Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M4sP6FieEk&feature=youtu.be

Andy Coates, MD, a former union activist and elected member of the
statewide executive board of his union, the 58,000 member New York State
Public Employees Federation, AFL-CIO, recently spoke in Chicago where his
presentation appeared on Labor Beat, a Chicago area Cable TV program.

Dr. Coates presents a clear overview of the national health care crisis,
the inadequacies of the ACA, and the argument for an ‘everybody in, nobody
out’ Single Payer health program. He gives insight into the basics in
this debate, backed up by selected PowerPoint graphics prepared by
Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) and the Illinois
Single-Payer Coalition. Dr. Coates is President of PNHP; Clinical
Assistant Professor of Medicine and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry,
Albany Medical College; Chief of Hospital Medicine, Samaritan Hospital,
Troy, NY; and Medical Director, Albany County Nursing Home.

Dr. Coates concludes that insurers are selling an “unaffordable, defective
product” as he compares the U.S. health care system to other
industrialized countries. We are a nation of increasingly un- and
under-insured, facing staggering household debt from medical bills, and in
particular exposing under-insured children, women, minorities and retirees
to increasing fatality rates and poor health, in order to satisfy a market
solution to health care.

He points to the 2013 AFL-CIO resolution’s “commitment to pursue health
care for all ultimately through a single-payer system” as an important
step forward.

Dr. Coates calls upon the union movement: “I think that for the trade
union movement that if we speak out for what it means for all working
people we’re talking about liberating the whole country here with basic
economic rights, the right to necessary care. Then we find a way forward
for the whole trade union movement. The unions they have the expertise,
they know how to lead us forward, they know exactly how to organize
people, how to fight…and it’s going to take a fight. There’s no
shortcut.”

If your union has not yet endorsed HR 676, please take that first step.

There is a sample resolution here:
http://unionsforsinglepayer.org/tools/sample_resolution

Distributed by:

All Unions Committee for Single Payer Health Care–HR 676
c/o Nurses Professional Organization (NPO)
1169 Eastern Parkway, Suite 2218
Louisville, KY 40217
(502) 636 1551

Email: nursenpo@aol.com
http://unionsforsinglepayer.org
6/16/2014