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Of course, if you haven’t figured it out already, this is limited to Pennsylvania. That, however, doesn’t make it any less exciting. My state is moving closer and closer to passing single payer, as this excellent history of recent developments in the statewide movement explains.
It had been a good year for Single-Payer in Pennsylvania already. HealthCare4ALLPA, the organization leading the fight (full disclosure: the author is an unpaid officer of that organization and an unpaid member of the Board of Directors) to enact single-payer healthcare in the Keystone State. Our Bill, HB 1660 and SB 400 was picking up steam (one blogger, in describing the scope of the bill, observed "you will never see a more comprehensive plan."), and had been endorsed by City Councils in Lancaster, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Reading, West Reading, and Wilkes Barre, as well as by the Allegheny County Council. Together those councils represent more than 3 million people, about a quarter of the population of Pennsylvania. A study of the cost of employee healthcare benefits paid by the combined governments and school boards within our state had documented a savings of nearly $2.3 billion dollars if the bill werer passed, and the study was getting noticed. Our quest for funds to commission an Economic Impact Study that would validate the benefits of instituting our bill were beginning to bear fruit. In October more than a thousand people — primarily from all over Pennsylvania, but augmented by advocates from Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Delaware, Ohio and even Washingtron State who journeyed to Harrisburg in a show of solidarity — gathered in the Capitol Rotunda on a Tuesday workday morning to demonstrate for the passage of our bill.
As I wrote about here, the bill for statewide single payer had a hearing late last year. Not only that, but the hearing was led by Republican State Senator Don White, and that’s not even the full extent of the bipartisan support of this. And Governor Ed Rendell has also pledged to sign the bill! And all five Democratic candidates for governor have expressed support of the bill! And both Arlen Specter and Joe Sestak have said that they intend to introduce bills in Congress that would end ERISA and make it much easier for states to establish single payer systems!
A lot of this exciting stuff, including the unanimous endorsement of the Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee, all happened this past weekend at the Winter Meeting of the Pennsylvania Democratic Committee. This is an exciting movement for the single payer movement in Pennsylvania. In the words of Jerry Policoff, "It had gone mainstream."
And it’s the result of an independent political movement that supports a specific agenda, not a candidate or a party. We do not gain support by raising money for candidates or threatening to stop our support. The movement for fundamental health care reform is real and growing in Pennsylvania, and it’s done through community outreach, media outreach, and utilizing the will of the people: Pennsylvanians – and most Americans – want quality health care, not health insurance.
You can support this exciting movement by going to HealthCare4AllPA.org and donating or contacting your state legislators (if you’re in Pennsylvania) or going more in depth and becoming part of the movement. Personally, I might be trudging through snow tomorrow to get a petition signed supporting the bill…
18 Comments
congratulations to the dems and all of PA!
i especially like your description of the bipartisan nature of the support for single payer. now if national dems would just follow the lead of PA dems…. *g*
p.s. thanks for posting this here. i was very heartened to see your diary make the top of the rec list at dailykos last night. hope it does the same at fdl. recommended by me for sure!
Thanks, selise! It’s very exciting news, indeed. And let it be a lesson to everyone that there are Republicans supporting this – making your movement subordinate to any party is a mistake.
amen and well done!
Also, to any FDLer who’s reading this – is FDL going to do anything to help movements for statewide single payer like this, especially once the current national health care stuff is over?
and I was about to move to PA…guess not!
Well you can always move to Somalia or even Haiti if you want to be in a true libertarian society.
If they manage to do this, I’m moving to Pennsylvania. GO STEELERS!
rossl, thanks! I recc’d you up both here and at the Orange Satan.
This is the first I’ve heard about Specter and Sestak pledging to introduce what sounds like a Senate version of the kiboshed Kucinich amendment. Do you have a link for that info?
(Note: It would not be necessary or desirable to “end” ERISA — just those few passages used to challenge single-payer.)
My source is the article I linked to in my diary by Jerry Policoff. He was at the Dem State Convention so I assume that’s where he heard them say it.
Hi, Jerry Policoff here. I saw this via a google alert.
Specter made the commitment to introduce a bill during a Q&A in Erie Pa. a couple of months ago, and I have since spoken with his aides who acknowledge the pledge and say he will honor it.
Sestak made the same pledge when he appeared before the NOW Pa. Convention last month. He re-affirmed it to me this past weekend at the State Committee meeting.
