Exciting Healthcare Update
Dear Friends,
With your support, your phone calls, your emails, we won a major legislative
victory today for a state single payer health care option in the House of
Representatives in Washington, DC. The House Education and Labor Committee
approved the Kucinich Amendment by a vote of 27-19, with 14 Democrats and 13
Republicans voting yes.
The amendment propels the growing single payer health care movement at the
state level. There are at least ten states which have active single payer
efforts in their legislatures. They are California, Colorado, Illinois,
Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington.
The amendment mandates a single payer state will receive the right to waive the
application of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), which has
in the past been used to nullify efforts to expand state or local government
health care.
Under the Kucinich Amendment a state's application for a waiver from ERISA is
granted automatically if the state has signed into law a single payer plan.
With the amendment, for the first time, the state single payer health care
option is shielded from an ERISA-based legal attack. Now that the underlying
bill has been passed, as amended, by the full committee, we must make sure
that Congress knows that we want the provision kept in the bill at final
passage!
The state single payer option was one of five major amendments which I
obtained support to get included in HR3200. One amendment brings into
standard coverage for the first time complementary and alternative medicine,
(integrative medicine). Another amendment drives down the cost of
prescription drugs by ending pharmaceutical industry's sharp practices
manipulating physician prescribing habits. An amendment stops the insurance
industry from increasing premiums at the time when people are not permitted
to change health plans; and finally an amendment imposing a requirement on
insurance companies that they disclose the cost of advertising, marketing and
executive compensation expenses (which generally divert money from patient
care).
Please make sure you post this message on your social networking site, ask
all your friends to get involved and encourage everyone you know to sign up
at www.Kucinich.us so we can build
full momentum behind this movement for real health care.
Let's do this!
