SB 810 would deliver comprehensive healthcare to everyone and it would save Californians tens of billions of dollars. It will do what the national health plan does not — cover everyone and contain health care costs. It will set the standard for the rest of the nation.

On Thursday, August 12, the Assembly Appropriations Committee sent SB 810 to Assembly for a vote. The vote will take place sometime before August 31.

The single payer movement has been an inspiration to the nation by passing SB 810 twice before in our legislature. We want to continue inspiring the nation by passing single payer healthcare a 3rd time.

Speaker John Perez can be reached at 916–319-2046. He is the first Speaker of the Assembly in 6 years to not be a co-author of SB 810. He needs to receive thousands of calls.

Then call your Assembly Member. You can find out who your Assembly member is by clicking here.

See Assembly Member roster below for voting records on SB 810 and their telephone number.

• If your Assembly Member is a co-author, please thank them for co-sponsoring. It is important that legislators know we appreciate their efforts.
• If your Assembly Member has voted for SB 810 in the past, but is not a co-author, thank for voting yes.
• If your Assembly Member has not voted for SB 810, encourage them to do so.

Please let us know if you have called, also if you can help us call activists who are not online, email here for a list or call Don.

We also encourage you make a contribution to the campaign for SB 810.

To contribute online please click here.

Or you can send a contribution to
Single Payer Now
PO Box 460622
San Francisco, CA 94146

Thank you,
Don Bechler
Chair — Single Payer Now
www.singlepayernow.net
415–695-7891

Assembly Co-author Votes We have 34 co-authors and need 41 votes.

The following Democratic members are not co-authors (we must get 7 of these votes):
Arambula
Buchanan
Caballero
Calderon
Carter
Fuentes
Furutani
Galgiani
Gatto
Hall
Hernandez
Huber
Perez J.
Perez M.
Portantino
Saldaña
Torres

Assembly Roster

When: Saturday, August 14th, from 11 AM to 1 PM

Where: the New Federal Building, 7th and Mission Streets, San Francisco, (one block from Civic Center BART/Muni)

Protecting Social Security is important to our health.  Please join with us this Saturday to protect Social Security from Wall St.  See announcement below.

Please let us know if you plan to attend.    Call  415–695-7891 or email

Celebrate Social Security’s  75th Birthday  Defend  Social Security!  Defend  Our Future!

Join Congresswomen Pelosi and Speier and Senators Feinstein and Boxer (invited guests).

Americans of every age must work together to make sure that the current attacks on this important family retirement program are not successful.

Please join the California Alliance for Retired Americans (CARA) and the San Francisco Central Labor Council for a celebration of America’s most successful social program. With Social Security, through our own work and contributions, our families count on:

• Independence and dignity for seniors
• Support for widows and children and people with disabilities
• A secure future

Cake and refreshments will be served.

RSVP to CARA, 415–550-0828 or 510–663-4086

or email ksmith@californiaalliance.org

Saturday, August 14th at 11am

Join the California Alliance for Retired Americans (CARA) and the San Francisco Central Labor Council to celebrate and defend America’s most successful social program. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are under severe attack by business groups, deficit hawks, and the Obama administration. Social Security, the longest established and most financially secure of these programs, is under particular attack, with media promoting lies such as Social Security being the verge of collapse, draining the national treasury, and providing bloated benefits to undeserving seniors.

The facts of Social Security are: (1) Its benefits have already been entirely paid by workers’ payroll taxes. (2) It has a $2.5 billion surplus. (3) If nothing were done, it could pay full benefits until 2037, and 75% benefits afterward. (4) If higher incomes were subjected to payroll taxes, it could pay full benefits indefinitely. (5) The majority of seniors, disabled people, and surviving spouses are dependent on Social Security, particularly minorities and women.

Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are under immediate threat because (1) the President’s Fiscal Commission on the Deficit, heavily stacked against these programs, is due to make its recommendations to Congress the first week in December 2010, and (2) Congress has promised to prioritize an up-or-down vote the Commission’s recommendations without amendment. So Social Security celebrates its 75th birthday under fire.

This event is (1) to give the truth about Social Security, the most successful social program in the US for seniors, people with disabilities, kids, and low-income families, (2) to warn these communities of the dangers that Social Security faces, and (3) to mobilize these communities to pressure Obama’s Deficit Commission and Congress to not privatize Social Security, reduce its benefits, or raise its retirement age.

Representatives of Bay Area US Congresspersons and US Senators are invited to hear our message, and respond. Similar events are planned for Fresno, San Jose, Los Angeles, and San Diego. Some additional Bay Area sponsors are SF Gray Panthers, Senior Action Network, Older Women’s League, SF.

This event is free and wheelchair accessible.

Michael Lyon
128 Faith St.
San Francisco CA 94110
415–215-7575

Please contact Assembly Speaker John Perez, and your Assembly Member. 916–319-2046. He is the first Speaker of the Assembly in 6 years to not be a co-author of SB 810. He needs to receive thousands of calls. You can find your Assembly Member here.

Please encourage legislators to pass SB 810, the California Universal Healthcare Act. This is a great opportunity for activists to have our voices  heard, and let our elected officials know that we, the people of California, want affordable, sustainable, and equitable health care for EVERYONE!

