Molly Rush/tidbits

==Target: 2009==
===We can defeat the health care behemoth!===
: January 2009
I’ve come to see the campaign for single payer health care as a David-Goliath struggle. You may recall the biblical story in which the boy David found a hole in the armor of the Philistine giant. Using just a slingshot he sank a stone into the giant's forehead causing him to fall face down on the ground.
2009 is the strategic year to defeat the Health Industrial Complex. Health care reform is on the national agenda. Unfortunately single payer may be off the table in the Daschle-Obama plan. While both have acknowledged that it is the best solution to our health care crisis, in Daschle’s words it is “politically problematic.”
However, a complicated, something for everyone compromise proposal is truly problematic. If we ever needed cost-effective comprehensive health care for all it is today. The history of past “reforms” that have actually made things worse should be instructive.
We are in the midst of a deep recession. Employers are laying off workers and cutting or eliminating health benefits. How on earth can employer-based health care continue as a linchpin of any real reform?
We simply cannot afford to rely on insurance companies whose major role is to profit by limiting or denying benefits while taking 30% off the top for duplication, waste, and an insane and bewildering bureaucracy.
Those of us who support a federal single payer system face an even steeper uphill battle if an inadequate Obama legislative plan gains momentum. The struggle must continue.
That is why the Pennsylvania Family & Health Security Bill is more pertinent than ever to the single payer movement. It offers a model for the U.S. of an elegantly simple program that is based on the success of other nations that provide universal coverage at half the cost.
Pennsylvania has been acknowledged as a leader in the single payer movement. As Chuck Pennacchio, Executive Director of Health Care for All PA www.healthcare4allpa.org put it:
“Pennsylvania is unquestionably "ground zero" in the Single Payer fight for sustainable, rational, humane, job-generating, life-saving, cost-saving, comprehensive, first-rate healthcare for all. Everybody in, nobody out. 
Remember -- unlike anywhere else in the US of A, we pass HB 1660 and SB 300 and Governor Rendell will sign the bill; the funding is built right into the legislation; HC4APA is attracting Republican supporters to the SINGLE PAYER SOLUTION; 68% of Pennsylvanians are on board with guaranteed universal healthcare (Quinnipiac, May 1, 2008).” 
Locally, PUSH is working with members of City Council to gain their support for the bill and to hold a public hearing.