“Frankly, I would like to apologize to all of you for the role I played in cheating you out of health care reform in years past. I played a role in helping to set up front groups. I played a role in helping to write talking points, some that you’re hearing today from politicians and conservative pundits. ‘Government takeover of our health care system.’ That is an expression that I used to write, and I’m ashamed of that.” That admission came from former CIGNA executive turned whistle blower and single-payer advocate, Wendell Potter, at the October 20 rally for PA HB1660/SB400 held in the Capitol Rotunda in Harrisburg.

Donna Smith, who with her husband Larry, endured financial catastrophe due to medical expenses (the experience chronicled in Michael Moore’s SiCKO) stepped to the podium and said, “Mr. Potter, could you step forward for a minute, please?” When he did so, she continued, “I want to tell you right now that even though I was fully insured, I forgive you.” The moment was punctuated with a warm handshake and an embrace.

Smith and Potter are just two among the multitude of heroes participating in the rally for the single-payer (improved Medicare for all) solution. Joining them were Pennsylvania legislative sponsors of the bills, members of the medical profession and the business community, four of the Baucus 8, labor leaders, activists with a variety of affiliations, Chuck Pennacchio, executive director of HealthCare4AllPA (sponsor of the rally), along with the group’s cadre of statewide volunteers, rally co-sponsors, and 1000 citizens who attended the rally to make their voices heard.

The rally included interludes of entertainment such as Mike Stout’s hard-driving acoustic rock, the satire of the Billionaires for Wealthcare and their nemesis, the Shamans.

All Eyes Are on Pennsylvania

With a governor committed to signing the legislation and the funding authorized in the bills, Pennsylvania stands on the threshold of a Declaration of Independence from health insurance companies.

Chuck Pennacchio, citing the general welfare protection promised in the Constitution, declared, “Health care is a right and not a privilege.” He thanked the legislative sponsors and noted the legislation’s bi-partisan support.

Pennacchio was assured a hearing this fall in the important Senate Banking and Insurance Committee by the committee chair, Sen. Don White (R).

Carl Romanelli of the Pennsylvania Green Party issued this challenge to the Pennsylvania Legislature, “Dare to do something great for the people of Pennsylvania, not the special interests.”

Pennsylvania’s Passionate Legislators

Name sponsors of the legislation, Senator Jim Ferlo (D) and Representative Kathy Manderino (D) were joined by co-sponsor Representative Bill Kortz (D) in delivering impassioned messages to the rally attendees.

Billed as the keynote speaker, Sen. Ferlo expressed his passion oratorically and physically, pounding the podium for emphasis with such gusto he nearly sent two CS2 cassette recorders flying. He spoke of inclusiveness, advising, “Don’t write anybody off as we build this movement.”

Sen. Ferlo decried the influence of corporate money in silencing the voices of single-payer advocates. “Our voices are not always being heard. Why? Because we have a corporate media that is being bought and sold by private insurance companies. Why? Because we have elected members of the House and Senate in Washington, and, who knows, maybe right here in the state capital, that are being bought and sold with PAC (political action committee) money.”

Ferlo had harsh words for Congressional attempts at health care reform. He said, “We are asking for an expanded and improved Medicare system for all. It’s not rocket science. If you’re a member of Congress and you can’t understand that, then get the hell out of Congress.”

Also calling for Medicare for all was Representative Kathy Manderino who spoke forcefully. Recalling her previous advice to PA single-payer advocates that our movement must build from the grass roots level up, she noted, “You have clearly heard that message…I can see by the faces, the numbers, and the enthusiasm in this Rotunda today that we are marching forward.”

Another passionate PA legislator for single-payer legislation, Representative Bill Kortz, energetically and enthusiastically addressed the crowd. He emphatically declared, “Quality, affordable health care is not a luxury…it is a right of every man, woman, and child in this state and in this nation. We live in the greatest nation in the world. We have the best medical facilities. We have the best doctors in the world. But what good is it if we don’t have access to this? This is a flawed system.” Kortz said HB1660 will fix the flawed system.

Healthy People, Healthy Businesses, Healthy Bottom Line

We cannot lose sight of the economic benefits of a single-payer (improved Medicare for all) system. Alan Jacobs, president of Isaac’s Deli chain of restaurants headquartered in Lancaster, decried the “massive bureaucratic overhead caused by our health funding system,” and complained that “the insurance game is a paper-pusher’s paradise.” He said business owners and their HR managers waste time in annual insurance contract searches and added that single-payer is the best way to eliminate administrative overhead.

Dr. Dwight Michaels is a family physician from Gettysburg, PA, caring for patients, as he says, “from the womb to the tomb.” As a small business owner, he admits that he struggles to pay escalating premiums for insurance for the employees of his practice for policies that “cost more and more and yet leave the individual with higher co-pays, deductibles, excluded services and gaps in their coverage.”

