New Nation Wide Health Care Campaign Launches

July 17th, 2008

I wrote this for my local paper; but since its a nation wide campaign with launches in most states; I’m putting it here too.

Nashville , TN – Tuesday July 8th Tn Citizen Action, SEIU 205, Tennessee Health Care Coalition, and Centers for Community Change held a press conference on the steps of the State Capital in downtown Nashville to launch “Health Care for America Now”. They describe Health Care for America Now as “an unprecedented coalition of major organizations including labor unions, large community-based membership groups, women’s groups, doctors, nurses, small businesses, and leading netroots activists” that have come together to launch “a new $40 million campaign to push for quality, affordable health care for every American. “

This is a nation wide campaign where the coalition of organizations pushing the Cover America Now campaign have set up in 44 cities (including 36 state capitals), to push the initiative. The campaign seems to be aimed at influencing the national conversation around healthcare and the platforms of candidates for electoral office in this important political season. The coalition “plans to spend $25 million in paid media and have 100 organizers in 45 states”; through the November 4th presidential and congressional elections.

Health Care For America Now logo

The campaign’s steering committee includes ACORN, AFSCME, Americans United for Change, Campaign for America’s Future, Center for American Progress Action Fund, Center for Community Change, MoveOn, NEA, National Women’s Law Center, Planned Parenthood, SEIU, UFCW, and USAction.

The Nashville Business Journal states that “The goal of Health Care American Now is to make sure then next order of business for the new administration is quality, affordable health care.”; echoing Centers for Community Change’s Deidra Reed in her statement during the press conference, as quoted by Fox 17 News, that “it is our commission. We are being commissioned to make sure that the next administration knows that regular everyday people, no matter what their socioeconomic background, no matter their ethnicity, deserve quality, affordable healthcare now.”

More specifics as to the ideals Health Care for America Now is advocating can be found on their website where they state “We’re offering a bold new solution that gives you real choice and a guarantee of quality coverage you can afford: keep your current private insurance plan, pick a new private insurance plan, or join a public health insurance plan.

We’re also calling for regulation on health insurance companies. We need to set and enforce rules that quash health insurance companies’ greed once and for all.There is a huge divide between our plan and the insurance companies’ plan for healthcare reform.”

The site goes on to list some bullet point particulars, including in part:

A choice of a private insurance plan, including keeping the insurance you have if you like it, or a public insurance plan without a private insurer middleman that guarantees affordable coverage.

A standard for health benefits that covers what people need to keep healthy and to be treated when they are ill. Health care benefits should cover all necessary care including preventative services and treatment needed by those with serious and chronic diseases and conditions.

Health care coverage with out-of-pocket costs including premiums, co-pays and deductibles that are based on a family’s ability to pay for health care and without limits on payments for covered services.

Health coverage through the largest possible pools in order to achieve affordable, quality coverage for the entire population and to share risk fairly.

A watchdog role on all plans, to assure that risk is fairly spread among all health care payers and that insurers do not turn people away, raise rates or drop coverage based on a person’s health history or wrongly delay or deny care.

Healthcare reform has consistently been a top issue every presidential race at least since 1992. Yet, the American healthcare funding and health delivery systems have remained practically unchanged over the last 16 years. An approximate 47 million Americans are without health insurance (about 15%)

Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Edwards as primary candidates pushed a “universal healthcare” plan that’s actual based on the system that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney instituted as Governor of Massachusetts; where purchasing coverage is mandated, with threat of a penalty if you don’t. Presumably this system is suppose to work by having everyone in the insurance system, preventing overall healthcare cost being run up through the uninsured using emergency services as primary care; which cost are largely passed on to the insured. Edwards nor Clinton would specify what penalties would be imposed for those who didn’t buy insurance, though Clinton indicated that garnishing wages would be a possibility. In Massachusetts when the deadline to buy insurance came, instead of imposing a penalty as the plan necessitates, the state just gave thousands of waivers to people who couldn’t afford to buy it.

Democratic presumptive nominee Barack Obama’s plan, he says, will “aggressively cut cost” making insurance affordable to 2/3rds of the currently uninsured, and lower cost for everyone else. His plan contained mostly the same elements as Clinton’s and Edward’s, just not the mandate to buy, and hence neither the threaded penalty. Edwards and Clinton attacked Obama on the campaign trail for his plan in their eyes, therefore, not being truly “universal”. Elizabeth Edwards, John Edward’s wife, continues to attack, or verbally disagree with if you will; Obama’s plan on this point even though her husband (the actual candidate) dropped out of the race in February and endorsed Obama in May. Go figure.

John Edwards Endorsoning Obama

As a news writer and not an editorialist I seek to remain impartial in my writing; but I honestly cannot discern what presumptive Republican nominee John McCain’s healthcare plan is; though I have followed the campaign since the spring of 2007, and just went to his website immediately before typing these very words.

During the primaries, the republicans rarely debated the issue, and McCain has spoken about healthcare very infrequently on the campaign trail, other than to give the usual republican tagline about no universal healthcare and solving the problem through free market forces.

He appears to have a laundry list of ideals that aren’t necessarily linked together; which include portability of your healthcare from job to job, non-profit entities contracting with insurers to cover the uninsurable, and up to a 5,000 tax credit that you get after the fact, for those of you who have a spare 5 Gs laying around that you can spend upfront on healthcare; though you can’t afford insurance.

The launch of Cover America Now comes on the heels of the Cover America Tour having come to Nashville in June. As ConsumerUnion.org reported on June 26th “Consumer Reports Health’s Cover America Tour came to Nashville today as part of a summer-long road trip across the country to highlight the challenges Americans face getting high quality, affordable health coverage. The nationwide tour was welcomed at a news conference in Centennial Park by Representatives Brenda Gilmore and Janis Sontany along with the Tennessee Health Care Campaign.”

To join Health Care for America Now’s campaign go to healthcareforamericanow.org/

Popularity: 12% [?]



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One Response to “New Nation Wide Health Care Campaign Launches”

  1. Black Political Analysis on July 19th, 2008 11:36 pm | link

    Hope it works!

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