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DESCRIPTION:\n\nAt 11 A.M today, Monday, June 22, members of Single Payer Now and other 
 organizations advocating for a single payer national health program will 
 rally outside the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, where Health and Human 
 Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is scheduled to speak at a fundraising 
 luncheon.\n \nIn a June 16 interview on National Public Radio, Secretary 
 Sebelius vowed that the health care reform legislation now being drafted in 
 Congress would be written specifically to bar single payer, both now and in 
 the future. She instead urged support for a so-called "public option," a 
 government subsidized health care fund that would coexist with private 
 insurance.\n \nPresident Obama and leading congressional Democrats favor 
 the public option, although a recent CBO report indicated that it would 
 cost at least $1 trillion and cover only a fraction of those currently 
 uninsured.\n \nSebelius’ remarks were intended to reassure critics of the 
 public option that the plan would not function as a backdoor way of 
 introducing a single payer system. Single payer, also known as "Medicare 
 for All", would create a unified public fund that would cover everyone and 
 save billions of dollars by removing private, for-profit insurance from 
 healthcare. Under this system, patients would have free choice of doctors 
 and hospitals.\n \nIn response to Sebelius’ comment, Don Bechler, Chair 
 of Single Payer Now, stated,\n“Any so-called reform program that keeps 
 the private insurance companies in the picture will waste billions while 
 leaving millions of Americans out in the cold. People don’t need a choice 
 of insurance plans; they need high-quality, affordable healthcare. The only 
 way that can happen is through a single payer system as provided for in HR 
 676, the United States National Health Care Act”\n \nAt Monday’s 
 demonstration, Single Payer Now will join the California Nurses 
 Association, California, Alliance for Retired Americans, California 
 Physicians Alliance, and San Francisco Gray Panthers in picketing the 
 $500-per-plate function at 950 Mason Street.\n \nLike hundreds of other 
 groups throughout the country, they are calling for Congress to pass HR 676 
 (Conyers) and its companion bill, S 703 (Sanders), which would expand 
 Medicare to cover all Americans.\n \n# # # #\n\n 
 																														Single Payer Now (SPN) works to organize 
 50,000 precinct activists to win universal healthcare without the private 
 health insurance industry. In California, SPN supports SB 810, the 
 California Universal Healthcare Act; on the national level, it supports 
 companion bills HR 676 (Conyers- the U.S. National Healthcare Act) and S 
 703 (Sanders- the American Health Security Act).\n\n\n\n \nFor more info, 
 contact SPN chair Don Bechler at (415) 810-5826 or dbechler@value.net or 
 log on to www.singlepayernow.net.\n\n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/06/22/18603361.php
SUMMARY:Secretary Sebelius, Put Single Payer on the Table
LOCATION:outside the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/06/22/18603361.php
DTSTART:20090622T180000Z
DTEND:20090622T190000Z
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