What is the new orgnization, Health Care for America Now, doing?  Hoping to create another layer of bureaucracy to deal with the private health coverage for profit that is the cause of health care disaster here in the United States?

When I wrote about it a few weeks, ago, I said that HCAN seemed to be a well meaning but misguided, self-aggrandizing organization that really didn't understand that there was already a bill, HR 676, single payer, Medicare for All, that would bring US health care into the 21st century and finally on par with all the other industrialized countries of the world.

Health Care for America, Now proposals simply add another layer of exacerbation to the current catastophe and don't solve the uninsured problem.

Here is what I wrote when I posted, "Why Health Care for America Now When The Answer Is HR 676?":  "The AFL-CIO blog, like many other blogs, has been promoting Health Care for America Now, which is described as "a coalition of more than 80 labor, community, health activist, women’s, netroots and other groups. It will undertake a campaign that includes building grassroots support and educating the public and lawmakers on how to fix the broken health care system that is putting quality health care further and further out of reach of almost all families."   

"While this is commendable there are a few problems with the program: 1) it is geared toward those who currently have health care coverage, employer based, 2) it does nothing for those who have no health care coverage, 3) it is focused on reforming the unreformable, the existing private profit making system."

Well, I am not alone in wondering why this consortium of groups is ignoring the answer, HR 676, and actual reform while promoting a flawed, problematic program.

A Tiny Revolution posted three dissenting articles, one from Rose Ann DeMoro, head of the California Nurses Association, for whom I have the greatest respect as a worker, and true labor organizer.   Both DeMoro and Jenny Brown's articles are at The Center for Labor Renewal  and Dr. Himmelstein's article can be found at PHNP, Physicians for National Health Program.   

They ask the logical questions that Health Care for America Now seems to have ignored or forgotten in its rush to create another organization that doesn't solve the health care catastrophe.

Here is a final excerpt from my posting about HCAN regarding which even many labor union locals disagree: "However, the comments following the AFL-CIO blog piece point out that there is already a solution that these groups should support rather than re-inventing the wheel: HR 676 which I have written about often.

"Let’s not mince words.

"The program that Health Care for America Now! is unworkable - because it is unaffordable. It points our health care reform movement in the wrong direction.

"My central labor council is one of the 300 AFL-CIO central labor councils that have organized meetings to promote health care reform - but we insisted on doing it on the program that our clc, and our Vermont State Fed, democratically adopted.

"We are supporting HR 676, the United States National Health Insurance Act because we need a single pool ( a single-payer), and we need to get the insurance companies out of health care. We need health care not insurance!

"HR 676 has been endorsed by over 417 union organizations in 48 states including 107 Central Labor Councils and Area Labor Federations and 33 state AFL-CIO’s (KY, PA, CT, OH, DE, ND, WA, SC, WY, VT, FL, WI, WV, SD, NC, MO,MN, ME, AR, MD-DC, TX, IA, AZ, TN, OR, GA, OK, KS, CO, IN, AL, CA & AK).

"Health Care for America Now!’s approach was floated at the Jobs with Justice convention recently where it fell flat. (Underline added.) Labor’s activist base will not be mobilized for an unworkable “compromise” that seems to have been designed not to win real health care reform, but to keep the Democratic Party’s big corporate funders happy.' "