Western PA Coalition for Single-Payer Healthcare

“HEALTH CARE: HUMAN RIGHT AND MORAL IMPERATIVE”

Presbyterian Church USA Takes Stand on Healthcare
Sponsors Single-Payer Conference in Pittsburgh

By Sandy Fox, President/Co-Chair, Western PA Coalition for Single-Payer Healthcare

PITTSBURGH, June 14—While Congress prepares for a contentious battle over healthcare reform legislation, citizens across the country are convening ten regional conferences sponsored by the Presbyterian Church USA.  Their mission, in fulfillment of a June 2008 overture passed by the Church’s General Assembly, is to educate and advocate for a national, single-payer model of reform. 

Organized by the Western PA Coalition for Single-Payer Healthcare, with prime sponsorship from the Presbyterian Church USA and 47 other local and national co-sponsors, about 200 participants gathered on June 14 at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in this city’s Highland Park neighborhood for a conference entitled  “Healthcare:  Human Right and Moral Imperative.”  The Coalition is an all volunteer grassroots organization whose mission is to educate and advocate for the passage of HR 676—“Expanded and Improved Medicare for All”—the national, single-payer universal healthcare bill introduced in the House of Representatives by Congressman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) with 83 co-sponsors. A single-payer plan substitutes one-payer, such as Medicare, for the costly overhead and profit of the private insurance company middlemen, offering all Americans full choice of providers, who remain private, and improving coverage for everyone.

The Western PA Coalition is a member of the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Healthcare—National Single-Payer Coalition, a diverse umbrella representing physician, nurse, patient, labor, faith, and civil rights organizations.   Members of the Leadership Conference recently protested the exclusion of single-payer expert testimony from Senate Finance Committee hearings on healthcare reform by standing up and speaking out during the hearings, resulting in 13 arrests.

Speakers for today’s conference included U.S. Representative Eric Massa (D-NY), Co-Chair, HR 676 Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives; PA State Senator Jim Ferlo (D-Highland Park), Co-Chair, State Legislators for Single-Payer, HR 676; Walter Tsou, MD, MPH, former Health Commissioner of Philadelphia, Past President of the American Public Health Association and a Board Member of Physicians for a National Health Program; and Dianne Bridges, a Western Massachusetts resident and critic of the 2006 Massachusetts healthcare reform legislation.

It is the Massachusetts model--including an individual mandate for purchase of private health insurance, a “connector” program linking people to insurance “products,” and government subsidies for those meeting certain income guidelines--that has become the template for Democratic legislation being written in Congress.  Bridges, who is a self-employed graphic designer and uninsured, argues “The Massachusetts mandated health insurance law is not equitable for all residents and is not synonymous with access to health care.  It has also created a morass of costly bureaucracy not necessary for the delivery of care.  For many, the ‘discount’ plans and subsidized premiums are too expensive, benefits are not uniform, and the insurance is unaffordable to use.  Others who can not afford insurance are forced to pay high tax penalties and are still uninsured.”   

Bridges warned attendees of the dangers of a Massachusetts-like Mandate, with or without a "public option," noting that only a single-payer system would be fiscally responsible and eliminate the disparities in coverage and cost that permeate the Massachusetts plan, which she sarcastically refers to as "Health Care for Some."  The "connector" program alone absorbs an additional 4 - 5 % in administrative fees, on top of government subsidies to purchase private insurance, further driving up the cost of healthcare.  

Bridges learned that the premium for a private insurance plan that would be assigned to her based on her prior-year gross income was not only unaffordable with or without the co-pays, but she would not be allowed to keep the doctors who have been treating her.

Bridges noted that the Massachusetts model is a disincentive to increase income for many receiving subsidies.  She shared the story of a friend on subsidized private insurance, who could not afford the cost of the co-pays for her diabetes medication and wanted to work overtime to purchase her medicine.  Unfortunately, doing so would have bumped her into the next higher income tier, cutting her subsidy significantly, making her premium unaffordable and rendering her both unable to afford to work extra hours and to receive the medication she needed.

In his keynote address, Congressman Eric Massa pledged "We will never surrender, we will never give up... every other industrialized nation on the face of this planet has figured it out, everyone except the executives in the board rooms of the insurance companies that are sucking us dry."  His address was interrupted several times by  applause, and ended with a standing ovation.

Dr. Tsou, who was one of three single-payer experts to testify June 10  at the House Education and Labor Subcommittee Hearing "Examining the Single Payer Health Care Option," presented a powerpoint illustrating the inequities in our present healthcare system compared to other industrialized countries and declared "A humane health care system should reinforce the safety net in the face of our nation's worst recession since the Great Depression, but our profits-driven system kicks millions of Americans in the gut and leaves them both jobless and uninsured."  In reading from his Congressional testimony, Tsou implored "Single payer is the only reform that can control health care costs... President Obama has stated that if he were to start over again he would favor a single payer system but that moving to single payer is too radical.  Well, I come from Philadelphia, where revolutionary ideas are celebrated, not dismissed.  Our most famous radical document begins with these words:  'We the People,' not 'We the Insurers,' 'We the People of the United States..."

PA State Senator Jim Ferlo, a long-time community organizer and advocate of a single payer system, called for people to exercise their voices against the profit-driven healthcare system, including encouraging members of AARP to challenge the organization on their partnership with one of the most profitable private insurance companies in the country, UnitedHealthcare.  Sandy Fox, President/Co-Chair of the Western PA Coalition for Single-Payer Healthcare, urged participants to join the grassroots movement and to come to the July 30 national single payer rally in D.C., "Medicare:  Made in America," to coincide with the 44th anniversary of the enactment of Medicare.

Hal Sanders, a former hospital administrator with Allegheny General Hospital and St. Johns, and a member of East Liberty Presbyterian Church, advocated successfully for the passage of the single-payer overture passed by the General Assembly, beginning with its adoption by the Pittsburgh Presbytery, a conservative group.  Chairing the Pittsburgh conference as Board Member of the Western PA Coalition for Single-Payer Healthcare, Sanders notes “Our profit focused-insurance controlled health ‘system’ is the biggest problem facing millions of working people in this country.  The emerging debate in Congress is corrupted by the money big insurance and pharmaceutical interests heap on our elected officials.  The clear majority of people in this country favor universal, single-payer healthcare.  Poll after poll verifies this.  It is time our elected officials respect the wishes of the public they are in office to serve."

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