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51
MILLION
Americans have no health insurance |
FED UP?
READY FOR POWER? |
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League
of Uninsured Voters Organizes to Build a New Health System (Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania) Americans without health insurance have quit
waiting for lawmakers to ensure affordable health care. They
have begun to protect their lives by raising demands, defying
regulations, and building an independent medical system.
The failure of federal and state government and health insurers to provide affordable health services for all Americans has stimulated their rebellion. Asserting that insurance laws are made to protect HMOs rather than Americans, LUV founder Paul Glover says that "legislators and regulators are bribed with money and jobs" to keep health insurance highly profitable. State insurance laws which require large initial capitalization and mandated coverage currently prevent low-income Americans from pooling money to self-insure. "Their laws are a cage for us to die in," Glover says. He has written the books "Health Democracy" and "A Crime Not a Crisis" to describe . He is also founder of the Ithaca Health Alliance, a pilot co-op whose members pay $100/year to receive grants for costs of common emergencies, and to own their own free clinic. The League of Uninsured Voters (LUV), whose motto is "Tough LUV," was launched on Valentine's Day 2011, to promote new insurance standards that welcome grassroots co-op plans. LUV intends to build a national nonprofit co-op network-- the United States Health Alliance-- which will be the basis for an affordable national health insurance plan. LUV is inviting doctors, dentists, opticians, hospitals, clinics, nurses and other healers to offer discounts to LUV members by registering on their website luvpower.org As well, LUV helps members establish member-owned free clinics, community credit systems, and medical barter systems. LUV demands more medical schools, more medical scholarships, more general practitioners, independent nurse practitioners, and the shift of budgets toward health care. LUV membership fees are by donation. Friends of the uninsured are also welcome to join. Bumper stickers, t-shirts, and relevant books are available.
For more information:
OPEN REBELLION IS HEALTHY Polite processes have created a deadly situation for 51 million Americans, who die early from lack of preventive care. Who go bankrupt, who lose houses, who age faster from worry, who are charged more for care. Whose children lose their parents and inherit a sicker society. Treating massive injustice politely is un-American. The American way to end slavery, to gain votes for women, to win an 8-hour workday and living wage, to establish Social Security, to assert Civil Rights, to end war and create the nation itself is to get angry and shove. To confront comfortable society, making normal function impossible, until it yields. Since Teddy Roosevelt proposed universal coverage 99 years ago, liberals favoring universal coverage have insisted on legislative action while urging unruly mobs aside. Beatrix Hoffman, author of The Wages of Sickness, details this history in her article "Health Care Reform and Social Movements in the United States." Every decade since the 1910s has had its universal health care champion: American Association for Labor Legislation, Committee on the Costs of Medical Care, Technical Committee on Medical Care, Committee for the Nation's Health, Committee for National Health Insurance, HealthNow. "None of these major reform attempts was initiated or fought primarily at the grassroots level. The problem in 1994 was not much different from that in 1949 or 1918: reformers put their faith in expertise and professional lobbying rather than popular activism." Excellent federal and state laws have been proposed. The meat is in the pan, but there's no fire under it. Says Richard Kirsch, director of Health Care for America Now, "We would never want to organize the uninsured by themselves because Americans see the problem as affordability." (AP 4/11/09). Many uninsured, however, see the problem as life or death. The polite campaign has failed again. President Obama blocked universal coverage advocates from the Health Summit 2/09 until an impolite demonstration outside was threatened. Congress is owned by insurers. The game is rigged. To get health care when we need it, we un-insured will push to the front of the line. Paul Glover 215 805-8330 luv@luvpower.org |
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 CO-OP
HEALTH PLANSHealth Democracy's agenda is broader than clinics, pills, and surgeries, however. They will also address the public foundations of personal health-- clean food, clean water, clean air. And their impact is to more effectively pressure the federal government, by example, to fund a national health system which meets organizational and therapeutic standards set by the Health Democracy movement-- much as grassroots pressure set the standards for organic foods. Health Democracy will emphasize standards for preventive treatment of communities and the citizens within them. We'll prescribe and fund clinics with personnel who treat the whole person-- the living conditions and emotional bases of ailments. We'll sooner prescribe warm hands to cold machines, and rely on them both. We'll prefer to prescribe natural rather than chemical remedies. We'll prescribe and finance new systems for feeding, fueling, housing and moving America's cities, investment in which will be healthier and more profitable than war. Yet the health co-op process mainly refreshes an old idea. Most U.S. health insurance has historically been community-based. Families and neighborhoods pitched in to pay medical costs, and volunteered time bedside. Painless payment for pain relief prevailed. Today, however, benefit concerts and bake sales rarely cover costs of catastrophic care. From 1890-1930, most health insurance was provided by fraternal organizations" and "friendly societies," the funny-handshake orders like Moose, Odd Fellows, Elks, Shriners, and hundreds of others. They collected pennies monthly from members, then built medical centers, orphanages, old folks' homes, hired doctors, and buried the dead. By 1920, lobbying by corporate insurers had severely restricted mutual aid health insurance. The public sector and private sector have created a monopoly which doesn't work. Welcomed in other countries (where they are known as Mutual Health Organizations, or MHOs), American co-op initiatives have been challenged by state insurance departments. These are often staffed by regulators who have worked for HMOs. While regulators have a legitimate obligation to protect the public from fraudulent schemes, community-based MHOs meet standards of integrity stricter than required of HMOs. We are asserting our right to serve people abandoned by insurers. The urgency is great and growing; the time for Health Democracy has arrived. Health Democracy, whose citizens are both owners and voters, begins with everyone who sees the need for immediate remedies for the uninsured. |
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