(South La Cienega Ave. & West 18th Street)

Thursday, August 19, 4–6 p.m.

email Lisa or call (323) 316‑8933 for more details and exact meet up location

We have only a few weeks to win an Assembly vote for SB 810, the California Universal Healthcare Act. SB 810 must be sent to the Governor by August 31.

This offers a wonderful opportunity to win more voters to support SB 810 and to influence Sacramento legislators.

Please consider ordering five or ten SB 810 postcards today.

Please ask people to fill them out within the next two weeks, and then you can return them to us by August 23rd. We will enter the new supporters to our Action Alert list, sort the postcards by Assembly District, and deliver them to Assembly Members with our request for them to deliver them to the Governor.

Help us spread the message, and if you can, please consider making a contribution to defray printing costs.

To contribute online please click here.

Thank you for all that you do!

We will be sending out notices for our July 31 San Francisco meeting featuring Claudia Chaufan, MD,  speaking on Expanding Medicare and Stopping the Wall St attacks on Medicare, and our early August meeting in Los Angeles featuring Sara Rogers, the health consultant to State Senator Mark Leno.

Please let us know if you can help with the mailing,  or if you would like to make a financial contribution for the mailing, send a contribution to: Single Payer Now; PO Box 460622; SF, CA 94146

Mailings are fun. We have snacks, great orange juice, and the best people in the world to work with.
I hope to see you.

Don Bechler
Chair – Single Payer Now
415–695-7891

The following text is the testimony that Katie Robbins, national organizer for Healthcare-NOW!, presented to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform on June 30 in Washington.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Thank you for this opportunity to testify. My name is Katie Robbins and I am here on behalf of Healthcare-NOW!, an organization founded in 2004 to support bill H.R. 676, “the U.S. National Health Care Act” or Expanded and Improved Medicare for All. With membership in 50 states, Healthcare NOW has broad support for single-payer health care.

Healthcare-NOW! opposes any consideration of cutting, privatizing or raising age eligibility for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

We seek to strengthen, not weaken, our social safety net. If passed, H.R. 676 would establish a national single-payer Medicare for All system granting everyone in the United States access to comprehensive, high-quality health care using our existing privately run infrastructure and a progressive financing that will guarantee coverage for all necessary medical care without financial or other barriers.

According to Harvard University studies, eliminating the waste of the multi-payer private insurance industry and moving to a single-payer system will save $400 billion a year. More savings are found in cost controls that a single-payer system can provide such as negotiating drug costs and medical equipment, and global budgeting for hospitals.

Since H.R. 676 was introduced in 2003, it has received tremendous support including endorsements by 582 union organizations in 49 states, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, 63 local governments which include 10 of the nation’s 30 largest cities, the Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church, the Unitarian Universalist Church, the Union for Reform Judaism, the United Church of Christ, and the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, and the majority of nurses, patients, and physicians.
Broad support for a single-payer Medicare for All system continues even after the new health law has passed. For example, this past Saturday, June 26, America Speaks, a privately run company, organized “town hall meetings” in 20 cities across the country to discuss the nation’s deficit. America Speaks received funding linked to the Peter Peterson Foundation; the same foundation which is also funding staff to this Fiscal Commission. (Peterson is known to be vocally in support of cutting and privatizing Social Security and Medicare.)

America Speaks claimed that all options would be considered, yet the materials distributed at the events did not include an option to support single-payer health care as a means of controlling health care costs. Despite efforts to silence support for single payer, many participants demanded the option to vote on a single-payer type health care system, which would ultimately reduce costs by making health care more efficient rather than just cutting services in Medicare and other public sector programs. Participants also voted overwhelmingly for defense cuts and for progressive taxation.
Because cost controls are notably absent from the new health law, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform should listen to what the public is urging them to do, and address meaningful cost control in our health care system, which only a single-payer system can provide, as a means to balance the nation’s budget.

We urge you to address cost controls immediately. Healthcare NOW and our network of supporters and allied organizations urge Congress to work to defeat any bill to cut, privatize or dismantle our social safety net – Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. We demand the enactment of an expanded and improved Medicare for All, H.R. 676, to fix our economy and our (still) broken health care system.

Guest Speaker
Claudia Chaufan MD, PhD
Vice President of the California Physicians Alliance and Assistant Professor of Health Policy at UCSF

Saturday, July 31, 2010 3pm

ILWU Local 6 Union Hall
255 Ninth St, San Francisco

2 blocks south of Market between Howard and Folsom   Civic Center BART/MUNI Stop

For 45 years, Medicare has provided health care to seniors. Medicare spends our resources wisely and allows seniors to live with dignity.  We want to expand this program by supporting national legislation that would deliver Medicare to everyone (HR 676). In California, we campaign for SB 810, the California Universal Health care Act.

But Medicare is under attack from Wall St.

A National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform has been selected to weaken Medicare and Social Security. The Commission is being financed by Wall St. investor Peter Peterson.  You are invited to a discussion on how to protect Medicare and Social Security.

Sponsored by Single Payer Now & the California Alliance for Retired Americans.

For more information please call 415–695-7891 or email dbechler@value.net

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