Sing Out for Single-Payer Road Show
Singer/songwriter Anne Feeney is headlining a tour throughout California, Oregon, and Washington in July to support national, single-payer healthcare (HR 676 and S 703).
You can find all of her tour dates on her website, and listen to one of her songs right here.
From Anne Feeney’s website:
“We believe that single payer health insurance is the only real solution to 50 million uninsured and countless millions of underinsured people in this country. We’re working closely with health care professionals and activists in all three states. This tour is sponsored and endorsed by all the groups mentioned above, along with generous contributions from many doctors, nurses and concerned individuals, including Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary. We hope you’ll catch one of these shows and PLEASE – tell your friends. Call your Representative in Congress today and thank him or her for sponsoring HR 676. If s/he is not one of the 80 co-sponsors, ask him/her to sponsor HR 676. Call your Senators and ask them to sponsor SB 703. Thank you! National Health Care NOW!!”
Single Payer VS. Public Option: Lessons learned from the V.A.M.C. system – June 30, 2009
While I keep hearing people who have never used the system point to the V.A. Medical system as “socialist”, many of us who have to use the system know better. “Socialist” medical care mandates that we ALL have equal access to quality care. Single Payer is closer to socialized medical care in this sense than the VAMC system. On the other hand, those of us old enough to remember the old state hospital systems know that the V.A. is more like a Public Option, in several important ways.
1. It creates a medical system that delivers care that is unevenly distributed. V.A. care is harder to access in rural areas than in big cities.
2. V.A. care in the cities is often linked to teaching institutions where veterans “medical care” is driven by the needs of students to learn, rather than the health of the veteran. Patients often get “care” they do not need for the sake of educating students. Providers who are also teaching/research faculty often reduce patients to a pool of lab rats and breathing cadavers, as medical staff can play it fast and lose with little fear of lawsuits.
3. The V.A. system often allows people to perform procedures that would not be considered qualified in a private facility, such as a “Tech”, (a C.N.A. with a week of special training) performing and teaching a procedure as dangerous as a colonoscopy.
4. Under funding in the V.A. system often results in the failure to treat minor conditions that will lead to major problems in time.
Those calling the V.A. system “socialist”, and point to it as an example of quality government provided medical care have limited understandings of the V.A. system. The gender inequality, the abuse of patient autonomy, and more, abuses that admittedly also goes on in the public sector is hyperbolized in the V.A. system. If a “public option” is passes, we can expect that:
1. Insurance companies will make sure that public option care is inferior care
2. The public option will be under funded and funding will be subject to political whims
3. A two tear medical system will be established where one groups health is subjugated to rationing, an abusive load of students, understaffing, improper staffing, neglect of minor medical conditions that turn in to major medical conditions. In our current medical system those with the money to sue are treated one way, those perceived to have less resources another. A public option system will not change this reality. Medical Care systems that treat all patients equally as we would with single payer or a non-profit national health care system that most of the developed world enjoy, tend to be much less abusive and much more responsive to patients rights and needs.
4. A one-payer system will offer more choice not less; we only have to demand that choice. In these other countries, homeopathic medical care is often used rather than expensive, often less effective and more dangerous pharmaceuticals. More preventive care is offered. If patients rights are violated it is a political rather than a civil or private matter. Bottom line is patients have more power when we all are in the same boat together and thus are encourage and empowered to act together.
I worked at a VA hospitol and every vet was covered and we also provided long term care…something the insurance companies won,t offer you unless you pay up the wazoo! /The VA was always in need of funding and that is true of my local hospitol. Sutter Corporation wants to shut it down.
Recently I went to the emergency roon of a small Sutter hospitol that they want to close. The next emergfency room is ten milesawau but in rush hour it may take a half our or more to get there. They were very kind and responsive and nice…unlike the corporate hospitol with the expansive rooms and bureacracy. We then went to an ear nose and throat dr for a followup and was told they never got the referal from the primary care dr and refused to see us! Well we refused to leave and as I complained to every incoming patient about the need for health care reform, reminded the staff of the “Hipocritical” Oath they told me that there was no way we could be seen without the paperwork and that there were no appointment available. I refused tp leqve and was calling mprimary care doctor’s emergency line and refused to leave. Finally htey agree to see hte Dr after a hour and a half of refusing to go away. The full schedule was bullshit. They just wanted us to go away. So much for insurance!
We need to demand HEALTH CARE NOW! Then we will get it.Medical Care for All Everyone In Nobody out!!!