Baltimore City Green Party Urges Representatives Cummings, Sarbanes, and Ruppersberger to Support Universal Single-Payer Health Coverage

BALTIMORE, MD - The Baltimore City Green Party calls on our members of the U.S. House of Representatives to reject the private health insurance industry bailout provided by HR 3962 – the Affordable Health Care for America Act – and stand up for a universal, single-payer plan that provides health care to all Americans regardless of their ability to pay for private insurance.

"This bill is a recipe for failure," says Vince Tola, Treasurer of the Baltimore City Green Party. "The weak public option will end up being more expensive than private insurance. It’s unconscionable that Congress wants to force people to pay premiums that they will not be able to afford."

City Greens applaud Representative Elijah Cummings for his recent statement that "Health care is not a privilege – it is a right" and ask him to back up his words with a meaningful public statement and vote in support of HR 676 – the United States National Health Care Act – which he cosponsors. In 2007, Representative Cummings wrote that "All a single payer system would do is eliminate the insurance company middlemen, saving millions of dollars in paperwork and processing fees."

The Baltimore City Green Party asks Mr. Cummings and all our Congressional representatives to reject bills such as HR 3962 that protect insurance company middlemen by mandating private insurance for all Americans. Senator Obama opposed the so-called "individual mandate" during election-year debates with Senator Clinton, yet this has become a central feature of President Obama's bill.

According to the Centers for Disease Control nearly 90,000 Baltimore residents have no health insurance. The Green Party believes that many of these individuals - the most needy city residents - will not be able to purchase mandated coverage regardless of the subsidies provided by President Obama's reforms. "People making the choice between food, shelter, and health care will still have to make the choice between food, shelter, and reduced-cost health care," noted Brian Bittner, Co-Chair of the Baltimore City Green Party. "They are likely to pick food and shelter first, and will now be in violation of federal mandates for making this choice."

In relation to other countries, the United States spends more per capita on health care without improved health outcomes. In fact, Americans fall behind other countries on nearly every health indicator, according to the World Health Organization. American innovation in health care – pioneered by Baltimore institutions like Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland Medical System – is meaningless when people cannot access it. Universal, single-payer health coverage – "Medicare for All" – is the only solution that truly addresses the crisis of our current system. A single-payer system cuts administrative costs, covers all Americans, and simplifies a complicated system filled with gaps and loopholes.

The Baltimore City Green Party believes that the people of Baltimore cannot wait any longer for a real solution to our health care crisis. We urge our Representatives Ruppersberger, Sarbanes, and Cummings to publicly state opposition to HR 3962 and promote real comprehensive health care reform through progressive bills such as HR 676.

The Baltimore City Green Party does not accept any contributions from business entities such as insurance companies or political action committees (PACs) such as the pharmaceutical or health insurance lobbies.

The Baltimore City Green Party can be reached at 443-876-8522 or baltimoregreens@gmail.com.

Reporting In

Last night I was on my friend Andy's internet radio show, B-More Connected. The show is about progressive politics in Baltimore. I gave a report from an event I attended earlier this week at Red Emma's, featuring former Green Party candidate and professor Bill Barry. Here's the text of the report:

"On Monday I attended a talk at Red Emma's here in Baltimore, featuring Bill Barry, who is a long-time union member and organizer and professor of labor studies at the Community College of Baltimore County. He was introducing his new book, called Union Strategies for Hard Times. It certainly is hard times for labor unions - membership is down to less than 10% of the American population and no union-friendly legislation has been passed by Congress for several decades - but Bill tried to look past the bleakness and look for ways that unions, and other progressive movements, can get on their feet and get reorganized.

First of all, the most important thing to know about Bill is that any event he organizes will have beer. Red Emma's does not specialize in beer so Bill brought his own. Bill is a fun guy and he wants strategizing, organizing, and working to be fun as well. We had a good talk and brought up some issues that unions and other groups in the progressive movement need to talk about.

Bill's book - Union Strategies for Hard Times - is a collection of union history, theory on labor relations, and a guidebook for union leaders and members as they organize their workplaces. It features chapters on creating communication networks with members, standing up to management during direct negotiations, building union resources, and providing aid and support to members who have been laid off.

This last topic was particularly interesting to me since I had been thinking about community, what it is, and what benefits it can provide for progressive activists as we try to build our movement. When I think of unions I think of stories like the Lawrence textile strike, where textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts went on strike for two straight months in the winter of 1912. One reason they were able to stand up to management was that they found support in community - they had housing, food, child care and other needs organized by a support committee that worked to provide for them while they were fighting for change. I wondered if support for such an action could exist anywhere in Baltimore today, and could it be built in such a way to provide support for a lengthy action against a corporation or government.

I think somewhere in between dependency or complacency with the forces that oppose us and militancy is self-sufficiency, where we have the choice to live our lives independent of government or corporations, or could resist them if we wanted to, but could sustain ourselves without them either way. I think that union history can serve as an instructive model for our progressive movement because some of things we seek - organization, community, and self-sufficiency that makes independence and resistance possible - existed in the 1910s, 20s, and 30s, and can exist again based on the lessons we can learn from Bill Barry and others.

The book is Union Strategies for Hard Times and you can find out more about it at www.unionstrategiesforhardtimes.com."

