 | This article needs to be updated.(December 2021) |
| Formation | 2004 |
|---|---|
| Website | healthcare-now.org |
Healthcare-NOW! is a non-profit grassroots coalition in support of the single-payer health care movement for the United States. [1] Healthcare-NOW!'s stated goal is to implement the Medicare for All Act. [2] [3] [4]
Healthcare-NOW! was founded in 2004, originally under the name of the Campaign for a National Health Program NOW (CNHP NOW). The first meeting of the coalition was the Campaign for a National Health Program NOW Conference: "Health Care Crisis and Election of 2004." On August 31 and September 1, 2004, the conference was held as well as a rally during the Republican Convention. [5] [6]
Healthcare-NOW! uses various community organizing methods. Strategies and ideas are developed through annual national strategy meetings with volunteer organizers and health care activists around the country, including Rep. John Conyers. [7] In 2007, Healthcare-NOW launched traveling Road Shows promoting single payer reform, as well as co-sponsored an Annual Health Care Justice Vigil held each September in Washington D.C. [8] Other techniques include Sicko House Parties [9] and Truth Hearings. [10] [11] On June 19, 2008, Healthcare-NOW! joined efforts with other organizations, including the California Nurses Association, to initiate the National Day of Protest Against Health Insurance Companies. This National Day of Protest took place in 18 cities nationwide in support of a single payer system. [12] It was a campaign mainly about public health care not private.
Healthcare-NOW is composed of 36 board members, in addition to the board of directors. The National Coordinator was Marilyn Clement.
Board member co-chairs [13]
Maxwell Sieben Baucus is an American politician who served as a United States senator from Montana from 1978 to 2014. A member of the Democratic Party, he was a U.S. senator for over 35 years, making him the longest-serving U.S. senator in Montana history. President Barack Obama appointed Baucus to replace Gary Locke as the 11th U.S. Ambassador to the People's Republic of China, a position he held from 2014 until 2017.
Universal health care is a health care system in which all residents of a particular country or region are assured access to health care. It is generally organized around providing either all residents or only those who cannot afford on their own, with either health services or the means to acquire them, with the end goal of improving health outcomes.
Single-payer healthcare is a type of universal healthcare in which the costs of essential healthcare for all residents are covered by a single public system.
The term managed care or managed healthcare is used in the United States to describe a group of activities intended to reduce the cost of providing health care and providing American health insurance while improving the quality of that care. It has become the predominant system of delivering and receiving American health care since its implementation in the early 1980s, and has been largely unaffected by the Affordable Care Act of 2010.
...intended to reduce unnecessary health care costs through a variety of mechanisms, including: economic incentives for physicians and patients to select less costly forms of care; programs for reviewing the medical necessity of specific services; increased beneficiary cost sharing; controls on inpatient admissions and lengths of stay; the establishment of cost-sharing incentives for outpatient surgery; selective contracting with health care providers; and the intensive management of high-cost health care cases. The programs may be provided in a variety of settings, such as Health Maintenance Organizations and Preferred Provider Organizations.
Families USA is a nonprofit, nonpartisan consumer health advocacy organization.
AHIP is an American political advocacy and trade association of health insurance companies that offer coverage through the employer-provided, Medicare Advantage, Medicaid managed care, and individual markets.
The Medicare for All Act, aka the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act or United States National Health Care Act, is a bill first introduced in the United States House of Representatives by Representative John Conyers (D-MI) in 2003, with 38 co-sponsors. In 2019, the original 16-year-old proposal was renumbered, and Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) introduced a broadly similar, but more detailed, bill, HR 1384, in the 116th Congress. As of November 3, 2019, it had 116 co-sponsors still in the House at the time, or 49.8% of House Democrats.
The Alliance for Retired Americans (ARA) is a 501(c)(4) non-profit organization and nonpartisan organization of retired trade union members affiliated with the AFL-CIO, which founded it in 2001. The group's membership also includes non-union, community-based activists. Its predecessor organization was known as the National Council of Senior Citizens (NCSC).
