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 Published by The New York Times.

Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan and the second-most senior member of the House, today ripped into President Obama and Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, accusing them of “bowing down” to “nutty right-wing” proposals just to get a health care bill passed.

“I’m getting tired of saving Obama’s can in the White House,” Mr. Conyers, one of the most liberal members of the House and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said in a radio interview on “The Bill Press Show.” 

“I mean, he only won by five votes in the House, and this bill wasn’t anything to write home about,” Mr. Conyers said of the health care legislation that the House passed on Nov. 7. “The public option is only available—which is the only way you manage cost and give some competition to 1,300 other health insurance companies—the only way he could have got that through is that progressives held their nose and voted for the plan anyway.”   [more]

Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva yesterday announced his full support for a Congressional investigation of unusual drug company pricing behavior over the past several years. Grijalva, co-chair of the 83-member Congressional Progressive Caucus, said the Government Accountability Office (GAO) should look carefully at why pharmaceutical companies have raised prices on dozens of common prescription drugs far in excess of standard inflation.
 
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, among other lawmakers, sent a letter to the GAO yesterday requesting “ongoing monitoring of pharmaceutical manufacturer drug prices” and an inquiry into “recent trends in prescription drug pricing,” both of which Grijalva said are necessary to protect consumers from unfair and potentially predatory price changes. The call for an investigation is supported by the AARP, which found in a recent study that “average manufacturer price increases for brand name and specialty prescription drugs widely used by Medicare beneficiaries continued to far outstrip the price increases for other consumer goods and services” over the past year.   [more]

Join PDA's Israel/Palestine Action Group; learn more here.

Published by Arab American Institue.

A story universally missed last week was the extraordinary debate that occurred in Congress in advance of a vote on a resolution against the Goldstone Report. It may have been that this story not seen as newsworthy as others playing out at the same time: the fallout over Secretary of State Clinton’s “whip lash” performances in Jerusalem, Marrakesh and Cairo; Palestinian President Abbas’ announcement that he would not run in 2010; and Israel’s seizure of a ship it claimed was transporting weapons from Iran to Hizbollah.   [more]

Take Action: Tell Senators "Support Genuine Healthcare Reform"

Published by DailyKOS.

Does passage of a bill that funnels millions of additional Americans into the private insurance system, and the decision of House leaders to shut down debate on one single-payer amendment and scuttle another, mean the end of the years of efforts by single-payer activists to win the most comprehensive reform of all?

For the nation's nurses and the many grassroots activists, the answer is clearly no.   [more]

Take Action: Tell Senators "Support Genuine Healthcare Reform"

Published by OpEdNews. 

In the run-up to the vote on health reform legislation Saturday, the possibility of getting a vote on single-payer in Congress was looking more likely each day. Leaders were admitting privately if not publicly that single-payer grassroots groups were keeping reform legislation from dropping the public option entirely.

But, as Katie Robbins, assistant coordinator of the single-payer advocacy group, Healthcare-Now!, explained, those leading the mobilization for single-payer (Physicians for a National Health Program, Progressive Democrats of America, California Nurses Association, Public Citizen, etc) had a quite jarring experience in the 72 hours before a vote that Democrats now regard as a huge victory for health care reform.

Between Thursday and Saturday, the movement witnessed Pelosi's refusal to allow any amendments on single-payer to come to the floor, Obama's message to Congress to not allow a vote on single-payer so close to a vote on his health insurance bill, Kucinich's and Conyers' decision to not support a vote on single-payer in the House, and a vote on an anti-choice amendment brought to the floor by conservative Democrats and Republicans after Pelosi declared no amendments to the bill would be allowed to come up for a vote.   [more]

Healthcare-NOW! 2009 National Strategy Conference
November 14 & 15
St. Louis, Missouri

Join Medicare for All activists from around the country to plan our strategy to win guaranteed single-payer national healthcare. By learning and sharing from one another we can build on the tremendous successes of the last year and develop the plan to push Congress to implement Medicare for All, single-payer national healthcare.  [more]

Published by Physicians for a National Health Program.

A research team at Harvard Medical School estimates 2,266 U.S. military veterans under the age of 65 died last year because they lacked health insurance and thus had reduced access to care. That figure is more than 14 times the number of deaths (155) suffered by U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2008, and more than twice as many as have died (911 as of Oct. 31) since the war began in 2001.

The researchers, who released their analysis today [Tuesday], pointedly say the health reform legislation pending in the House and Senate will not significantly affect this grim picture.