You can listen to the archive here.

I'm In the New York Times ('s Politics Blog's Comment Section)

Comment #13.
  

Four Hours With the Senate Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs Committee

Testimony and Statement for the Record 

IN SUPPORT of Senate Bill 947 (Petition Requirements - Political Parties)

Submitted by Brian Bittner on behalf of the Maryland Green Party

to the Senate Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs Committee

March 12, 2009

The Maryland Green Party urges the Senate Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee to give a favorable recommendation to Senate Bill 947 and forward it to the Senate for a vote. Senate Bill 947 is a clear, straightforward, bipartisan bill that will have a dramatic and positive impact on thousands of current and potential future Maryland minor party members. 

It is vital that Marylanders have the right to choose their political party affiliation and that that choice be a free one, with options sufficient to represent the political and ideological diversity of our state.  Politics only works when people are active in voting, running for office, and volunteering and working in the electoral and legislative process. When people feel that they have fewer options for political participation, they disengage from the process. This hurts our democracy and every elected official, regardless of their party or office.

Currently, a group wishing to form a new political party or an existing political party working to

maintain its status must collect and turn in 10,000 signatures of registered Maryland voters. Because voters move, make errors in signing the petition, or fail to maintain active status, many more than 10,000 is actually necessary to ensure that enough signatures can be verified. While Maryland is relatively tolerant of minor parties compared to some other states, this requirement is still a high hurdle to minor parties who want to participate in the political process. Maryland should judge itself not on how its requirements compare to other states, but how tolerant it is to its own citizens who want to participate in civic life even though their political ideology is different from the two major options.

Minor parties want to run for office, pursue legislation, educate voters on their platforms, and participate in government in every other way major parties do. It is impossible to devise an effective electoral strategy with interruptions every three years to collect tens of thousands of signatures.  Explaining that we are required by state law to justify our very existence sounds less like an enthusiastic appeal to voters and more like an penance for some past violation. Most voters are surprised to hear that this is even required under state law, and many say that even if they would not vote for a minor party, they would still like to see people who are interested in running for office allowed access to the ballot.

Giving a favorable recommendation to Senate Bill 947 will not eliminate this burden on third parties but would move one step closer toward a stronger democracy in which all Marylanders felt as though they are welcome to participate regardless of their political ideology. Please recommend this bill and give the full Senate a chance to affirm this vision for all Marylanders.
 

Let My Party Go

In response to the idea that a"free and fair electoral process is a civil right, I posted the following comment.  The whole post is available at http://tinyurl.com/ankql8.

"A free and fair electoral process is a civil right, and I support public financing of campaigns. But, if you want to work for a free and fair electoral process and you think of it as a civil rights issue, working for public financing of campaigns is like working for fair representation of minorities on reality TV shows while Jim Crow laws are still on the books. You could not call a publicly-financed electoral system free and fair without major progress in ballot access.

In this country, the only candidates who get to run campaigns are the ones that have access to the ballot. In every state, members of the Democratic and Republican automatically have ballot access. In some states, they are the only candidates that have it. In many states, members of smaller parties have limited ballot access. In Maryland, four smaller parties are allowed to run candidates, but they have to re-gain ballot access every four years by collecting many thousands of signatures while Democrats and Republicans spend time actually organizing their campaigns (and get help by having the state publicly-fund primary elections, which “minor” parties are Constitutionally-prevented from having). In almost all states, an individual who wants to run for office as an independent candidate has to organize and fund their own petition to be allowed on the ballot before they could ever have access to public campaign financing. And the barriers a party or person has to overcome to win ballot access are getting worse, not better. Senate Bill 445 in the Maryland General Assembly, for example, would make it much harder for a party or independent candidate to win ballot access if passed. Our electoral system is broken not because of the kind of machines we use to count ballots, but because of the names that are allowed on those ballots in the first place.

Imagine an electoral system where 100% of campaigning was publicly-funded and no rich person or corporation were allowed to make any contributions of any kind. Imagine also that 100% of the population voted and 100% of the votes were accurately counted. Sounds great, right? Now imagine that there was only one name on the ballot. Because that’s exactly what happened in half of Baltimore’s City Council races during the last election. No amount of public campaign funding would change this, and while I support public funding of campaigns, I would demand that all candidates had an equal right to be on the ballot."

My Letter in the City Paper

Legal Solution (Baltimore City Paper, February 11, 2009)

A solution to the destructive results of Baltimore's "informal economy" has been on the city's radar for decades, but is ignored by city leaders for their political gain ("Shadow Players," Feature, Jan. 28). Legalizing or decriminalizing some or all drugs would help address the city's drug-addict population and the city's addiction to drug money. Legalizing the trade of some drugs and decriminalizing the use of others - treating their use as a public health issue, not a law enforcement issue - would boost the city's tax base, reduce the number of addicts not receiving treatment in our overcrowded prisons, and free police resources to fight serious crimes and unsolved murders. But very few of our city leaders take the proposition seriously because they prefer to score political points by cracking down on addicts so they can say they are "tough on crime." It's time to push our leaders to make radical changes that will help the city and its addicted population, and be ready to make radical changes to our City Council if it fails to do so.

Brian Bittner

The writer is the Co-Chair of the Baltimore Green Party.