[Distributed at Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Ocala) town meeting in Gainesville September 26, 2009]
We Want Medicare for All
It’s the only affordable option: All other health care plans support an expensive, bloated insurance industry that adds nothing to our health care.
Private insurance wastes 30% of our health care dollars on profits, administration, advertising and red tape. But Medicare overhead is only 3%. With the difference, we can cover everybody with no more denials, copays, deductibles or paperwork.
The legislation that would do this is HR 676, which 86 brave Congressional representatives have signed on to:
• Everyone would be covered no matter what your job, your age, your marital status, and whether you change jobs or lose a job.
• You would have total choice of doctors and hospitals.
• Instead of skyrocketing premiums and co-pays, every employer and every employee would pay a modest payroll tax, the same way Medicare is funded.
• 95% of us would pay less than we’re paying now.
Other health care reforms under consideration are a bonanza for the insurance companies: Senator Max Baucus’s proposal requires that we buy private health insurance—a government mandate to buy a defective product from a private corporation.
But the majority of Americans want private insurance companies totally out of our health care system: In an October 20, 2003 ABC News/Washington Post poll, sixty-two percent said they’d prefer a universal insurance program “in which everyone is covered under a program, like Medicare, that’s run by the government and funded by taxpayers.”
Is our Congress so bought and paid for by the insurance lobby that they won’t do what the majority of Americans want? Vote them out if they won’t stand up to the insurance companies.
HR 676 — Medicare for All — Everybody in, nobody out!
Alachua County Labor Party
P.O. Box 12051, Gainesville, FL 32604
www.floridalaborparty.org/alachua
352 375-2832 • aclp@floridalaborparty.org
Healthcare Activists to Protest Blue Cross/Blue Shield in Gainesville; Part of nationwide health insurance protest
When: Thursday, May 28, 2009, 4:30 pm – 6:00 pm
Where: Blue Cross/Blue Shield, 3811 NW 40th Terr., Gainesville
Who: Alachua County Labor Party, 352 375-2832; 352 281-8078 (cell)
Seeking an end to the healthcare crisis that is destroying American lives and families, thousands of healthcare activists will descend on insurance companies in cities around the country the week of May 28th to protest health insurance corporations–and support guaranteed, single-payer healthcare, the “Medicare for All” system succeeding in nearly every other industrialized democracy.
“The current debate in Congress is leaving out the option that the majority of Americans want, a Medicare-style ‘single-payer’ system that covers everyone,” says Labor Party co-chair Mark Piotrowski. “We want private insurance companies out of our health care, they’re the ones making health care inaccesible, and making our health care the most expensive in the world.”
In Gainesville, advocates of HR 676, The National Health Insurance Act, will protest at Blue Cross/Blue Shield, which spends millions of our insurance premium dollars on political lobbying to prevent health insurance reform. Then the group will march the half-block to NW 39th Avenue and 43rd St. to call attention to the fact that Solantic urgent care center is owned by Rick Scott, a millionaire opponent of health reform. Scott put $5 million into an anti-reform group, “Conservatives for Patients Rights” to try to derail the extension of health care to everyone.
Heatlhcare Now! says, “A national, single-payer healthcare system is the only healthcare reform option that will cover every American resident while saving us billions of dollars. The majority of Americans want it. The majority of physicians want it. The only thing missing is the political will in Washington.”
More information can be found at:
http://www.floridalaborparty.org/alachua
http://www.healthcare-now.org/
Nationwide protests supported by: The Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care; Healthcare-NOW!; Progressive Democrats of America; CNA/National Nurses Organizing Committee; Physicians for a National Health Program; Americans for Democratic Action; Green Party