A patient advised Dr. Michaels to look at HealthCare4AllPA’s web site where he discovered that the PA Family and Business Health Care Security Act (HB1660/SB400) “would markedly reduce present administrative costs of health care to the system and to providers of health care in our state.”

With state, county, and municipal governments and school districts in the state of Pennsylvania providing health insurance coverage for employees, how would the savings resulting from a single-payer (Medicare for all) system affect the taxpayers of the commonwealth? HealthCare4AllPA’s Cindy Purvis oversaw and compiled data from a massive research project. Combined statewide savings to taxpayers, Purvis discovered, amounts to more than $2 billion annually. That amount should make even the most recalcitrant single-payer opponent sit up and take notice.

Is There a Doctor or Nurse in the House?

Health care providers were well represented among the rally speakers. Their main focus was concern for their patients.

Patty Eaken, president of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals (PASNAP), is an ER nurse in Philadelphia. She sees it as her moral obligation to play a role in patient advocacy - making sure that people receive health care with dignity and have access to the care they need. “The nurses of Pennsylvania will not stop until we have everybody covered,” she said.

Dr. Margaret Flowers (Physicians for a National Health Program) is one of the Baucus 8, those true heroes who interrupted Sen. Max Baucus’s Senate Finance Committee hearings on health care reform to demand single-payer be placed on the table. They were ejected, handcuffed, and arrested.

Dr. Flowers issued an urgent plea for the single-payer solution (”civilized health care”) because until we get it, people will continue to die needlessly every day. She said, “We have the resources. We have the money. We have the doctors and nurses. We don’t have the political will. This is America. Why do we tolerate this? Why do we allow ourselves to be the only industrialized nation that doesn’t take care of its people?

Dr. Dwight Michaels explained that health insurance companies interfere with his relationship with his patients and waste his time placing obstacles in the way of good care. He deals with over 30 payers (insurance companies). The PA single-payer (improved Medicare for all) legislation “would allow me to practice by one set of rules, rules based on clinical excellence and proven standards of care” instead of rules that improve the bottom line of a profit first private health care industry. Dr. Michaels wants this legislation passed so doctors could focus on caring for their patients.

Dr. Walter Tsou (PNHP) of Philadelphia, expert on community health, is a long-time single-payer proponent. He spoke of solidarity with members of the medical profession who are “sick and tired of the private health insurance for-profit system sucking billions of dollars out of our health care system.”

Representing the future of the medical profession was Lindsay Kaldor, a third year medical student at Temple University and regional president of the American Medical Students Association (AMSA). She said, “I want to be proud of the profession that I enter. I want to see a world where people don’t have to worry about if they can pay for their co-payments before they go to the doctor. I want to not have to worry about whether or not you are pre-certified for physical therapy.”

Pennsylvania’s AMSA members are major players in the fight for PA single-payer legislation.

Villainous Insurance Companies

We’d be very surprised if you or someone you know has not had an insurance company horror story encounter. This is not breaking news. Many rally speakers deal with these companies on a regular basis, so their insights and observations should be enlightening.

Contrasting the cost of our current private system with the proposed single-payer (improved Medicare for all) system in Pennsylvania, Dr. Dwight Michaels said, “HB1660 would provide unbelievably thorough health care without co-pays, without deductibles, without premiums for practically all of a patient’s needs for every Pennsylvanian at a cost to practically all of us that would be much less than we currently pay.”

Dr. Walter Tsou has told us, you recall, that for profit insurance sucks billions out of our health care system.

Who knows the sins of the health insurance industry better than the man who was a mouthpiece for the industry for many years, Wendell Potter, former CIGNA executive turned whistle blower and single-payer advocate.

A featured speaker at the October 20 rally, Wendell Potter is down-to-earth, soft-spoken, friendly and approachable. He has risen to national prominence in recent months, testifying before Congress (”the scariest thing I’ve ever done but perhaps the most important thing I’ve ever done”) and appearing in countless TV interviews. As he approached the podium, he received a standing ovation for his courageous actions after seeing the light.

Shortly after Potter came out of the insurance industry closet, he sought out Chuck Pennacchio and Dr. Walter Tsou to learn more about the single-payer movement and what drives it. He said he finds Pennacchio, Tsou, and the rally attendees “inspiring”. Wendell Potter’s stinging criticism of the health insurance industry is best presented, for the most part, in his own words:

“The decision to change the course of my life was both gradual and sudden. The higher up the corporate ladder I climbed, the more I could see how insurance companies dumped the sick, how they confuse their customers. And they do that so they can increase their profits, all for the benefit of the people who own them, the Wall Street masters that control these companies.

“Insurance companies move all of us into plans that shift more and more of the financial responsibility to us. They call them consumer-driven plans, but what they are is cost shifting.

