Our healthcare system is the most expensive in the world and it is badly broken. Most of the current proposals for fixing it include maintaining a large role for the health insurance industry. Including the insurance industry guarantees that these proposals will not provide affordable, high-quality healthcare for all Americans.

The insurance industry is in the business of making money, in part, by avoiding coverage for the people most likely to need it, by avoiding payment of claims and by passing along ever-increasing healthcare costs to patients and employers. Healthcare dollars spent on the insurance industry go to people who are neither preventing nor curing illness.

A different solution is necessary: a universal, single-payer healthcare system.

It's called "single-payer" healthcare because one organization makes all the payments to the private healthcare professionals and institutions that you, the patient, choose to use.

It's "universal" because it covers everyone.

By eliminating the duplication, paperwork, overhead, advertising, profits and excessive executive salaries of the insurance industry, and by negotiating lower drug prices with the drug industry, we can eliminate 15 to 30% of current healthcare spending.

Traditional Medicare, itself a single-payer system, spends only about 3% on these overhead costs. H.R. 676, the single-payer healthcare bill now before Congress, is also known as "Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act ".

H.R. 676 provides for single-payer health insurance for all U.S. residents. It covers all medically necessary care, including:  primary care and prevention; inpatient, outpatient, and emergency care; prescription drugs; durable medical equipment; long term care; dental, vision, and hearing care; mental health services; substance abuse treatment; and chiropractic services. 

In addition to covering all US residents, this bill seeks to improve the current Medicare program by closing the infamous "donut hole," negotiating lower drug prices with the pharmaceutical companies, and replacing all premiums, deductibles, and co-pays with a with a 3.3% payroll tax on employees and a 4.5% payroll tax on employers, a modest (one quarter of one percent) tax on stock and bond transactions, and a supplemental tax on our wealthiest Americans.

The Western PA Coalition for Single-Payer Healthcare is working to educate the public about H.R. 676 and to encourage our elected officials in Washington, Harrisburg and locally to support single-payer.

To learn more about single-payer watch the videos or read the articles listed to the left or read this brief summary of the legislation.

To get active for change, come to our next general meeting or to our next study group. Or contact us to arrange to have us make a presentation to your group or to talk about how you can get active for change in your community. And add your name to our e-mail list.

Endorsers

PENNSYLVANIA UNIONS ENDORSE H.R. 676 (LIST)

DOYLE CO-SPONSORS HR 676

	Congressman Mike Doyle Issues Strong Statement in Favor of H.R. 676 DETAILS

ALLEGHENY COUNTY COUNCIL PASSES RESOLUTION SUPPORTING HR 676 (DETAILS)

PITTSBURGH CITY COUNCIL EMBRACES
SINGLE-PAYER (DETAILS [PDF])

Your Financial Contribution

Please review the letter we recently sent to supporters asking for contributions. While we have no staff or offices, our continuous growth and ever-widening activities are producing expenses beyond what can be paid for out of our pockets or by passing the basket at our meetings. Read the letter here.

UPCOMING EVENT
A Special Invitation to the Public from
Senator Jim Ferlo:
Medicare Birthday Party
Join us as we celebrate the passage of federal Medicare and demand improved and expanded Medicare
for all, legislation that would create a single payer national health care plan.

President Johnson signs up President Truman
as Medicare's first beneficiary.

Wednesday, July 30, at Noon,
Teamster’s Temple Local 249 Social Hall,
4701 Butler Street in Lawrenceville.
Register and learn more (pdf)

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Big Day of Protest Against
Health Insurance Companies !!!
RALLIES in PITTSBURGH and NATIONWIDE (MORE )

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Where do the candidates stand on Single-Payer Healthcare and HR 676?
Here are two candidates who have clearly stated their support for Single-Payer Healthcare!
Candidate Steve O'Donnell 18th Congressional District SUPPORTS SINGLE-PAYER	Congressman Mike Doyle 14th Congressional District CO-SPONSOR OF HR 676
Steve O’Donnell won the Democratic party nomination for Congress in the 18th Congressional District over Beth Hafer and Brien Wall.  By the end of the campaign, all three candidates had come out in favor of universal, single-payer healthcare (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).  O'Donnell has made the commitment to co-sponsor HR 676 if he is elected to the new Congress. He will face incumbent Congressman Tim Murphy in the November election. Incumbent Congressman Mike Doyle won the Democratic party nomination in the 14th Congressional District. He has co-sponsored HR 676 in the last two Congresses.

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What's Congressman Tim Murphy doing on the $400,000 bill?
And who DOES he work for anyway?
FIND OUT!

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"Sick Around the World"

This Frontline program from PBS visits 5 modern capitalist democracies where everyone has healthcare.  Each country spends much less on healthcare than we do in the United States. Watch the full program online.  

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Articles

"Rendell's Remedy" by Sandra Fox
"Media Miss Bigger Picture in Healthcare Debate,     Ignoring ‘mandate’ plans’ record of failure", by FAIR
"Doctors Give Massachusetts Health Reform a Failing Grade" from Physicians for a National Health Program
"Forty Percent of Americans Lack Adequate Health Insurance, Survey Finds - Doctors and Nurses Call for Cure: National Health Insurance Act" from the California Nurses Association
"Fix the system with Medicare for All" by Dr. Marcia Angell
"Single-Payer Myths; Single-Payer Facts" from Physicians for a National Health Program
"Business Sense, Common Sense and Healthcare" by Morton Mintz
"Reclaim and Strengthen Medicare" from Rekindling Reform
"The press needs to tell us more about Canada’s single-payer health-care system" by Morton Mintz

HR 676 Text, Summary, Co-Sponsors and other information.

How crazy is our healthcare system?
FIND OUT!