Background Information
Congressional Visit Kit
Why Obama’s Public Option Is Defective, and Why We Need Single-Payer
Public Option: Myths and Facts
Refuting the Public Option
Talking Points
Financing single-payer national health insurance: Myths and facts
For your lobby packet
I. Materials that outline the case case for HR676
PNHP Research
H.R. 676 Factsheet
Recent PNHP Slideshow
The Physicians Proposal for National Health Insurance
II. Materials that demonstrate broad support for H.R. 676
Groups endorsing the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Healthcare
(The National Single Payer Alliance)
Conference of Mayors endorsement of H.R. 676
Polling Data on Single Payer
59% of Physicians Support Single Payer
III. Other Materials
Whe FEHBP Won’t Work
The Massachusetts plan: a failed model for reform
Myths and Facts about Single Payer
PNHP Tools for Change
The Health Care Deceit
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS | Counterpunch
The current health care “debate” shows how far gone representative government is in the United States. Members of Congress represent the powerful interest groups that fill their campaign coffers, not the people who vote for them. [Continue reading]
Public Option Advocates: Time to Come Home to Single Payer
By Mark Dunlea
As the various public option proposals in Congress for national health care reform become weaker every day, there is still time for its proponents to support what they really believe in: a single payer, Medicare for all type program. [Continue reading]
PNHP Factsheet
The Massachusetts plan: a failed model for reform ( Printable PDF )
The recent health reform in Massachusetts has been touted as a successful model for other states — and the nation — to follow. But declarations of its success are decidedly premature. The Massachusetts reform is “incremental,” in that it leaves the private health insurance industry intact and attempts to achieve universal access by expanding public programs and regulating the existing private insurance market. Like the incremental reforms that have a failed in seven different states over the last 20 years, the current Massachusetts plan is foundering on the shoals of its high cost. It is a failed model for national health reform.
PNHP Factsheet
The Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan: Why it won’t work as a national model for reform ( Printable PDF )
Some advocates of health care reform cite “the health plan that members of Congress have” as a model or template for the nation. Yet this plan, known as the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan (FEHBP), is actually a mix of private health insurance plans that carry the same problems of private plans generally: administrative waste, restrictions on health care providers, inequities and inadequate cost controls. FEHBP will not work as a health care reform model for the nation.
PNHP Factsheet
Financing single-payer national health insurance: Myths and facts ( Printable PDF )
PNHP Factsheet
The single-payer path to genuine health care reform: The United States National Health Insurance Act, H.R. 676 ( Printable PDF )
PNHP Factsheet
Background fact sheet: Single-payer national health insurance ( Printable PDF )
PNHP Factsheet
The “Public Plan Option”: Myths and facts
( Printable PDF )
Testimony of Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., to the Health Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee
The following testimony is the prepared text of the remarks given by Dr. Steffie Woolhandler at a hearing on health care reform conducted by the Health Subcommitee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on June 24 in Washington. [Continue reading]
Testimony of Quentin Young, M.D., to the House Ways and Means Committee
The following testimony is the prepared text of the remarks given by Dr. Quentin Young at a hearing on health care reform conducted by the House Ways and Means Committee on June 24 in Washington. [Continue reading]
Health: a fight for rights ( Printable PDF )
By Margaret Flowers | Baltimore Sun
Health care must become the civil rights movement of our time. And it is becoming clear that achieving guaranteed health care for every American will require all the tools that helped win earlier civil rights fights. [Continue reading]
Memo to Obama: Seize the Moment for National Health Insurance ( Printable PDF )
By John Geyman, MD | Tikkun magazine
Together with a sizable majority of Americans, I am again hopeful for the future of our country. My special concern, however, is for our failing health care system and how it is pricing health care beyond the reach of ordinary Americans. Our system has come to the point where none of the many incremental reforms will work. The business model of insurance has failed, and we need to rebuild the system on a social insurance model. [Continue reading]
Why Mandate Model Reform Plans Fail (Baucus/Kennedy/Obama) ( Powerpoint Slideshow )
Dr. David Himmelstein, Washington DC, November 11, 2008
Summary: Universal “mandate model” health reforms like those proposed by Senators Baucus and President-elect Obama have already failed in several states, including Massachusetts. Only single payer national health insurance can cover all the uninsured and control costs”
Talking Points: Why the mandate plans won’t work, and why single-payer “Medicare for All” is what we need ( Printable PDF | Web )
I Am Not a Health Reform ( Printable PDF )
By David U. Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler | The New York Times
IN 1971, President Nixon sought to forestall single-payer national health insurance by proposing an alternative. He wanted to combine a mandate, which would require that employers cover their workers, with a Medicaid-like program for poor families, which all Americans would be able to join by paying sliding-scale premiums based on their income. Nixon’s plan, though never passed, refuses to stay dead. Now Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama all propose Nixon-like reforms. Their plans resemble measures that were passed and then failed in several states over the past two decades. [Continue reading]
The time is now: Reform health care ( Printable PDF )
Editorial | Des Moines Register
A single system could reduce administrative expenses associated with facilitating thousands of different private health-insurance plans in this country. It could increase leverage for negotiating lower prices. It could facilitate the expansion of electronic medical records, which would streamline paperwork and help prevent costly medical errors. It would boost the country’s economy in the long run. [Continue reading]
Testimony of David U. Himmelstein, M.D. before the HELP Subcommittee
Read or watch Dr. David Himmelstein’s testimony before a House panel about how cost control and universal, affordable care are impossible without a single-payer system. [Click here to read or watch the testimony]
Coverage mandate will fail as a health-care reform plan ( Printable PDF )
By Rose Ann DeMoro | The Philadelphia Inquirer
It’s time for Congress to stop getting carried away with financial bailouts for big industries, especially when it comes to some of the most-profitable and least-responsible companies: the health-insurance giants. [
Continue reading]
Doctors, citing mandate for change, call on Obama, Congress to ‘do the right thing’ on health reform ( Printable PDF )
A group of over 15,000 U.S. physicians has called on President-elect Barack Obama and the new Congress to “do the right thing” and enact a single-payer national health insurance plan, a system of public health care financing frequently characterized as “an improved Medicare for all.” [Continue reading]
Massachusetts Health Reform: Solution or Stopgap? ( Printable PDF )
Massachusetts health reform (known as “Chapter 58”) has been billed as a “model for the nation” and a “blueprint to universal coverage.” This rhetoric has generated expectations that Massachusetts residents of all incomes will be able to get affordable coverage. This hype distracts us from what really has been achieved, what hasn’t, and the strengths and weaknesses of the political strategy that brought us the new law.
State Legislators for Single Payer Healthcare
Two dozen state legislators representing 16 states are circulating a letter to 7,500 of their colleagues across the country, asking them to sign a newspaper display ad appealing to President Obama and Congress to pass H.R. 676, the U.S. National Health Care Act sponsored by Rep. John Conyers Jr. The appeal stresses how the bill would reduce the adverse impact of the economic crisis and guarantee everyone care. The advertisement is tentatively scheduled to appear in a late-May or June issue of Roll Call, the Capitol Hill publication. The co-conveners of this project are state Sen. Jim Ferlo (38th-Pennsylvania) and Assemblyman Richard Gottfried (75th-N.Y.). [State Legislator Materials]
PNHP Petition Kit
Petition for patients to support H.R. 676
Frequently Asked Questions about single-payer national health insurance
Poster for your office waiting room
Barack Obama on single payer in 2003
Full quote from Obama in 2003:
“I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program.” (applause) “I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.”
Obama speaking to the Illinois AFL-CIO, June 30, 2003.