Labor & Lakoff: Fighting for Single-Payer

by: California Nurses Shum

Fri Oct 19, 2007 at 18:18:01 PM EDT

Great news for the single-payer movement: a majority of state federations of labor have now endorsed guaranteed, single-payer healthcare! (Well, ok, 25 out of 50, but one of them is MD-DC.) This follows on the heels of the recent announcement by the national AFL-CIO that they are pushing Medicare for All. Do not discount how important this is…guaranteed, single-payer healthcare now becomes the only proposal with an organized, powerful constituency pushing for it.

More labor endorsements are coming every day…Here's what Oregon has to say:

The resolution continues, ". . . (T)he fundamental principal of the labor movement -- that fragmentation leads to weakness while solidarity leads to strength -- is a powerful tool that can be applied to create a consolidated, single payer American healthcare system."

California Nurses Shum :: Labor & Lakoff: Fighting for Single-Payer

The Rockridge Institute and George Lakoff are also advocating for single-payer healthcare. They've written a very interesting study on the "neo-liberal" biases inherent in how we talk about the debate. Long story short: the conservatives don't want you to think of a sick child, they want you to think about the problems with regulating industries like insurance. Check out their new video…

Don't forget, Al Gore's also fighting for single-payer healthcare, and the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association are thanking him for it.

Elsewhere, it seems the public is quite ready to pay for SCHIP.

In case you missed it…HMOs in California? Not doing such a great job. But nurses could have told you that.

Finally, when conservatives attack single-payer healthcare, here's the best they can come up with:

A shift to a single-payer system for all Americans would yield net savings in reported administrative costs of about $100 billion annually, or $2,100 in additional health care benefits for each of the 47 million individuals estimated as uninsured.

Everything else in the article is a bunch of lies written by corporate PR people, so be warned.

…cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association's Breakroom Blog, as we organize to make 2007 the Year of GUARANTEED healthcare on the single-payer model.

Tags: health care, universal health care, nurses, single payer health insurance, California Nurses Association, National Nurses Organizing Committee, labor, (All Tags)

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