Is MoveOn.Org Ignoring Its Core Democratic Principles in Setting its Direction on Health Care Reform?

I'm a longtime admirer and member MoveOn.Org. MoveOn has helped transform progressive politics, point the way to a new web-based activism, and raised millions of dollars to support progressive candidates.

The key to MoveOn's success has been its core democratic principles. As its web site puts it, "Every member has a voice in choosing the direction." When MoveOn wanted to decide which candidate to support in the Democratic primary, it didn't have a conference call among a small group of leaders. It polled its 3.2 million members.

However, when it comes to health care reform, MoveOn's leaders seem to be overlooking its core democratic principles. Without asking the opinion of its members, MoveOn's leaders have elected to join the steering committee of (and pledge at least $500,000 of its members' money to) a new health care coalition called Health Care For America Now, which excludes supporters of single payer health care, many of whom are MoveOn members. HCAN instead supports preserving and reforming the private health insurance system (while offering an expensive public alternative that individuals and employers can buy into with their own money).

I recently critiqued this coalition in the Huffington Post and was joined a day later by Rose Ann DeMoro, Executive Director of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee. (In the name of a full and fair debate, the type which I believe MoveOn and HCAN should be encouraging among its members, also see the blog by HCAN's Richard Kirsch, which while criticizing the private health insurance industry, also reassures the health insurance lobby that HCAN supports preserving private insurance.)

MoveOn's leaders could have encouraged this kind of debate and pushed for HCAN to organize itself as a broad coalition of progressive health care reformers, encompassing both single payer supporters and supporters of a private/public compromise. Instead, HCAN has enshrined the preservation of private health insurance in its Statement of Principles and has excluded single payer supporters from its events. I'm friends with some of HCAN's founders and honor their deep commitment to health care reform. But I believe that they have chosen a strategy that divides the progressive movement, right at the moment when we may have the best chance in a generation to fundamentally transform America's failing health care system.

Now a coalition of single payer supporters, including Progressive Democrats for America, Healthcare-NOW, Physicians for a National Health Care Program, and the All Unions Committee For Single Payer Health Care, are circulating an online petition requesting that MoveOn follow its core democratic principles and -- after sponsoring a vigorous online debate on whether to support reforming private insurance with a voluntary public add-on, or replacing private health insurance with a universal single payer system -- allow MoveOn's members to vote on which approach they support.

You can find the petition at http://pdamerica.e-actionmax.com/takeaction.asp?aaid=3436

Whatever your position on health care reform, if you agree that MoveOn's members, and not just its leaders, should determine MoveOn's direction on the vital issue of health care reform, please go there and sign the petition.

Then please email the petition to your friends and supporters and ask them to sign too.

UPDATE: The Petition has only been on line for a couple of hours and already over 1000 [2 hours later and its up to 1500] people have signed. [A FEW HOURS LATER AND ITS UP TO 2000 SIGNATURES, AND THE PETITION HAS ONLY BEEN UP FOR LESS THAN 12 HOURS--KEEP THOSE SIGNATURES COMING, AND PASS THE PETITION LINK ON TO YOUR FRIENDS.]
Here's the text of the Petition:

WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, respectfully petition the leaders of MoveOn.Org to abide by its core democratic principles and ask the opinion of its members whether they support reform of the private health insurance system or replacement of private health insurance by universal single payer health care, before MoveOn continues to organizationally and financially support a new coalition which supports the former and excludes the latter.

WHEREAS, MoveOn has had extraordinary success because it has presented itself as democratic organization in which, as its web site proclaims, every member has a voice in choosing the direction.

WHEREAS, MoveOn's leadership has not followed its democratic principals regarding the choice of MoveOn's direction on one of the most important issues confronting the country, universal health care.

WHEREAS, Tens of thousands of activists, including many MoveOn members, have been organizing at the grassroots in support of replacing Americas fragmented and wasteful system of private health insurance with a universal single payer Medicare-For-All system that would cover everyone from cradle to grave, in which health care decisions would be made between patients and doctors and not by insurance company bureaucrats, and in which everyone would have the right to choose her or his own doctor. Medicare-For- All is embodied in H.R. 676 introduced by Rep. John Conyers and co-sponsored by 91 members of Congress.

WHEREAS, With the longstanding coalition called Healthcare NOW playing a key role, HR 676 has been endorsed by 452 union organizations, including 111 Central Labor Councils, 36 State AFL-CIO federations, and 17 national or international unions including the United Auto Workers, The National Education Association, The American Federation of Teachers, the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers, The International Longshore and Warehouse Union, and The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee; such national organizations as the NAACP, Progressive Democrats of America, Physicians for a National Health Program, the United Church of Christ, and the United Methodist Board of Church and Society; and 32 City Councils including Baltimore, Louisville, Indianapolis, Detroit and Boston.

WHEREAS, Without asking the opinion of its members, the leaders of MoveOn have chosen to join the steering committee and pledge $500,000 of its members money to a competing health care coalition with the confusingly similar name Health Care For America Now, whose Statement of Principles seeks to preserve and reform the private health insurance system (adding an expensive public alternative that businesses and individuals can pay for with their own money) and which systematically excludes supporters of single payer health care, including many of MoveOn's own members, from its events.