The Harvard group analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s March 2009 Current Population Survey, which surveyed Americans about their insurance coverage and veteran status, and found that 1,461,615 veterans between the ages of 18 and 64 were uninsured in 2008. Veterans were only classified as uninsured if they neither had health insurance nor received ongoing care at Veterans Health Administration (VA) hospitals or clinics.  [more]

The following statement by Califirnia Nurses Assocation/National Nurses Organizing Committee Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro was released November 9:

Of all the torrent of words that followed House passage of its version of healthcare reform legislation in early November, perhaps the most misleading were those comparing it to enactment of Social Security and Medicare.

Sadly no. Social Security and Medicare were both federal programs guaranteeing respectively pensions and health care for our nation's seniors, paid for and administered by the federal government with public oversight and public accountability.   [more]

Join PDA's Stop Global Warming/Environmental Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here.

Published by Carbon Tax Center.

How do you get inside Washington D.C.’s exclusive Cosmos Club? With an invitation to present on behalf of the Carbon Tax Center in a “roundtable” discussion, “Transatlantic Perspectives on Market Mechanisms for Curbing Carbon Emissions,” hosted by the European Institute. Here’s my report of the panel this past Wednesday.

Peter Zapfel, Assistant Deputy Director General of Environment at the European Commission kicked off the session by conceding that the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) had experienced serious difficulties, but he contended that they are being remedied. The EU and the UN are improving oversight of offsets, he said, and the ETS is moving toward full auctioning of allowances and away from free allocation that gave windfalls to emitters. Zapfel also asserted that the ETS has tightened up its initial over-allocation of allowances. The overriding imperative for the U.S., Zapfel stressed, is to price carbon.  [more]

Published by Politico.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: PDA believes healthcare is a human right and remains firmly committed to Medicare for All, single-payer healthcare.]

After many months of twists and turns in which conventional wisdom changed too many times to count, a final vote on this year’s landmark health care reform bill is near. There were days and weeks when any hope for a public health insurance option seemed lost, yet this Congress is now a short step away from giving that option to the American people.  [more]

Take Action: Tell Speaker Pelosi "Reinsert the Kucinich amendment"

Seven Members of Congress have signed an October 30 letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi requesting that Democratic Leadership restore the Kucinich Amendment to the health care reform bill before bringing the bill for a vote.
 
Added to H.R. 3200 in the Education and Labor Committee, the Kucinich Amendment removes an obstacle for states that seek to enact a statewide single payer health care system.   [more]

Editor's Note: PDA believes healthcare is a human right and supports Medicare for All, single-payer healthcare.  We plan to continue this fight in the states.  Only single-payer will control costs, provide universality, and patient/doctor choice. 

Grijalva Expresses Disappointment With House Bill, Vows Robust Amendment

Congressman Grijalva announced his deep disappointment, yesterday, that a robust public option was not included in the House version of health care reform legislation released on Thursday. He said he would fight for a floor vote on including a robust plan in the bill, which will require approval by leadership and the Rules Committee.  [more]

Join PDA's End War and Occupations, Redirect Funding Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here.

Published by TomDispatch.

So you thought the Pentagon was already big enough? Well, what do you know, especially with the price of the American military slated to grow by at least 25% over the next decade?

Forget about the butter. It's bad for you anyway. And sheer military power, as well as the money behind it, assures the country of a thick waistline without the cholesterol. So, let's sing the praises of perpetual war. We better, since right now every forecast in sight tells us that it's our future.   [more]

The Mobilization for Health Care for All launched its national campaign of "Patients Not Profit" sit-ins at insurance company offices in New York City to demand an end to a system that profits by denying people care. The September 29 protest’s message was clear: Americans want the real "public option"—Medicare for All, a single-payer plan that puts patients first and cuts out the profit. Seventeen people were arrested in health insurer Aetna’s lobby for refusing to leave until the company approved all life-saving treatments for people on their files.

The campaign moved on to Chicago on October 8 with seven arrests at Cigna, and to nine cities across the country on October 15. The Mobilization for Health Care for All plans to organize future actions in as many cities as possible to win health care reform that ensures no barriers between Americans and health care, removing profit from the health care equation.   [more]

In an October 14 email to his supporters, Rep. Robert Wexler of Florida announced his resignation from Congress. Wexler will be the next president of the Center for Middle East Peace. Wexler served as representative for Florida's CD-19 and was an outspoken advocate for impeachment of Dick Cheney and George Bush.

 

[more]

Complete CPC and Allies News Archives