Work on State Single-Payer     CLICK HERE

HCfA NC Proposal for NC Health Plan     CLICK HERE

Legislative Work 2008 and Previous    CLICK HERE

Our Legislative Focus 2010

Finally by March 2010 it became clear what sort of reform would pass through Congress. The health care reform bill which will slowly come into implementation through 2017 has several aspects which will be beneficial for most working and taxpaying people in North Carolina. This is true, despite the fact, that overall we do not expect it to suceed either in cost-containment or in achieving universality in access to care. In brief the bill is best characterized as an expansion in coverage by throwing additional tax dollars at private insurance corporations. This cannot solve the fundamental problems of the system.


Most important among the positive aspects, the reform opens the door for state single-payer efforts such as that which we have been pursuing for over 15 years. Thanks to Sen. Kucinich, there is an article in the bill which will allow individual states to implement experimental plans, including Single-Payer in 2017. This is not too far away, rather it is perfectly timed. If we can build our organization and spearhead an effective educational drive in North Carolina during the next few years, we will be able to push our legislative effectively towards Single-Payer, especially as the limitations of the current reform become increasingly obvious.

Download Our Program for 2010 as a PDF CLICK HERE

Our Proposal for NC's Health Care Sytem

Published in March 2009, and available at this website as a PDF, we have proposed the most sensible economic option to be put on the table by any organization in our state.  It is politically feasible now and becomes ever more so, as more working (and formerly working) people are left with fewer and fewer affordable choices for comprehensive health coverage in this recession. And becomes just more urgent as small businesses are forced to drop health plan offerings to employees, or offer restricted (capped) and high-deductible plans (i.e. less health care benefits).

We continue to represent this plan in 2010 as we did in 2009 through work with the ongoing commissions which may lay some cornerstones for a state Single-Payer system. Chiefly, we: 1) continue to support and work with the NC Institutes of Medicine Commission on Affordable Access to Care for All North Carolinians (a commission we were instrumental in getting started) and 2) to the Blue Ribbon Commission investigating possible changes to the State Employees Health Benefits. In both these cases we believe there may be opportunity to introduce proposals for combining and expanding public health care coverage, along with the administrative/financial efficiencies which are always possible by combining covered pools of enrollees and cutting out administrative overhead of corporate health care coverage middle-men.