Day 1! Will We Seize the Time?
Day 1! The legislative session is set to open with a bang on January 5th as the Healthcare Is A Human Right campaign rallies at 12:30 pm in the Statehouse’s Cedar Creek Room, to demonstrate the broad support for moving forward to achieve universal health care, delivering thousands of petition signatures calling on the legislature to move forward with the design for a new healthcare system based on human rights principles with single-payer financing. (If you haven't signed the petition go to: workerscenter.org/petition2010).
The Vermont Workers' Center recently released a People' Budget Report about the broad economic crisis in our communities and the failure of public policies to meet our basic need. The need for fundamental policy changes recommended by this report are seconded by another new study, the State of Working Vermont 2010 by the Public Assets Institute which highlights the toll taken by the Great Recession and Vermont's failed efforts at job creation leading up to it. This report argues that policy makers need to re-examine their sustainable job creation strategy because current policies, especially business tax breaks, are not working.
We believe we need to come together to fundamentally change these priorities. Following the Statehouse rally we will move to the Pavilion Auditorium for a People' Movement Assembly from 1pm - 3pm to continue to connect our struggles and bring together leaders across movements to build unity amongst groups fighting for a broad range of issues facing working class and low-income Vermonters.
The Workers Center believes that organizing for healthcare and workers’ rights are directly connected to many of critical issues facing working and low-income families in Vermont. Join us at a to discuss strategies of uniting across movements, including:
- A healthcare system that works for everyone
- Livable wage jobs, paid sick days and safe working conditions
- Quality early education and affordable childcare
- Disability rights and protecting important social programs
- Safe and affordable housing and ending homelessness
- Fighting racism and all forms of oppression
- Climate justice and healthy environment
The letdowns and unfulfilled promises of Obama’s first two years demonstrate that politicians of the two corporate parties will not deliver on their campaign pledges unless we force them to. We must not let that happen here in Vermont with our new governor, Peter Shumlin. As Workers Center director, James Haslam, says, “When the Vermont Legislature reconvenes Jan. 5, let’s make it Day 1 in building a new people’s movement to mobilize for and demand policies that serve the interests of our workplaces, our families, our communities, our planet and the future our children will inherit. Come stand with us and make your voice heard.”
Comments
Traven, Jeanne Keller makes
Traven,
Jeanne Keller makes the case for why single payer in Vermont alone is impossible. Please rebut her points if you can.
http://7d.blogs.com/blurt/2010/05/health-care-rally-draws-hundreds-to-mo...
"Single Payer" Is Not the Point
The anonymous poster erroneously assumes that the goal of the Healthcare Is a Human Right campaign is a "single payer" healthcare system. The posting implies that obstacles to achieving a pure "single payer" system preclude achieving the campaign's goal of a healthcare system that would satisfy our community's needs.
While minimizing the number of payers in the healthcare system would undoubtedly have several benefits -- not limited to "eliminating administrative costs" -- merely changing the way that we pay for healthcare would not be enough to fix our broken healthcare system anyway, even if a pure single-payer system were achievable in a single state and with the current constraints presented by federal law.
So arguing about the possibility of "single payer" is missing the point.
Keller's blog posting does little more than demonstrate some knowledge of the situation, while she claims not to be arguing for the status quo. Meanwhile, Vermonters are suffering and dying, needlessly, because of our broken healthcare system. We do not need anyone to continue to enumerate the obstacles; they are well known. We need a solution.
When the Healthcare Is a Human Right campaign won passage of Act 128 (S.88), which calls for the design of a new healthcare system for Vermont, we began to find a solution. The team being lead by Harvard economist William Hsiao is working to generate precisely the answers that Keller calls for -- including the application of macro- and micro-economic models that will estimate the "unintended consequences" that she refers to.
We know that our healthcare system fails to provide care to everyone who needs it. We can see clearly that it is focused less on providing necessary care than on generating revenue for the health insurance, pharmaceutical and other medical industries. As Keller states, billions of dollars are being spent on healthcare. With a portion of that money, powerful vested interests shape federal healthcare policy to suit them, which -- among other things -- means trying to prevent states from "innovating" about healthcare.
Act 128 was the result of the concerted, collective efforts of thousands of Vermonters rejecting the status quo. It was a signal accomplishment of a burgeoning social movement that rejects the privatization of public goods, that rejects the commoditization of human lives and that rejects public policy that serves the desires of a ruling class at the expense of the vast majority of people.
We were told that enacting healthcare reform legislation in 2010 was not politically possible. Yet thousands of Vermonters ignored that assessment, and they made Act 128 possible. Whatever else needs to be made possible, we will make possible. See what I mean?
"Whatever else needs to be
"Whatever else needs to be made possible, we will make possible. See what I mean?"
Not really, because once again you've made no attempt to articulate how you're going to actually do anything.
Hsiao is already signaling that any plan described in the report mandated by Act 128 (and that's all it is - the commissioning of a report) will cost a fortune. Guess what, Vermont doesn't have a fortune. This is part of why Clavelle's "plan" was so ridiculous, he made no mention of where he was going to get his startup costs.
I swear, this has to be one of the only places on the planet where people declare victory over a problem ten minutes after declaring that they're going to start thinking about a way to solve it.
"...calling on the
"...calling on the legislature to move forward with the design for a new healthcare system based on human rights principles with single-payer financing."
So either you're wrong, or Traven is wrong. Discuss among yourselves.
BTW, do you really consider Act 128 "healthcare reform legislation"?