Are House Democrats gutting HR 676 (Medicare 4 All) in secret?

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Single Payer Gold Standard HR 676 Rest in Peace

HR 676, the gold standard single payer legislation for the past sixteen years, is no longer.

The House Democrats have decided that their single payer Medicare for All bill will not carry the HR 676 number.

They let that number go this week to a bill that reiterates “the support of the Congress of the United States for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Some in the single payer movement see the abandonment of HR 676 as a betrayal of years of grassroots activism, activism that drew 124 co-sponsors to HR 676 in the House last year.

Some in the single payer movement see the abandonment of HR 676 as a betrayal of years of grassroots activism.

Now, with Democrats in charge of the House, the Medicare for All single payer bill is being rewritten, watered down and renumbered.

“For the past 16 years, HR 676 was our gold standard bill defining a national improved Medicare for All single payer healthcare system for the United States,” said Margaret Flowers of Health Over Profit for Everyone. “It was based on the 2003 Physicians Working Group proposal by Physicians for a National Health Program.”

“Now that the Democrats can no longer ignore that their base is demanding a single payer health system, we have lost both HR 676 by number and its status as the gold standard. From what we have heard, as we have still not seen the text of the draft as promised, the new health bill being written by Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) has an unnecessarily long transition period and maintains the for-profit providers in the system. The delayed transition means more preventable deaths and suffering. Keeping the for-profits means higher costs and lower quality of care.”

Jayapal’s bill is being written behind closed doors.

Last month, single payer advocates called on Jayapal to share the draft text of HR 676 with the single payer movement for review and input. She has refused.

Kay Tillow of Unions for Single Payer says that “unless the movement acts quickly to assure HR 676’s ban on for-profit institutions is maintained, Jayapal’s new bill will remove this vital section of HR 676.”

“It’s a compromise that there is no need to make,” Tillow wrote recently. “We are getting hearings in this Congress. Why should we take the impact of the for-profits out of the discussion before the debate starts? We gain nothing. The ban on for-profits has been in HR 676 since the beginning. It did not stop 124 congresspersons from signing on to it. It did not stop unions, organizations, cities, counties, and many others from endorsing it. It was one of the popular provisions that all of those who have dealt with these for-profit hustlers welcomed.

Kevin Zeese of Popular Resistance didn’t miss the irony of losing HR 676 to NATO on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. It was King who said – “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”

“Congressman Jimmy Panetta (D-California) the son of former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, took HR 676 and turned it into a bill to support NATO,” Zeese said. “NATO is no longer a defensive force against the non-existent Soviet Union but has become a military aggressor working with the US in illegal wars among them Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya. It has not only expanded to cover most of Russia’s border with bases, missiles, and troops but has spread to Colombia which borders Venezuela, another nation the US is threatening with war.”

“To top it off, on April 4, the anniversary of the murder of Dr. King, NATO will be holding a 70th-anniversary meeting in Washington, DC. This is also the anniversary of King’s Beyond Vietnam speech. In that speech, King warned that ‘A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.'”

“Congressman Panetta’s replacement of healthcare for all with military aggressiveness exemplifies that spiritual death.”
Click to expand...

I got wind of this from Jimmy Dore

 
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The other document mentioned in the video

Letter to Congresswoman Jayapal – Release the text of HR 676
On Monday, December 17, 2018, the letter below was delivered to Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal requesting her to share a draft text of HR 676 with the single payer movement for review and input.

We urge you to take action – use the letter to draft your own letter to Congresswoman Jayapal and/or use this simple tool to call Congresswoman Jayapal’s office today and every day until the text is released.

Click here to call.
Letter:

The Honorable Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal
319 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Ms. Jayapal:

We write to you as longtime advocates for National Improved Medicare for All as embodied in the current version of HR 676. We have championed HR 676 for the past fifteen years, working with Congressman John Conyers and his staff.

We have a deep appreciation for your willingness to not only take on the lead sponsorship of HR 676 but also to create a Medicare for All Caucus. We believe we share a common vision of a national, universal, publicly-funded, comprehensive and high-quality healthcare system in the United States.

We understand that you are rewriting HR 676 before you introduce it in 2019. It is important to us that HR 676 not be weakened in this process, but be made stronger. We ask that you release a draft of the text of the revised HR 676 so that longtime single payer advocates can read it and share our views with you before the bill is introduced.

Transparency matters greatly to us as does getting the policy right. HR 676 must be strong from the outset so that as it goes through the legislative process, we can be sure the final bill will solve the healthcare crisis in the United States.

We know you have met with representatives of some groups. Opening up the process will ensure that the best information on expanded and improved Medicare for all is contained in the bill. And, it will ensure that the whole single payer movement is in support of the bill.

Some of your public statements recently have caused concern. In particular, statements about your desire to align the text with the Senate bill, S 1804, which is inferior to HR 676. Indeed, the Senate Bill is so deficient that many in the single payer movement cannot support it unless it is significantly revised. We want the House Bill to remain strong and fully supported by the entire single payer movement as the gold standard that the Senate must measure up to.

We are committed to winning National Improved Medicare for All and believe the movement is capable of winning this issue in the near future. It will be a historic victory for the United States. We want to help you succeed in leading this effort.

We urge you to release a draft copy of the new legislation before the end of the year so people can have input before it is made final. We are being asked to mobilize support for the new HR 676, but we cannot support a bill we have not seen.

Please let us know as soon as possible if you are willing to release a draft copy of the new legislation for input and when we can expect to receive it.
Click to expand...
 
Geek Nasty

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Real simple. Make Medicare a public option in Obamacare, but limit it to no more customers than the largest carrier in your state. And if all the private carriers go out of business, your state becomes a single payer state
 
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Obviously they're crafting legislation they can pass in the house that puts pressure on vulnerable Republicans.

It's not going to pass and if it does its a win. :ehh:
 
88m3

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Call Me James said:
Obviously they're crafting legislation they can pass in the house that puts pressure on vulnerable Republicans.

It's not going to pass and if it does its a win. :ehh:
Click to expand...

Obviously the neo-lib pill pushing pimps are doing this to backstab the progressive movement so they can enslave and sell them to big pharma. Another example is how the neo-libs halfheartedly defended ACA after we sat out the last few elections. We need to cast our lot in with the Republicans and they'll give us Medicare for All, reparations, and even more tangibles.
 
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