Health insurance in the United States is any program that helps pay for medical expenses, whether through privately purchased insurance, social insurance, or a social welfare program funded by the government. Synonyms for this usage include "health coverage", "health care coverage", and "health benefits". In a more technical sense, the term "health insurance" is used to describe any form of insurance providing protection against the costs of medical services. This usage includes both private insurance programs and social insurance programs such as Medicare, which pools resources and spreads the financial risk associated with major medical expenses across the entire population to protect everyone, as well as social welfare programs like Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, which both provide assistance to people who cannot afford health coverage.
Healthcare reform in the United States has a long history. Reforms have often been proposed but have rarely been accomplished. In 2010, landmark reform was passed through two federal statutes enacted in 2010: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), signed March 23, 2010, and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, which amended the PPACA and became law on March 30, 2010.
The history of health care reform in the United States has spanned many decades with health care reform having been the subject of political debate since the early part of the 20th century. Recent reforms remain an active political issue. Alternative reform proposals were offered by both of the major candidates in the 2008, 2016, and 2020 presidential elections.
The healthcare reform debate in the United States has been a political issue focusing upon increasing medical coverage, decreasing costs, insurance reform, and the philosophy of its provision, funding, and government involvement.
The proposed America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 was an unsuccessful bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on July 14, 2009. The bill was introduced during the first session of the 111th Congress as part of an effort of the Democratic Party leadership to enact health care reform. The bill was not approved by the House, but was superseded by a similar bill, the proposed Affordable Health Care for America Act, which was passed by the House in November 2009, by a margin of 220-215 votes but later abandoned.
There were a number of different health care reforms proposed during the Obama administration. Key reforms address cost and coverage and include obesity, prevention and treatment of chronic conditions, defensive medicine or tort reform, incentives that reward more care instead of better care, redundant payment systems, tax policy, rationing, a shortage of doctors and nurses, intervention vs. hospice, fraud, and use of imaging technology, among others.
The Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB, was to be a fifteen-member United States Government agency created in 2010 by sections 3403 and 10320 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act which was to have the explicit task of achieving specified savings in Medicare without affecting coverage or quality. Under previous and current law, changes to Medicare payment rates and program rules are recommended by MedPAC but require an act of Congress to take effect. The system creating IPAB granted IPAB the authority to make changes to the Medicare program with the Congress being given the power to overrule the agency's decisions through supermajority vote. The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 repealed IPAB before it could take effect.
National Nurses United (NNU) is the largest organization of registered nurses in the United States. With more than 225,000 members, it is the farthest-reaching union and professional association of registered nurses in the U.S. Founded in 2009 through the merging of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, the United American Nurses, and the Massachusetts Nurses Association, the NNU focuses on amplifying the voice of direct care RNs and patients in national policy. The union's policy positions include the enactment of safe nurse-to-patient ratios, patient advocacy rights at the Executive and State level, and legislation for single-payer health care to secure "quality healthcare for all, as a human right." The organization's goal is to "organize all direct care RNs into a single organization capable of exercising influence over the healthcare industry, governments, and employers."
Friends of Medicare is Canadian non-profit organization that advocates for the Canadian universal public health system. The group was founded in September 1979 in Edmonton, Alberta. Friends of Medicare is a coalition of many individuals and organizations, from physicians to patients, seniors’ organizations, cultural and community groups, and labour unions. It has played a role in defending the principles of Canada's universal public health system both in Alberta and nationally.
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Whole Washington is a statewide universal healthcare advocacy organization in Washington state that advocates for universal single-payer healthcare for Washington and the United States of America. Whole Washington is a 501(c)(4) organization and has campaigns for statewide single payer healthcare in Washington via both the state legislature and statewide ballot initiative. It is also a supporter of single payer at the federal level through Medicare for All as introduced into the US Congress by Pramila Jayapal in the House of Representatives and Bernie Sanders in the Senate.