNBC in which he interviews Margaret Flowers of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) and Senator Debbie Stabenow on the topic of healthcare reform.

Here’s video.

Sure, Ed slaps a gratuitous insult on the heroines of Code Pink, says he’s against protesting and “getting arrested” as a rule but thinks it’s OK if read more