“I happen to know that the average household income is $50,000. The price of a decent health insurance plan for a family of four is $13,500. We cannot continue to do that.” (NOTE: Under the single-payer plan, a family with a household income of $50,000 would pay 3% of that income, which equals $1,500 annually.)

Health insurance companies want us to pay more while at the same time pushing us into limited benefit plans. Many times we’re “paying premiums for fake or junk insurance.”

Potter spoke of watching his former colleagues recently assuring President Obama that they would work with him on achieving health care reform. “I knew that was disingenuous. About a day later I saw a congressman from my home state of Tennessee being interviewed, and he was asked about the problem of the uninsured in this country. His responses was, ‘You know what - half the people who are uninsured are that way by choice. They have decided that they just don’t want to buy insurance, and they decide to go naked.’

“I knew at that point that he was a shill for the insurance companies. So many people who are elected officials in Congress are shilling for health insurance companies. I recognized it was a shill because I used to write that kind of stuff. I was trying to perpetuate that kind of misinformation. The reality, of course, is that people who are uninsured, for the most part, can’t afford it. They just don’t have the money to do it. Many of those people who are uninsured are destitute and can’t get the care they need.”

Potter went on to tell the experience that really made him decide that he was on the wrong side. He was in Tennessee visiting family when he read in his hometown paper about a health care exposition being held nearby, organized by Remote Area Medical. The organization’s original mission was to send doctors from the U.S. to the Amazon and to Africa, providing free medical care to those with no access to it. Soon they realized there was a need for their services here in the U.S.

“In my corporate job…I let myself become removed from the reality of what happens in so many people’s lives,” Potter continued. He went to see the exposition at a county fairgrounds in southwest Virginia. He saw thousands of people waiting in interminable lines in the rain. Care was provided in animal stalls and barns by doctors who donated their time. Calling this “a life-changing experience,” Potter said, “It was more than I could bear. If the insurance companies have their way in Washington, we’ll all be there.”

A Matter of Civil Rights

Lorenzo Canizares (Keystone Progress) railed against the greed mongers in the health care industry and stressed, “The fight for health care is the civil rights movement of today.”

Kate Michelman (NARAL), reflecting on past struggles for rights for people of color and women, said, “Health care has become a central mission. It’s central to our lives, it’s central to our families, our community, our nation.”

A Call to Action

The ultimate message of this rally is that the fight for single-payer (improved Medicare for all) health coverage is a movement, and this movement needs you.

“No one should be sitting on the sidelines in this revolution for health care reform. You are the revolutionaries,” PA AFL-CIO president Bill George said.

Labor organizer Lorenzo Canizares made the case for citizen involvement. “For power to concede, you have to fight that power with organization,” he said.

“We need a revolution just like the way we started this country…Our most famous, radical document begins with these words: ‘We the people’ not ‘We the insurers’,” Dr. Walter Tsou insisted.

Tim Carpenter of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) delivered a pep talk. “We at PDA thank the Keystone state for your leadership. We got your back, Pennsylvania. Work hard and continue to do what you’re doing.”

Dr. Dwight Michaels offered inspiring words. “HB1660/SB400 would provide the dawning of a new era in Pennsylvania, an era in which we all benefit from affordable, accessible, high quality health care for all Pennsylvanians, and we quickly become the envy of our entire nation.” Now you must help us make this happen.

Wendell Potter advised, “Form coalitions with strange bedfellows. Talk in a language that people understand in a way that touches them.”

Russell Mokhiber of Single Payer Action was the first of the Baucus 8 to to interrupt the Senate Finance Committee in May to demand single-payer be placed on the table. He was removed from the proceedings and arrested. He asked that we all raise our voices to demand a debate on the single-payer solution.

Kevin Zeese of Prosperity Agenda, mobilizeforhealthcare.org, and one of the Baucus 8 stressed the importance of everyone’s involvement in the movement. “It wasn’t LBJ who brought civil rights to the U.S. It was organized people being persistent. It was not Woodrow Wilson who gave women the right to vote. It was women demanding the right to vote. It will not be President Obama or anyone in politics that gives us single-payer health care. It will be us that gives us single-payer health care. Our job is to be clear, persistent, and uncompromising.”

As one of the Baucus 8, Katie Robbins (Healthcare-NOW) was arrested in May. She acknowledged that while not everyone can risk arrest, everyone can at least make a phone call or pay a lobby visit to their legislators. Repeating the clarion call that this movement needs YOU, she emphasized, “Power concedes nothing without demand.” We are asking you to join the parade of single-payer heroes and get involved. Go to HealthCare4AllPA.org to see how you can help. Tell them Ron and Rosie sent you. Remember, in the words of writer Amity Gaige, “Individually we are single drops of rain falling silently into the dust, offering scant promise of moisture to the thirsty land. But together we can nourish the earth and revive its hopes and dreams. Together, we are a thunderstorm.”

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