By Chris Gray
The ink may not be dry on the health bill signed into law by President Obama, but Illinois state Rep. Mary Flowers is undeterred in her plans to continue to push for single-payer health care in the president’s home state.
“I’ve gotten lots of calls from my constituents asking where they could sign up for health care,” said Flowers, a Democrat from Chicago’s South Side. “It’s a long battle just to explain this legislation. It would’ve been a lot easier just to have single payer.”
The new health law retains a dominant role for the for-profit, private health insurance industry, with all of the costly, unnecessary paperwork and bureaucracy that comes with it. In contrast, a single-payer system would create a streamlined public agency to handle all medical bills, similar to how Medicare operates today, and use the resultant savings to assure everyone comprehensive, quality care.
On the national level, supporters of single-payer reform have backed two pieces of legislation: H.R. 676, the U.S. National Health Care Act, sponsored by Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Ill., and 87 other congresspersons, and S. 703, the American Health Security Act, sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. It’s expected that both bills will remain in the legislative hopper.
Meanwhile, Flowers plans to reintroduce her state-based single-payer bill, HB 311, next January. She has pledged to rename it the Nicholas Skala Health Care for All Illinois Act.
During the present legislative session, HB 311 will likely not make it out of committee. Flowers said the other legislators were reluctant to move forward with a state single-payer bill until they saw what Congress would pass in Washington. She said one of her health care committee meetings failed to even attract a quorum.
But Flowers said that once people see how inadequate the federal legislation is, her bill should gain more support.
“We will be paying money into the insurance companies without getting any coverage,” Flowers said. “I think quite frankly it’s going to help [state single-payer reform] when people see that the insurance companies will not cooperate, constantly raising rates on deductibles and premiums.”
The bill, originally written by Nick Skala, a founding member of the single-payer advocacy group Health Care for All Illinois who died in 2009, has been introduced to the Illinois General Assembly several times.
Flowers said she may not have gotten so involved with single payer if not for the efforts of Skala and Dr. Quentin Young, the national coordinator for Physicians for a National Health Program.
“Nick’s whole life was making sure that the people of Illinois have access to health care. It was only fitting that the least we could do to remember him was to name the health care bill after him,” she said.
In 2008, Flowers, with the help of 35 co-sponsors, including House Speaker Michael Madigan, was able to shepherd the Health Care for All Illinois Act out of committee, but it never came up for a vote in the full House.
House Bill 311 was greeted with significant grassroots support during that session. In a “Single Payer Lobby Day” on March 24, 2009, more than 150 residents and health care providers from across the state of Illinois, representing at least 30 organizations, descended on Springfield to show their support for the bill. The large crowd forced the House Health Care Access Committee to move into the largest hearing room at the State Capitol to accommodate them.
Champaign County alone brought two dozen people to the hearings as well as a couple thousand petitions in support of single-payer legislation in Illinois, said Claudia Lennhoff, executive director of Champaign County Health Care Consumers.
That support still exists, she said. “I think people are hungry at the opportunity to do something around single payer,” Lennhoff said. She said it was the grassroots support that moved Champaign’s state representative, Naomi Jakobsson, to co-sponsor the bill. “People need to know that they made a real impact.”
About 70 members of the Illinois Single Payer Coalition met recently in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, talking about grassroots efforts from East St. Louis to Springfield to Chicago and its suburbs. While many of the activists were unhappy, if not incensed, that single-payer national health insurance was pushed to the side during the congressional debate, they show no signs of giving up on their goal.
To find out more about the work of the ISPC, visit www.ilsinglepayercoalition.org. To learn more about Health Care for All Illinois, the state affiliate of Physicians for a National Health Program, visit http://healthcareil.org/.
Chris Gray is an intern at Physicians for a National Health Program (www.pnhp.org).