single payer

  • Health Care Bill's Hidden Pitfalls

    The Obama and Congressional versions of health insurance legislation—assuming that a bill will pass—will affect workers in ways both obvious and not so obvious. At the moment, House Democrats are making their last changes to a smaller “reconciliation” bill that they would vote on either at the same time they consider the Senate’s version or separately.

    The bill’s final details aren’t yet known, especially on contentious issues dividing the chambers, such as abortion coverage.

  • 'Toxic' Health Bill or No, Labor's 'Medicare for All' Activists Dig In

    When I told friends I was on my way to the Labor Campaign for Single-Payer conference, held last weekend, they all said, “I bet that’ll be a bunch of long faces.” I predicted not—these were people who’d always known the health care reform debate in Congress would come up short. Yet the 124 delegates to the March 5-7 conference in Washington were upbeat.

  • ‘There Are No Tea-baggers in Soup Lines’

    Auto workers outshone the tea-party types as dueling demonstrations took place in the snow outside the Detroit Auto Show today. Small numbers of auto workers gathered to say government should use its role in the auto bailout to direct the factories toward job-creating green products such as high-speed trains and wind turbines—and should enact Medicare for All.

  • Senate Health Care Bill: A Step in the Wrong Direction

    An analysis by the Labor Campaign for Single Payer
    In a last-minute flurry of pork barrel deals and capitulation to powerful corporate interests, the U. S. Senate finally passed its version of health care reform on December 24. The bill was roundly condemned by nearly every labor organization in the country.

  • Should Single-Payer Activists Back Down?

    Despite many expressions of support and much advocacy for a single-payer health plan, it hasn't captivated the country in the lengthy health care debate nor moved a bill through Congress. The onus is on single-payer supporters to “take a step back," an AFL staffer argued.

  • Labor Rallies for Health Care Reform, but Keeps it Vague
    Jane Slaughter
    Jul 15 2009 - 1:56pm

    It’s no secret that the union movement is divided on health care reform. Resolutions favoring “Medicare for All,” a single-payer system, have been passed by 558 unions, central labor councils, state federations, and other union organizations. Yet in practice leaders of many of those same unions have acted as if actual single-payer legislation (Representative John Conyer’s HR 676 and Senator Bernie Sanders’ S703) didn’t exist.