For-profit healthcare making you sick? Tonight on GRITtv we discuss the broken health care system and who's fixing it. Hempstead Mayor Wayne Hall, Health Care Now’s Tom Knoche, and Art Richter, co-chairman of Citizens for Universal Health Care say the movement for single payer health care is picking up steam. Find out how mayors and grassroots organizations are leading the way.
Most Americans favor a health care system that is publicly financed. So how do we go beyond preaching to the choir to making change? According to Knoche, "it’s already happening and it’s not too good to be true. It’s for real."
And an interview with photojournalist Donna DeCesare and playwright Jeff Solomon - DeCesare covered the war in El Salvador in the 1980s and was moved by scenes of devastation and the impact of trauma on children. In her recent exhibit, Sharing Secrets, DeCesare documents the lives of Central American and Colombian children struggling with the scars of war. Solomon, in his new play “De Novo” Part 1—Lil’ Silent, uses many of DeCesare’s images to tell the story of undocumented youth in US immigration custody.
Finally Transportation Alternatives holds their 7th annual commuter challenge. And the incandescent bulb has gone the way of the VCR. Find out why compact florescents (CFLs) are the wave of the future in a video from Common Craft. And Dedrick Muhammad of the Institute for Policy Studies on the mortgage meltdown. All that and more on GRITtv.
Yeah, a fair number of polls are now showing majority support for universal health care, depending how you word the questions. That number will keep going up. It’s why it is so disappointing that many national politicians are so unwilling to seriously tackle the issue.
By Ian Welsh on July 2nd, 2008 at 8:13 pm
It does seem to be all in framing, or how the poll questions are worded.
I would really like to see some figures comparing what we pay in health care premiums now v. what we would pay in taxes for universal payer. I suspect it would be less in taxes, just BECAUSE i can’t find any figures.
By wangdangdoodle on July 2nd, 2008 at 8:50 pm
I would like to see employers responsible for the health care of their labor force, they have to pay to maintain their equiptment and all their assets, they need to pay the bill for maintaining the health of their laborers
then I would like to see an additional tax levied against both the employers and the laborers that would cover those unemployed and those without parents or family to provide said health care
this to me is a no lose proposition, it’s even no lose for the corporations since they would be able to pay their labor force less by providing health care, and since they would be buying the health caer at reduced rate, they could (and would) be able to offer jobs at a more reduced rate then the health care costs.
win win
we need to start considering the health of labor as one of the costs employers have to face in order to stay in business, and as I said, this should actually cost less then if they didn’t provide that health care
By perris on July 2nd, 2008 at 9:06 pm
off topic:
If you haven’t done so already I hope you will post a comment about Obama & FISA and how the media is covering this story on the NYT blog.
Obama Backlash in His Online Backyard
By Noam Cohen
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes…..d/#respond
By pmorlan on July 2nd, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Digg this post
By egregious on July 2nd, 2008 at 9:12 pm
thanks, egregius. I forgot to mention it in the comments.
By neurophius on July 2nd, 2008 at 9:20 pm
New Ian
By egregious on July 2nd, 2008 at 9:42 pm
I love the chickens. Wallace and Gromit, too, and Chicken Run.
By Nettle on July 2nd, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Excellent show!
Let’s see, we have America’s mayors, America’s physicians, and America’s just plain folk on board for single payer (HR 676) not to mention NY’s (?any other states’) Assembly. Now all we need are candidates for Congress and the Pres. that will support it. And they are out there! At the Pres. level, Nader and McKinney support it. At the Congress. level, I know of a person running for the NY 25 seat who does, surely there are candidates in other CDs who do as well.
Ms. Flanders, after that great presentation, the only thing lacking in your health care piece was the connecting link between the local/state NEED for single payer and the enactment of the enabling Fed.l legislation stalled in the pipeline. That link could be made in the next election by putting in office people who support it. Would you have those people or their spokespersons on your show so we could connect ALL the dots? We could actually GET there! Will you help?
By Aquifer on July 3rd, 2008 at 7:22 pm