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Cong. Dennis Kucinich Thanks Progressive Democrats of America on 5th Anniversary
Report on AFL-CIO June 25th Rally for Healthcare Compromise
Labor Rallies for Health Care, But Keeps it Vague
by Jane Slaughter
Labor Notes Newletter
It’s no secret that the union movement is divided on health care reform. Resolutions favoring “Medicare for All,” a single-payer system, have been passed by 558 unions, central labor councils, state federations, and other union organizations. Yet in practice leaders of many of those same unions have acted as if actual single-payer legislation (Representative John Conyer’s HR 676 and Senator Bernie Sanders’ S703) didn’t exist.
Instead they’ve promoted milder changes that will leave private insurance companies in place, instead of kicking them out of the temple, as every other industrialized country-from Canada to Japan-has done. In effect, labor’s leaders are placing on the table first what logically should be their fall-back position. They’ve gone along with the D.C. consensus that the most that can be won is a plan that includes a “public option” to compete in the marketplace with private companies.
And they’re not wrong about the unwillingness of this Congress to buck the system. Conyers was asked in May, “What would it take this Congress to pass single payer?” He replied, “Nuclear weaponry.”
Even so, the staunchest single-payer advocates believe they will win most by continuing to agitate for what they really want rather than a compromise. These folks see large amounts of activists’ anger and energy wasted.
RALLY FOR?
The June 25 rally at the Capitol sponsored by the AFL-CIO and Health Care for America Now (HCAN), both of which steer clear of single payer, was attended by 7,000 people. But the organizers “didn’t know what to get them fired up about,” said Mark Dudzic of the Labor Campaign for Single Payer. “It was a good, high-spirited group of people, who want to fight, who honestly believe they’re fighting for national health care,” he said. “A lot of the focus of the rally was to mobilize anger at private insurance companies, and it’s tragic where the leaders want to leave those folks.”
Continue reading Report on AFL-CIO June 25th Rally for Healthcare Compromise
Teamsters Local 6-505 Endorses HR 676 Single Payer National Healthcare
In Maryland Heights, Missouri, Chico Humes, President of Teamsters Local 6-505M, Graphic Communications Conference/IBT, reports that his local has endorsed HR 676, single payer healthcare legislation introduced by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI).
Altmire: Expect congressional action on health care
Beaver County Times
By J.D. Prose, Times Staff
Published: Monday, June 29, 2009 10:10 PM EDT
MARSHALL TWP. — After meeting with his health-care advisory board Monday, U.S. Rep. Jason Altmire said Americans should expect congressional action before 2009 ends.
“We are going to pass a health-care reform bill in Congress this year,” said Altmire, D-4, McCandless Township. “We need to find a way to bring down the cost of health care.”
Trying to determine how to do that was the main topic Altmire and about 35 health-care professionals and business people privately discussed prior to a press conference at Medrad Inc., a medical device company in Marshall Township.
Continue reading Altmire: Expect congressional action on health care
UMWA Local 9926 Endorses HR 676 – Single Payer Healthcare
In Booneville, Indiana, Roger Anderson, President of United Mine Workers (UMWA) Local 9926, reports that his local has also endorsed HR 676. Roger Anderson said: “The UMWA has been at the forefront of health care. It was one of the first unions to negotiate health care for its working members and retirees and the only union to build hospitals in rural areas to guarantee access to health care for its members and their families. With the present system in place, the members of Local 9926 understand that the health care they have fought for and were promised for life can be taken away overnight.”
Put the Health Profiteers ‘Off the Table!’
Thirty Arrested at WV ‘Mountaintop Removal’ Protest
Mountaintop removal protest:
Finding a path forward?
by Ken Ward Jr.
The Charleston Gazette
SUNDIAL, W.Va. — It was quite a scene outside Massey Energy’s Goals Coal Co. operation Tuesday.
First, there were the protesters — a mix of West Virginia residents and those darned out-of-state agitators — playing some hillbilly music, doing some speechifying, and then marching down W.Va. 3 in the hopes of being carted off by State Police troopers, joining the ranks of those who have been arrested in the growing civil disobedience campaign against mountaintop removal.
Then, there were the miners and their families. They revved up motorcycle engines, honked air horns and did one heck of a lot of yelling, all trying to drown out the protesters. Then, of course, they massed together, blocking the entrance to the mine site, thwarting any hopes the other side had of trespassing on Massey property.
And oh yeah, Daryl Hannah was there — and she smiled and waved as she got hauled off in a nice, blue-and-gold trooper cruiser. There was also some guy named James Hansen, who happens to be one of the world’s top climate scientists. He got arrested, too.
Continue reading Thirty Arrested at WV ‘Mountaintop Removal’ Protest
Single-Payer, Medicare for All, is Best Solution to Crisis
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 24, 2009
CONTACT: CNA/NNOC/PDA
Charles Idelson, 510-273-2246
or Tim Carpenter, 413-320-2015
Nurses, Progressive Dems Seek Stepped Up
Action for Real, “Robust” Healthcare Reform
WASHINGTON – June 24 – With action heating up in Washington for enactment of comprehensive healthcare reform, the nation’s largest RN union and professional association joined with progressive Democratic Party activists today in calling for the most “robust” reform of all to repair the nation’s healthcare crisis, by enacting a single-payer system in the form of an expanded and updated Medicare for all.
In a joint statement, the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association and Progressive Democrats of America announced they are stepping up calls and other lobbying efforts to urge Congressional leaders to include discussion of the single-payer option in upcoming deliberations on the healthcare reform legislation now advancing in Congress.
Continue reading Single-Payer, Medicare for All, is Best Solution to Crisis
Beaver County Blue: Voice of the 17th CD of Progressive Democrats of America 