PNHP Western Washington Meeting

It is time to add your voice. PNHP meeting agenda: By the time of our September 20th meeting, Senator Sanders will very likely have introduced the Medicare for All legislation that he has been promising for several months. We will spend this meeting looking at the legislation and comparing it to HR676 which has been our “gold standard,” and if and how we can support it. At this point (August 31) he is still considering the final version so your input before Sept 13 is important.
http://healthoverprofit.org/sanders/

“At the start of the August congressional recess, Senator Bernie Sanders announced that he will introduce a senate bill this September “to expand Medicare to cover all Americans.” Since the election, the movement for improved Medicare for all, has been urging Sanders to introduce a companion to John Conyers’ HR 676: The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, which currently has a record 117 co-sponsors in the House and is considered the gold standard by the movement. Recent reports are that Sanders’ bill falls far short of HR 676 in fundamental ways. In fact, Sanders’ bill is a multi-payer system not a single payer system. His bill reportedly would allow private insurers to compete with the public system, allow the wealthy to buy their way out of the public system and allow investor-owned health facilities to continue to profit while providing more expensive and lower quality health care. As a leader in the Democratic Party in the Senate, Sanders is trying to walk the line between listening to the concerns of his constituency, which overwhelmingly favors single payer health care, and protecting his fellow Democrats, whose campaigns are financed by the medical industrial complex. Sanders needs to side with the movement not those who profit from overly expensive US health care.”