Neither has introduced a bill yet.
Here in Pa. there is a huge single-payer movement that people rarely read about because there is a total news blackout. Nonetheless, a candidate cannot go out on the stump without encountering legions of S-P advocates, and when the subject comes up during a speech or a q&a the room usually explodes in applause. That is why the politicians are starting to pay attention.
My long OpEd piece can be read here:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Single-Payer-Healthcare-Go-by-Jerry-Policoff-100209-270.html
and you can learn more about us (and contibute if you can afford it) at:
http://www.HealthCare4ALLPA.org
The piece linked to above provides a context to what happened at State Committee this past weekend. The momentum has building all year. There are also many useful links if you are motivated to really get on top of this issue. The wonderful thing is that we are overcoming the media blackout via word of mouth and the almighty blogosphere.
Re ERISA, we are quite sure that our bill is ERISA-friendly because it neither forces employers to provide healthcare nor punishes themn if they don’t. Instead it maintains the privately delivered medical delivery system while establishing a Medicare-type system to pay the bills. The 10% payroll tax is much less than what most employers pay now, and since this is an equally assessed tax that does not single out any category of employer it cannot be seen as punishing employers who do not provide healthcare. Simply put it is a single-payer system that provides universal comprehensive healthcare with the government as the single-payer. The reason we want an ERISA exemption is that the insurance companies are certain to file a lawsuit under ERISA just because they can, and it will take lots of money to defend against it and will delay implementation for possibly many years. Finally, there is no guarantee that some Conservative judge may rule that we do violate ERISA. It won’t be the first time something like that has happened.
Thanks rossi and thanks to you Jerry for bringing the progress in Pennsylvania to us. I’m really very, very excited over this prospect. I have two comments.
First, it strikes me this is very bad for Canada, because it will give Americans tired of risking their lives and all their worldly wealth for the privilege of continuing to live here, another nearby alternative to move to escape that risk.
Second, the insurance companies appear to have been less successful in buying off Democratic and Republican legislators in Pennsylvania than at the Federal level. Any guesses on why that appears to be the case? Also, is it really the case? Or is it the differences in the structure of Government between Pennsylvania and the Federal Government that accounts for the evident greater effectiveness of the health insurance lobby here? Or is it just that Obama, Reid, Pelosi, and Baucus took Medicare for All off table in Washington?
Well, the real battle in the legislature over this has yet to take place. So in the near future we’ll see who’s bought off and who’s not.
First of all, I think the fact that the media has largely blacked out our efforts has allowed us to make a lot of progress while flying largely below the radar. Wendell Potter has cautioned us that it is only a matter of time before the insurance industry comes after us with guns blazing. And we have had opposition in the Legislature, but so far we have managed to survive that mine field.
I need to set the record straight about Massachusetts. That system is not remotely similar to a single-payer system. It isin fact the model for the Baucus plan and it is a system only insurance companies and the politicians they buy could love. The media, with the help of some very dishonest polls, has spun Massachusetts as a big success when in fact it is a collosal failure. It requires people to buy insurance from private for-profit insurance companies, but it institutes no cost controls and it leaves insurance companies free to continue to game the system and to continue to screw policy holders. Many of the newly insured are finding it difficult to obtain care because the re-imbursement rates for subsidizerd patients are so low that doctors don’t want to admit those patients to their paractices. Many more cannot use their insurance because they still cannot afford the deductibles and co-pays. Premiums have continued to sky-rocket and arte the steepest in the nation and rising faster than the national average. The newest trend is for people to drop their insurance and instead pay the fine because the high deductibles make their policies all but useless when they get sick.
There is little doubt that if we can pass single-payer in the U.S. other states will follow. Eventually it will go national.
Oh! that IS exciting. thanks for sharing!
Awesome! Very good job. Let’s tag team ‘em :-)
Pennsylvania on one side, California on the other
Wow ! This is exciting.
Thank you to PA.
I hope this will be a movement across all the states.
Maybe the states will lead the single payer effort, never thought would see the day. I would guess CA will be next or NY.
I just have this image of miles-long lines of the lame and infirm hobbling across the Walt Whitman bridge to Philly, as if to Lourdes.
Let’s please limit this to Pennsylvania for a few years to see what comes out of it. Massachusetts has something very similar that is falling into deep debt. We don’t want 5 years down the road to have to have a Pennsyvania bailout, do we? Or maybe some don’t mind that.