Healthcare-NOW! Supports Occupy Wall St. Movement

By Healthcare-NOW!  

October 12, 2011

In 1,368 cities across the country and around the world, people are standing up to the top 1% who collectively have more wealth and power than the lower 99% of the population. These occupations are self-sustaining communities focused on creating a space for free and open dialogue and action on the issues–from healthcare to education to unemployment–that plague the 99%.

Healthcare-NOW! endorses the occupation movement and urges all who can to join them, bringing the message of improved Medicare-for-all as a solution to the crisis of inequality in wealth and in health.

We’re being told by the Super Committee and other politicians that our already too modest safety-net is bankrupting us, but the reality is that Wall Street is bankrupting us. Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare are not the problem. Instead of being cut, they should be maintained and strengthened. Single-payer, improved Medicare for all, like H.R. 676, would save millions of lives and reduce healthcare spending by $400 billion per year.

We need to take the single-payer healthcare message to the occupations, as is happening already in many cities (New York City, Denver, Washington, DC, Philadelphia). We need to make sure that improved Medicare-for-all is on the lists of demands.