Single Payer Urgent Action

In 1997 one million Italians sent a blizzard of postcards to their parliament demanding an anti-landmine bill. It worked.

We could send A MILLION POSTCARDS to Max Baucus, the quasi-Democrat who's in charge of the Finance Committee and who has a stranglehold against single payer or even a strong "public option." He claims that the "American people don't support single-payer" tho polls show that 64% do. (If it's easier for you to send a scribbled note in an envelope, do that. Do put PLEASE SUPPORT SINGLE PAYER on the outside of the envelope too.) I use "This American does want single payer!" om my postcard. Please forward this info to your friends.

Senator Max Baucus
511 Hart Senate Office Building,
District of Columbia 20510-2602
Phone: 202.224.2651
Fax: 202.224.9412
(As the Finance chair, he has not just the future of Montanans, but of all Americans in his hands.)

White House comment line
202.456.1111 (6AM-2PM Pacific Time)
(I use speaker & redial til I get a ring. Hold has never been longer than 5 minutes.)

Postcard:
• Maximum size is 6” long X 4 1/4” high
• Minimum size is 5” long X 3 1/2” high
.28 cents postage tho you can use a 42 cent or 44 cent.

Some background thoughts:

The Medical-Industrial Complex Insurance Corporations add what value to your healthiness exactly? The idea of profiting on someone's health care is sickening. Health rights are not a privilege of the rich or lucky in other modern countries. Currently we have insurance corporations' profit coming between you and your doctor.

I'm focusing on sending postcards to Senate & House committee chairs exhorting them to bring at least a representative of single-payer for health care to the table. (Single payer not public option is how you save the annual big $300 billions on insurance corporations' paper-shuffling costs.)

I thought of postcards (which don't have to be opened to be read) because I just read about the wonderful surgeon-without-borders Dr. Gino Strada stirring up !a million postcards! from Italian citizens in 1997 (each with a picture of a mutilated child) to exhort the Italian President to signatory a landmine ban. That year the Italian parliament passed "a law banning the production, use, import, and export of land mines."

The equivalent of EVERY man, woman, and child in the whole states of Georgia, Indiana, North Carolina, New Jersey, Virginia, have NO health care in our United States of America. (Mnemonic: GINNV.)

Or you could say that the equivalent of EVERY man, woman, and child in the whole states of New York State, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Iowa have NO health care. (Mnemonic: NIPI.) Even more shocking & shameful put this way, isn't it? [bxA]

(You can find addresses for postcarding; phone numbers; fax numbers re health rights movement on congressdotorg.) http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt

cheers & Thanks,

ps .Keep an eye on Sheldon Whitehouse, Democratic Senator Rhode Island -- stunningly smart and humane.
pps.
Insurance corporation ceo annual compensation:
* Ron Williams - Aetna - Total Compensation: $24,300,112.
* H. Edward Hanway - CIGNA - Total Compensation: $12,236,740.
* Angela Braly - WellPoint - Total Compensation: $9,844,212.
* Dale Wolf - Coventry Health Care - Total Compensation: $9,047,469.
* Michael Neidorff - Centene - Total Compensation: $8,774,483.
* James Carlson - AMERIGROUP - Total Compensation: $5,292,546.
* Michael McCallister - Humana - Total Compensation: $4,764,309.
* Jay Gellert - Health Net - Total Compensation: $4,425,355.
* Richard Barasch - Universal American - Total Compensation: $3,503,702.
There are 1300 insurance corporations across the nation making for a snarled (& snarling) tangle of paperwork that is, well, insane.
.....
cartoon: Mark Badger