Annual Meeting & Leadership Training

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Cambridge, MA | October 23-24, 2009

PNHP’s Annual Meeting this year will be in Cambridge, MA on Saturday, October 24.

Online registration is now closed. Registration will be available at the door starting at 8 a.m.

We’ll host a Leadership Training for a limited number of participants in advance of the meeting, starting at noon on Friday, October 23 at the Harvard Faculty Club.

The Leadership Training Institute is currently full. Please contact matt@pnhp.org to be placed on the wait list.

Please join PNHP leaders at one or both events. Hotel rooms are limited ($209 single/double); reserve directly by calling the Royal Sonesta Hotel at 617-806-4200 or click here to reserve online with PNHP’s group code.

General Session — Grand Ballroom (level two, west tower)

8:00 a.m. — Registration opens

9:00 a.m. — Welcome and introductions
- Dr. Oliver Fein, PNHP President

9:30 a.m.
Health Politics in the Obama Era: Wither real reform?
- Dr. David Himmelstein, PNHP co-founder & Harvard Medical School

Massachusetts: No “model” for national reform
- Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, PNHP co-founder & Harvard Medical School

10:30 a.m. — Break

10:45 a.m.
Universal coverage and “bending the curve:” the evidence for single payer
- William Hsiao, Ph.D., Harvard economist & architect of Taiwan’s health system
- T. R. Reid, author and journalist, PBS Frontline and the Washington Post

12:00 p.m. — Luncheon panel
Health reform for sale? Exposing the role of the drug and insurance lobbies
- Dr. Marcia Angell, Editor Emerita, NEJM, on the pharmaceutical industry
- Wendell Potter, former CIGNA executive, on the insurance industry
- Dr. Oliver Fein, PNHP response

2:00 p.m. Workshops I

1. The history of opposition to NHI in the United States (Grand Ballroom)
- Ted Brown, Ph.D., University of Rochester

2. Cancer and the case for a single payer system (Skyline B)
- Dr. Lou Balizet, Oncologist, Pueblo, CO

3. Medical bankruptcy: one patient’s story (Skyline A)
- Donna Smith, California Nurses Association, appeared in “SiCKO”
- Dr. David Himmelstein, PNHP co-founder

4. “Mad as Hell Doctors” & civil disobedience: new tactics for reform (Skyline C&D)
- Dr. Paul Hochfeld, “Mad as Hell Doctors”
- Dr. Margaret Flowers, PNHP Congressional Fellow
- Katie Robbins, Healthcare-NOW!

3:00 p.m. Workshops II

1. State single payer plans from California to Vermont (Skyline A)
- Dr. Deb Richter, PNHP Past President (Vermont)
- Other state leaders TBA

2. Chapter organizing: tools and advice (Skyline C&D)
- Dr. Oliver Fein, PNHP President
- Dr. Ann Settgast, PNHP Minnesota
- Dr. Susan Hasti, PNHP Minnesota

3. Medical students and the movement for single payer (Skyline B)
- Danielle Alexander, former PNHP DC Fellow
- JB Fenix, California Physicians Alliance
- Liz Wiley, STAT/AMSA

4. Massachusetts PNHP chapter meeting (Grand Ballroom)
- Dr. Rachel Nardin, Chair, PNHP Massachusetts

3:50 p.m. — Break

4:00 p.m.
Where do we go from here? As a nation? As PNHP? (Grand Ballroom)
- Dr. Oliver Fein, PNHP President
- Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, PNHP co-founder
- Dr. Margaret Flowers, PNHP Congressional Fellow
- Donna Smith, California Nurses Association
- Tim Carpenter, Progressive Democrats of America

5:00 p.m. — Activist networking/break

7:00 p.m. — Dinner
- Presentation of the Dr. Quentin Young Health Activist Awards
- Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)
- Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.)

Invitation to PNHP’s 2009 Annual Meeting

Dear Colleagues,

We write to invite you to attend the Annual Meeting of Physicians for a National Health Program on Saturday, October 24, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It will be preceded by our popular Leadership Training course, starting at 1:00 p.m. on Friday, October 23, at the Harvard Faculty Club.

Registration for the Annual Meeting is now on-line at www.pnhp.org/meeting. To register for leadership training (space is limited), please call Matt Petty at 312-782-6006.

The theme of the meeting is “Evidence-based or market-based health reform? Health Policy in the Obama Era” with health economist William Hsiao, Dr. Marcia Angell (former editor, NEJM), PNHP co-founders Drs. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, PNHP President Dr. Oliver Fein, T.R. Reid (“Sick Around the World”), former Cigna communications executive Wendell Potter, and more.

The conference hotel is the Royal Sonesta (617-806-4200, $209 single/double reserve by September 23), with leadership training at the nearby Harvard Faculty Club.

PNHP is committed to promoting fundamental health care reform over the long term. Although proposals based on mandating that individuals purchase private insurance (like HR 3200) have the backing of the powerful drug and insurance lobbies (PhRMA alone has already spent $17 million on supportive ads), they certainly won’t solve the health care crisis. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that we’ve seen our single-payer proposal go from being “off the table” (Senator Max Baucus) to being “on the floor,” with a commitment from Speaker Nancy Pelosi to a full House vote on single payer in the form of the Weiner amendment after the recess (see press release, enclosed).

PNHPers have played a leading role in this historic development, testifying before committees in the House and the Senate on single payer, and before the House Judiciary committee on medical bankruptcy, and making numerous media appearances, including on Bill Moyers, Bill Maher, Fox News, CNN, Colbert, Ed Schultz, Democracy Now, and more.

This surge in media and congressional interest was almost certainly triggered by the courageous and dignified acts of civil disobedience before the Senate Finance Committee by PNHPers, nurses, and citizen activists in May.

As the administration’s inadequate proposals are either enacted or rejected, our single-payer proposal takes on even more importance as the only remedy for the health care crisis.

Please join us as we assess the status of health reform and plan PNHP’s policy and strategy for the future.
Yours truly,

Quentin Young, MD
National Coordinator

Ida Hellander, MD
Executive Director

P.S. Your membership in PNHP is more important than ever. Please consider renewing your membership or making a special donation at this critical time. www.pnhp.org/renew or www.pnhp.org/donate