2-3-07, 9:57 am
Today’s (2-2-07) News --President Bush wants to Slice and Dice Medicare and children’s health programs, H.R. 676 is the answer to that!
The story is here.
Healthcare-NOW and its thousands of supporters nationwide want an enhanced and improved Medicare for All, H.R. 676. How can we save Medicare? This is the way.
Medicare will be secure for all of us and will provide healthcare for all children and their parents and their grandparents as long as we need it under H.R. 676, single payer healthcare for all.
However, if we allow the debate to go on in the beltway this year around trying to keep Bush from cutting $70 billion dollars from Medicare or other incremental cuts or $35 billion or a few bucks less and focus all of our time on trying to keep him from cutting dollars from Medicare and the CHIPS program for children rather than getting to the central debate, then the current (new) Congress will have lost its momentum and be subject to rebuke and likely defeat by the voters in 2008 who voted for real comprehensive change in 2006, not incremental reforms.
This is the debate we must engage -- getting to healthcare as a human right, an entitlement for all under Medicare,
We need to focus our time and energy and our money, our organizations, our unions, our faith communities on the effort to save and expand Medicare for All and to enhance it and improve it so that it covers all of us for all of our healthcare needs. It is a no brainer.
If we do not do that, then the Bush administration and their long-term agenda to destroy entitlements, both Medicare and Social Security will have won the day even though the voters rejected them and the new Congress is largely opposed to such a devious and destructive approach. I can just see Bush and his strategists chuckling in their sleeves about how they can limit the healthcare debate, keeping it focused on children or on cuts to Medicare while at the same time taking incremental measures themselves to chop away at very base of our safety net.
We cannot afford to mess around with little amendments to this and that bill. We need to demand, as the voters have overwhelmingly, that Congress hold hearings NOW. We are recommending April 4th during Martin Luther King National Healthcare Month on H.R. 676, single payer, Medicare, national healthcare for all.
You must take action. We can’t do it for you. Healthcare-NOW is planning meetings with the leadership of Congress and modeling a new faith initiative to encourage our faith communities to help us fight for a national healthcare system now and to help organize a thousand hearings across the nation. But that is not enough.
But, you have to do it! You need to call or write Congressional leaders, Rangel and Pelosi, Stark and Dingell. You are the one who can get your Members of Congress to sign on. You can help organize hearings, Healthcare-NOW TRUTH HEARINGS in your community. You are the one who can contribute to Healthcare-NOW. www.healthcare-Now.org You are the one who can call your Senator and ask him/her to create a complimentary bill in the Senate.
If you would like our essay/analysis on the Bush attack on Medicare and children and how to respond to it or how to organize a hearing or contact your Members of Congress, or a free copy of the beautiful Martin Luther King Jr. National Healthcare Month poster, please contact our office,
Save Medicare! Fight for H.R. 676. Save the children too. Keep on working.We finally have a chance to win.
--Marilyn Clement, National Coordinator, Healthcare-NOW, www.healthcare-now.org 212-475-8350 or 1-800-453-1305
Click to send a message to your representatives to pass Medicare for all.
