RECENTLY PUBLISHED ARTICLES WRITTEN BY NSP MEMBERS
“Value-Based Payment Is the New For-Profit Health Care Industry” (Truthout)
“How This Rural Wisconsin County Put Publicly Funded, Non-Profit, National Health Care on the Ballot” (Common Dreams)
“Value-based payment has produced little value. It needs a time-out” (Stat)
“‘Value-Based Care’ is a Pretext for Privatization” (CounterPunch)
“5 Reasons We Need a National Organization to Energize the Fight for Single Payer” (Common Dreams)
OTHER GOOD READS
“Yes, Canceling Student Loan Debt Is Justified. Canceling Medical Debt Would Be, Too.” (Jacobin)
“U.S. Plans to Shift Bill for COVID Shots and Treatments to Insurers, Patients“ (WSJ)
STOP SELLING MEDICARE TO WALL STREET!
ACO REACH is a stealth program out of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) first developed under the Trump administration as Direct Contracting Entities (DCEs) to “manage” the care of seniors on traditional Medicare. It was rebranded as ACO REACH by the Biden administration, but the “new” program still maintains all the problems of DCEs: for-profit middlemen straight out of Wall Street, Medicare beneficiaries who get assigned without their knowledge or consent, and no Congressional oversight.
Thousands of activists are organizing against ACO REACH and the privatization of Medicare, by writing to their members of Congress, signing letters and petitions to President Biden, and calling the President, urging him to issue an executive order to end ACO REACH. This month, we highlight the fight of activists in TEXAS to stop selling Medicare to Wall Street: Representative Lloyd Doggett’s (D-TX) letter to CMS demanding an end to ACO REACH, and the Texas Democratic Party resolution to immediately stop ACO REACH.
Take action! Urge your MOC to follow Rep. Doggett’s lead and demand Becerra end ACO REACH. Find out more about DCEs and ACO REACH here.
REGIONAL SPOTLIGHT
WESTERN PA TOWN HALL HIGHLIGHTS THE NEED FOR NATIONAL SINGLE PAYER
The Western PA Coalition for Single Payer Healthcare and the Western PA chapter of the Physicians for National Health Program organized a citizens’ town hall on August 18, 2022.
Speakers discussed the bi-partisan privatization of Medicare, our unmet health care needs, and the economic, racial, and sexual disparities affecting millions of Americans and how a single payer system is the necessary foundation for any real change.
Town halls are one example of the organizing that needs to be multiplied in America tenfold to achieve NSP.
VOLUNTEERS STEP UP TO GET THE WORD OUT
Over the two weeks prior to the event, a dozen volunteers passed out over 1100 leaflets at farmers’ markets, clinics, health fairs and various venues to promote the town hall.
The hypocrisy of corporate health and “charity” care was front and center in Pittsburgh, PA, where Mission of Mercy Pittsburgh, a free 2-day clinic that serves patients without regard to insurance status, provided free dental, hearing, and vision visits to adults. Activists handing out flyers to promote the town hall to the more than 1,000 individuals who lined up at dawn, were threatened with arrest for “violating the Mission of Mercy’s private property rights.” In other countries, where health care is a human right, the thousands “begging for mercy” in Pittsburgh and elsewhere in America, do not exist. We need a national single payer system, where health care is a right and is free from corporate profit. We do not need charity.
“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.” – Dom Helder Camara
TAKING THE FIGHT FOR HEALTH CARE AS A HUMAN RIGHT TO THE U.N.
We’re proud to join March for Medicare for All and a number of other organizations in filing an official complaint with the United Nations Human Rights Council against the U.S. government for denying us our right to health care. Want to share your story with the UNHRC? Follow the instructions here.
NSP RESPONDS TO SCOTUS OVERTURNING ROE V. WADE
ABORTION IS HEALTH CARE AND HEALTH CARE IS A HUMAN RIGHT
The aftermath of the end of Roe v. Wade and its protections of the right to terminate a pregnancy has fulfilled all the catastrophizing predictions of abortion supporters and reproductive rights groups. As expected, states are activating trigger laws and currently abortion is completely banned in 9 states, banned after 6 weeks in 4 states, and restricted in some way in 31 other states. We are now seeing the abandonment of pregnant people because the state has prioritized the fetus over the autonomy of the host pregnant person. This has resulted in near catastrophic neglect in treating common medical complications that threaten the lives of pregnant people, such as ectopic pregnancies, spontaneous abortions, and pre-eclampsia, because treating these complications would result in removing the fetus, even though lack of treatment could kill the maternal host. Make no mistake, individuals who are pregnant will die because of these laws, it’s just a matter of time.
At NSP, we believe that health care is a human right, and abortion is health care. Ectopic pregnancy is abortion, miscarriage is abortion, and the decision to withdraw from producing a fetus is abortion. Abortion technology has developed scientifically like treatments of other medical conditions. To deny these treatments to patients is to deny the humanity of women and all people who can become pregnant. When abortion is fully understood as health care, legalization is no longer relevant.
The Reproductive Justice framework, defined as “the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities,” (SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective), guides the NSP position on reproductive health care. This framework moves the focus from rights to justice because the right to have children, or not, in a safe and sustainable community is meaningless unless there is a system of just distribution for free and accessible health care including contraception, abortion and prenatal care. Currently Americans are on their own to establish and pay for the care they desire or need for a pregnancy. They must prove their level of poverty or seek employment where health care is provided. Even then, pregnancy care including delivery results in medical bills that many can’t afford to pay. Not only is pregnancy a risky health condition, now it is neither affordable nor avoidable. We must imagine a world where health care is free at the point of service and prenatal care does not require co-insurance or special qualifications. We will be rewarded with healthy children and parents who can thrive together.