Single-payer vote canceled and next steps

SINGLE-PAYER VOTE CANCELED & NEXT STEPS November 6, 2009 Dear PNHP colleagues and friends, We are disappointed to report that there will not be a vote on the Weiner amendment for single payer today in advance of the vote on the House bill tomorrow. Two reasons were given by Rep. Weiner for withdrawing his amendment: 1. Speaker Pelosi said if she allowed debate on the single-payer amendment, she would have to allow debate on an expansion of the Hyde anti-abortion amendment, which the Democrats do not wish to do, and 2. There are at least 8 members who would vote against the House bill if they were given a chance to vote for Weiner's single-payer amendment. At this point the Democratic leadership is desperately counting votes; they can only afford to lose 15 votes total, and according to the Washington Post, they are currently down by 25 votes. Next steps and interpretation - 1. The fact that single payer got so far along in the House is a testament to the strength of our single-payer movement. The huge number of calls by single-payer advocates in support of single payer and the Weiner amendment in recent weeks have been noted by several members of Congress. Increasingly the public is learning what Harvard health economist William Hsiao told the New York Times, that "[y]ou can have universal coverage and good quality health care while still managing to control costs. But you have to have a single-payer system to do it." 2. It appears that nobody, particularly President Obama, expected our single-payer option to be alive in the Congress for so long. As you know, they attempted to keep it "off the table" from the very beginning. 3. The president was directly involved in the decision to not hold a vote on the Weiner single-payer amendment, and Weiner will be meeting with him later today. Stay tuned. 4. We need to increase pressure on the Congress and White House for Medicare for All through lobbying, speaking engagements, media outreach, grassroots organizing and civil disobedience. Senator Bernie Sanders will call for a vote on single payer in the Senate - this could come up anytime in the next month. Encourage your senator to support the Sanders bill (S. 703) and also an amendment he will offer for a state single-payer option. Our friends in the California Nurses Association/NNOC have already started lobbying visits to the Senate in D.C. Lobbying materials, slides, and other materials from our spectacular Annual Meeting in Cambridge are now on-line at www.pnhp.org/annual-meeting-2009 In the national office we are working on press outreach regarding uninsured veterans (we'll have a release for you early next week on this) and civil disobedience by physicians in support of Medicare for All (see press release, below). Members are encouraged to continue to publish op-eds, letters to the editor, and articles in support of single payer (see articles in today's Asheville, (N.C) Citizen-Times and the Palm Beach Post, below). 6. We have been asked how to tell members to vote on the House bill. Our response is that the bill "is like aspirin for breast cancer". As noted by PNHP Past President Dr. John Geyman in his latest blog post "No bill is better than a bad bill," even the public option in the House bill is a sham. In solidarity, Ida Hellander, MD Executive Director Quentin Young, MD National Coordinator Mark Almberg