Free Single Payer Health Care - Ideas for Change in America

What do you think is the most effective way to turn this idea into real policy? Add your suggestions here for how you think we should run an advocacy campaign to advance the idea – including the overall strategy, messaging, targets, and tactics.

Approach this from the standpoint that people reading this forum already agree with you on the importance of the issue, and are asking "What can we do to help make this a reality?"

You can also comment on and rank the suggestions submitted by others.

What part of this is hard to understand?

"Make employer contributions more fair by requiring large employers that do not offer coverage or make a meaningful contribution to the cost of quality health coverage for their employees to contribute a percentage of payroll toward the costs of their employees' health care."

In other words if your employer doesn't offer or pay enough towards your health insurance they will force you to have health insurance by making you pay for it out of your wages. What about the millions of Americans living paycheck to paycheck? I can't help but think that maybe taking money away from the people who need it the most to pay for health insurance they would have paid for if they could have afforded it in the 1st place isn't the right approach.

Why isn't anybody discussing this? This is not free health care. This is a huge payday for insurance companies! Why don't we try and get our national debt paid off so we can afford truly free health care for our citizens.

Suggested by X otix on 02/12/2009 @ 07:39AM PT
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Here are my ideas:
1) Many people have never heard of HR 676, so we need to make them aware in really simple terms. We can create awareness and popular support by organizing by metro area/region. We can do things like leaflet, hold letter-writing meet-ups, meet with leaders who care about social justice and have access to large groups of people, such as church leaders, get people to use Facebook and other social networking tools to let their friends know about this. We need to frame it really simply: we are the only wealthy industrialized company that doesn't do this, and why should we pay insurance companies so they can pay their CEOs millions to deny us health care when we need it most; half of bankruptcies are caused by medical bills and THREE QUARTERS of those had insurance. We need to leaflet people, give them our "elevator speech" in one or two sentences as we hand them the leaflet and include the name of their rep. on the leaflet; we need to collect e-mail addresses and develop large local e-mail networks of supporters.Locally, we also need to find a few people who went bankrupt because of medical bills and who lost their insurance when they lost their jobs who are willing to be interviewed, and we need to get local media to cover our efforts. It would help if we could also locally find a few Americans who have lived in Canada, Japan, France, etc., who would be willing to be interviewed about their experiences in those "scaaaaary" socialized medicine countries.
2) Once we start building up our local networks of supporters, we need to have really big coordinated pushes to get people to call their reps, senators, the White House, etc and write letters.
3) As we build steam and a groundswell of support, we need to include protests, trips to Washington and maybe a few big media events to really get the point across that the people are demanding this. My idea for a big media event is to get thousands of people with signs to visit the HQs of some of the health insurance giants to "fire" their CEOs. (We can have a huge pink slip - like those cheesy big checks they do at press events.) Front and center, waiting to be interviewed by the media, we have to have people with really good stories - again, people who have gone bankrupt because of their medical bills while they had insurance, etc. We have to demand, from our reps, to know if it's "uniquely American" to go bankrupt because you had the bad taste to become seriously ill. We have to demand to know why a simple, streamlined solution is impractical, but it's practical that most of us now have no choice but to go uninsured or pay hundreds of dollars every month to insurance companies so they can pay their CEOs millions (and billions in stock options) to deny us care when we need it and when we paid for it.
In summary, since 59 percent of people want this, we have to let them know there's a proposal out there to make it happen right now that they just need to get behind and two, we have to let our elected officials know that it would actually be impractical NOT to make this happen since we are all demanding it. We have to let them know we see through the rhetoric and there is only one choice - to catch up to the rest of the world.

Suggested by Allie Johnson on 02/12/2009 @ 07:22AM PT
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First and foremost - remove the "Free" from the idea.

Single-payer is Publicly Funded and Privately Delivered as envisioned in our country. Everyone Contributes and Everyone Benefits. Everyone In - No One Out.
At the state level there are many proposals already formulated into legislation, most notable SB840 in CA that will be reintroduced soon. At the national level there is HR676.

Suggested by bart woolery on 02/06/2009 @ 08:57AM PT
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Elected reps are generally "owned" by special interest money. We don't have the money to pony up, but, the reps have to be re-elected to get the money. Hence, our power really lies in making single payer a litmus test for re-election using the Internet to circumvent obstacles. As well, we need one, and only one slogan or catch phrase to help ignite the general public. So, let's get that marketing "slogan" with a simple, easily-identifiable logo, and begin overwhelming the elected reps at all opportunities via every channel we have (Internet, letters, emails, yard signs, bumper stickers, window decals, etc...). Charging a modest fee for materials and shipping will make this campaign self-sustaining.
Done right, this "campaign" will win. Sign me up!

Suggested by David Smith on 02/05/2009 @ 08:57AM PT
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Another way to sell it, and sell it we must, is for the administration to get corporate, academic, and especially small business owners to buy in. They'll do this to level the playing field by taking the nation's healthcare problems off their own backs and off their balance sheets. It will improve their own competitive position compared to other countries where their competitors don't have healthcare on their balance sheets.

