Just Healthcare:

How do we get there?

At our upcoming convention in November, Labor Party delegates will discuss a new national campaign to win grassroots support for the Labor Party's kind of healthcare reform - what we call Just Healthcare. How would we mobilize for Just Healthcare? Here are some elements of the plan:

Photo: ŠEarl Dotter, Impact Visuals

• The Labor Party will offer a series of training courses for Labor Party activists on Just Healthcare. These "train the trainer" sessions will prepare people to talk to their neighbors and fellow union members about what's wrong with the current healthcare system and how our plan for Just Healthcare would work. Organizers will also get an organizing manual that will help us talk to people about healthcare reform.

• The Labor Party will organize Just Healthcare hearings in selected locations around the country. The public will be invited to describe their experiences with our flawed healthcare system. We will assemble a panel of physicians, nurses, healthcare activists and Labor Party members who can respond to the testimony and describe our "prescription for a sick America."

• The Labor Party will announce a campaign to organize a national "Committee of One Million" for Just Healthcare.

• Labor Party state and local entities will gear up to begin the signature campaign. They will set a target for the number of signatures they will collect, and map out a strategy to get them.

• Labor Party union and community activists will take Just Healthcare petitions around their union shops, door-to-door, organize neighborhood house meetings and take the petitions to street corners and events.

• Petition-signers will be asked to contribute what they can to help further the organizing drive. Local Labor Parties may choose to use the money to pay for full-page ads in the local daily paper advocating Just Healthcare.

Just Healthcare is already on the ballot

"Shall the state representative from this District be instructed to initiate and support legislation to create a healthcare system for all the residents of Massachusetts that:

Provides universal coverage for comprehensive healthcare services that includes the freedom to choose doctors and other healthcare professionals, facilities, and services;

Eliminates the role of insurance companies in healthcare and creates an insurance trust fund that is publicly administered and fairly funded;

And in order to safeguard the availability of quality healthcare, stops the buying, selling, managing and closing down of healthcare facilities by for-profit corporations?"

The Massachusetts Labor Party is already putting our Just Healthcare idea before the voters. On election day, November 3, people in two state House districts will vote on the nonbinding resolution above which calls on their representatives to support our healthcare reform plan.

Labor Party organizer Ed Bruno says local activists easily got the 200 certified signatures required to get the resolution onto the ballot in each of the districts. All it took, he says, was a few door-to-door and subway entrance petition drives. Because it's often hard to insure that every signature is valid (for instance, that it comes from a registered voter in the appropriate district), the Labor Party actually collected 500 or 600 signatures in each area.

"The reaction we got in petitioning was good," says Bruno. "The only question that really popped up was when people asked us what would happen to their insurance if we really did do away with the insurance companies." (Answer: You will automatically get health insurance from the government, just like Social Security. Only with this insurance, you wonÕt have to pay premiums or deductibles. And youÕll be able to use any doctor you want.)

Bruno says the two districts, in Quincy and West Roxbury (Boston), both include solid working class populations. West Roxbury is predominately white, while Quincy is very mixed racially. Bruno says the state representatives in these districts are not yet on record supporting a Labor Party-type healthcare proposal. But if the ballot initiative wins, they may change their tune.

Between now and November 3, the Labor Party will be doing door-to-door and street leafletting on the ballot resolution. The party is asking every member in the state to take part in the mobilization, and requesting every LP-affiliated union to do mailings to members supporting the initiative. In addition, the Labor Party is seeking endorsements from other organizations. So far, MassCare (a healthcare reform group), Senior Action, and several other organizations have endorsed the campaign.

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