CAROL PARIS, M.D., via Clare Fauke, clare [at] pnhp.org, @pnhp
Dr. Paris is president of Physicians for a National Health Program, which just released the statement “Doctors’ group: House leaders are out of touch with majority of Americans demanding Medicare for all,” which states: “This vote shows that House leaders are not only out of ideas on health care, but out of touch with their own constituents. … In polls and at town hall meetings, Americans consistently demand Medicare for all, the only plan that is universal, sustainable, and proven to work in every other industrialized nation.”
A single payer proposal is progressing at the state level, perhaps most notably in California. The San Francisco Examiner reports: “Universal health care becomes a real possibility in the Golden State.”
TOM GALLAGHER, tgtgtgtgtg [at] aol.com
Gallagher is chair of the San Francisco chapter of Progressive Democrats of America and is a delegate to the upcoming California Democratic state convention. He once represented Boston in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. He is the author of The Primary Route: How the 99% Take On the Military Industrial Complex.
He recently wrote the piece “A California Fix From Out of Old Massachusetts?” which states: “Having twice passed single payer legislation, the Democratic-controlled California legislature four years ago disappeared the bill. There is no record of the legislative leadership telling members they couldn’t file the bill, it’s just that none, in either branch, did — even though a bill had been filed in each of the seven previous two-year sessions. The salient fact here is the legislature had actually put the bill on the governor’s desk when the governor was Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now it’s Democrat Jerry Brown and as one observer bluntly put it, ‘A Democratic legislature will pass single payer when there’s a Republican Governor but not when there’s a Democratic Governor — unless he wants it.’ The legislative leadership’s previous support for single payer had been for show only.”
