Marian Shostrom, Health Care Item Co-Chair

LWV Diablo Valley co-sponsored a showing of the Film Fix It: Healthcare at the Tipping Point on April 18th.  A group of about 60 people watched the 38-minute film, and then listened to panelists Dr. Mary Boegel, MD, Pat Snyder, RN, PhD, and Dan Geiger, MBA. Mr. Geiger gave an overview of a Single Payer system. Ms. Snyder talked about current national and state legislative efforts. Dr. Boegel talked about her experiences practicing medicine in Canada as well as in the United States.

LWVDV member Janet Thomas introduced the program, and LWVDV member Ann Flynn moderated the lively Q and A. If you missed the program, and want to stream the movie at home, you can do that by going to this website:  https://fixithealthcare.com/. In addition to Fix It, there are other documentary films, including: Medicare for All: How do we pay for it? and Big Pharma: Market Failure available for streaming at home. If you would like to host a viewing of any of these films with a Q & A, contact Marian Shostrom, info [at] lwvdv.org

We all know that Health Care reform in the United States is complicated because we have so many different systems and payers, including Socialized Medicine (Veteran’s Administration) and Single Payer (Medicare).

Single payer Medicare for All bills have been introduced in both the House (H.R. 1384) and the Senate (S. 1129).  Neither bill can clear the Senate, but this is an opportunity for all of us to learn more about the single payer model, which would provide affordable and equitable health care for everyone, vs. the Public Option, which would provide Medicare for more people than Medicare currently covers, but would leave much of the current system in place. Physicians for a National Health Program, PNHP, has an excellent FAQ page about Single Payer: https://pnhp.org/what-is-single-payer/faqs/.