It'll take local, regional, and national ads just like the presidential campaign. Obama, the Secy. of HHS, and the appropriate national, state, and local business leaders backing him up.

This would sell it to the American people. Then you ask the people for action -- deluging their congress-critters with email, snail mail, phone calls, etc. to get them to co-sponsor HR 676.

Suggested by Bruce Watson on 02/05/2009 @ 08:18AM PT
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Advertisement "theme"* idea:

PUBLICIZE ALL THE TIME ACROSS THE GLOBE:
WHERE THE USA RANKS IN THE WORLD relative to all other countries with respect to health care (or whatever else you may be advocating).
Make waves (multiple innuendos).
Run it a bit like a "horse-race" election campaign, but as cheap as possible.
Have as many as possible different kinds of medii "post" a few graphs with item names & numbers that keep track of the SCORE-BOARD ...
(much like various orgs and people
kept account(sic)down on the end of King George's reign).
People and orgs with websites can post it all over the internet.
"Post" it to DemocracyNow, BillMoyersJournal & LuaraFlandersSupersSharpActivist etcetc
when there is any change in our "status" (lol).
I'd bet both Stewart and Cobert could use it to their own benefits and help us all LAUGH, to not feel so sick about what we see going on out there in FantasyFinanceLand etc (laughter is among the best meds of all times).

Perhaps the hoarders of most of the money in the world have a sense of pride???
Even if they haven't any ..
"The People ARE Going To Know" ~Spaceb@lls
This is important, otherwise there would have been no need for such secrecy as We have been treated to by CorporateCowPotty. ...

*not sure "theme" is the right word but I think my meaning is clear ...

Suggested by Ani L. Schwartz on 02/04/2009 @ 11:07PM PT
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As a civil rights organizer working in the state of Vermont to pass a same-sex marriage bill, might it be better to implement universal healthcare by gaining momentum for individual states to adopt the system, until enough states passing resolutions, making it impossible for the federal government to not also endorse single-payer health care? You know, like a domino effect?
To Gerard Lefevre:While I applaud the idea of a "Health Insurance Consumer Bill of Rights," shouldn't our goal be to dismantle the private, for profit health care industry that has purposely denied care to millions of Americans in the first place? I think ideally, what we'd want is to sustain a single-payer system through a progressive tax, not by paying high premiums. Nobody should be denied coverage even if they can't pay a premium, because the idea is that healt care is a human right. Besides, we stand alone as the only industrialized nation that doesn't provide health care as a right of citizenship. It would certainly be a good way to jumpstart our waning economy...

Suggested by Matthew Kimball on 02/04/2009 @ 10:12PM PT
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(socialism vs. antisocialism)
A (slightly "shaggy") MOUSE TALE

A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife open a package. "What food might this contain?" the mouse wondered. He was devastated to discover it was a mousetrap.

Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning. "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!"
The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, "Mr. Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it." The mouse turned to the pig and told him, "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!" The pig sympathized, but said, "I am so very sorry, Mr. Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured you are in my prayers." The mouse turned to the cow and said "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!" The cow said, "Wow, Mr. Mouse. I'm sorry for you, but it's no skin off my nose."

So, the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer's mousetrap alone. That very night a sound was heard throughout the house -- like the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey. The farmer's wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught. The snake bit the farmer's wife. The farmer rushed her to the hospital, and she returned home with a fever.

Everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup's main ingredient. But his wife's sickness continued, so friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them , the farmer butchered the pig. The farmer's wife did not get well; she died. So many people came for her funeral, the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat for all of them. The mouse looked upon it all from his crack in the wall with great sadness.

So, the next time you hear someone is facing a problem and think it doesn't concern you, remember -- when one of us is threatened, we are all at risk. We are all involved in this journey called life. We must keep an eye out for one another and make an extra effort to encourage one another. EACH OF US IS A VITAL THREAD IN ANOTHER PERSON'S TAPESTRY; OUR LIVES ARE WOVEN TOGETHER FOR A REASON.

(don't know who wrote this story)

Suggested by Ani L. Schwartz on 02/04/2009 @ 08:22PM PT
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INFO:

"Practices in Health Care & Disability Insurance: Delay, Diminish, Deny & Blame"
By Peter Phillips & Bridget Thornton;
ucsaction@ucsusa.org
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the insurance lobby industry spends $130,588,217 per year to influence state & federal politicians. (p.6)

Suggested by Ani L. Schwartz on 02/04/2009 @ 06:50PM PT
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Please go on the PDAmerica.org website and sign the "Healthcare NOT Warfare" Petition (by doing so, your support for HR 676 will be sent to your Congressperson). Also, please use the website to sign up as a member of Progressive Democrats of America and get active putting pressure on your Congressperson to co-sponsor (or at least support HR 676).

Suggested by Bryan Wm. Blakely on 02/04/2009 @ 06:36PM PT
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