OC Healthcare for All and other groups peeved about the current health-care debate march to the Ronald Reagan Federal Building in downtown Santa Ana tonight and rally in support of the following message:
Both sides–the ones personified by President Barack Obama and town-hall protesters–are dead wrong about how to cure our ailing health-care system.
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Unlike the leadership of the Democratic or Republican parties, the AARP or the insurance industry, OC Healthcare For All is calling for a single-payer solution to the health-care mess. They are joined by OC Communities for a Democratic Society, CODO Verde/OC Greens, Orange County's Catholic Worker community, OC Peace Action, California Peace Academy, Lincoln Republicans, Unitarian Universalist Church of Anaheim's Social Justice Committee, Patrick Henry Democratic Party Club of Orange County, Progressive Democrats Against Another Bailout and Santa Ana Food Not Bombs.
“H.R.
3200 is the worst of all possible worlds for consumers and taxpayers,” states the rally announcement. “It creates a mandate to purchase taxpayer-subsidized health insurance
plans that offer limited benefits and have high out-of-pocket expenses.
It grants a huge windfall (aka bailout) to private health insurance companies, while still leaving millions of people at financial and health risk.
“The so-called 'public option' will do nothing to alter this scheme. We will still have a dysfunctional health care system organized around private health insurance companies. 'Public option' will give these corporations a strong incentive to dump their sickest (and costliest) patients on the backs of taxpayers in order to make more money. Millions will still be left under- or uninsured and those who can afford it–even if they are eligible for taxpayer subsidies–may end up paying higher premiums and deductibles and get less healthcare in return.”
The real solution, according to this coalition, is “Medicare For All,” or the single-payer option, which, they claims, would save more than $400 billion per year
nationwide in healthcare costs, enough to provide health coverage for everyone. So why isn't that being touted in Washington?
“President Barack Obama and
Democratic Party politicians deliberately kept it off the table because
their election campaigns were largely funded in record amounts by the
multi-billion dollar insurance, pharmaceutical and for-profit health services industries who stand to make hundreds of billions in profit from H.R. 3200,” the coalition claims.
Single-payer would give patients choice, hospitals and doctors more time to spend on care and everyone coverage for health care, prescription drugs
and medical supplies, say the ralliers who plan to meet at 4th and Main streets in Santa Ana at 6 p.m. and march to the Ronald Reagan Federal Building at 411 W. Fourth St. For more information, email here or call (714) 235-6083.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.