WHEREAS, We, the undersigned, believe that this decision by MoveOn's leadership to take a major leadership and fundraising role in this competing coalition to reform private health insurance and exclude single payer supporters, many of whom are MoveOn members, violates MoveOn's core principle that MoveOn's members choose its direction.

NOW THEREFORE, We, the undersigned, respectfully call on MoveOn to follow its core democratic principles and sponsor an online debate between supporters of universal single payer health care and supporters of reforming private health insurance with a voluntary public alternative, and then let MoveOn's members vote on which approach to health care reform they believe MoveOn should support.

Signed:____________

To sign, click here.

Comments

[nursenpo]

The Kentucky House of Representatives passed a resolution in support of HR 676, national single payer health care, in 2007. There is a crying need and massive support for single payer once people know the truth. Come on MoveOn. You can help us build this movement!

WHEREAS, United States Representative John Conyers has introduced H.R. 676, the United States National Health Insurance Act, in the United States House of Representatives for the 110th Congress, and this act would provide a universal, comprehensive, single-payer system of high quality national health insurance;

NOW, THEREFORE,

Be it resolved by the House of Representatives of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Kentucky:

Section 1. The House of Representatives of the Kentucky General Assembly respectfully urges the United States Congress to enact H.R. 676, the United States National Health Insurance Act, sponsored by Representative John Conyers in the United States House Of Representatives for the 110th Congress.

http://www.lrc.ky.gov/record/07RS/HR81/bill.doc

[RobStone]

I went to medical school to learn how to take care of sick people, and that’s what I do. The insurance industry exists to serve its shareholders, not its customers. It takes money in the form of premiums from the healthy, and in order to make a profit, it must put all its ingenuity and guile into not paying for the care of the sick. I want to take care of the sick, and they want to avoid taking care of them.
Obama was a single payer advocate, and more than once has said that in the ideal world, single payer health insurance would be the best system, but “given current political reality” his plan (similar to HCAN’s) is the best way to go.
If single payer is the ideal plan, then why compromise before we’ve even sat down at the negotiating table? NPR interviewed sanitation workers on whose behalf Dr King had gone to Memphis before he was assassinated. Mr. Taylor Rogers was one of those men. He explained how thirteen hundred sanitation workers decided they weren’t going to take it any more. “If you bend your back, people will ride your back. But if you stand up straight, people can’t ride your back. So that’s what we did. We just stood up straight.”
The for-profit insurance industry is like a dinosaur stumbling toward a tar pit. Let them go.
MoveON, stand straight and don’t compromise before we’ve even sat down at the table.

[Eli Pariser - Huffpost Blogger]

Thanks for the hearty debate. As a matter of fact, we HAVE asked MoveOn members what they think about health care. Here's what we found:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eli-pariser/what-do-moveon-members-th_b_118930.html

--Eli

[larry278]

MoveOn is again on another of its Quixotic crusades. This is similar to MoveOn's crusade to save reactionary daily's in 1 paper towns. Perhaps MoveOn's members will sign the petition.
No, I'm not a member of MoveOn. Their misguided crusade to save reactionary daily's in 1 paper towns was a turn off for me.

[HR676fan]

HuffPost's Pick

And if you watched yesterday's Congressional hearings on health insurer recissions and denials, you will understand why we need a nonprofit single payer system.. The greed and duplicity of the HMOs and the health insurance industry is the shame of the nation. Insurers are not health care providers. Yet we hand them 20 to 30 cents of every healthcare dollar. They simply create problems, deny or interfere with care, and carry money from our pockets to theirs.
At the hearing, a spokesperson for AHIP, the insurers' trade group,, kept saying that the insurers would welcome "universal coverage." Of course they would! They see every new client as a profit center. We need NONprofit universal coverage. If we eliminate the private insurers, economists tell us we could save billions, cover everyone and control costs going forward.

[jmpurser]

Once again the "extreme liberal left" speaks up and says something that sounds a lot like a republican.

You can't fix our health care problem by throwing more money at a severely broken system.

[mosh]

Thank you for this post. I signed the petition and happen to be an 'automatic' monthly contributor to MoveOn so I hope they take this petition seriously.

[Neaguy]

MoveOn should move out of the way; they're blocking progressive reform with their diversionary tactics.

[LWkcma]

It's time for us to "Move On" to single payer health care.

[RoloTomassi]

This is quite disturbing; single-payer is the only way to fix this mess, and MoveOn endorsing HCAN smacks of corporate influence on their internal policies.

But, I must admit, I really doubt that we will see any significant change anytime in the near future; Obama's plan is mostly smoke and mirrors, and without a strong consensus on the single-payer approach to reform I fear we'll see the entire issue buried once again.

We cannot reform the healthcare system with the primary problem--private health insurance companies--included in the mix. They will undermine and eventually destroy any meaningful reforms from the inside out, and in the end nothing much will have changed.

[nyceve]

great work, Miles.

Did you read my post on Daily Kos?

[mmogu77]

For another great blog on MoveOn, HCAN, and the reason single payer is the only true solution for America's health care crisis, see NYCEve's post on Daily Kos at:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/13/74759/7616/857/562571

[Spoons]

Thank GOD for you!. Hundreds of billions of wasted health care dollars and millions of innocent American lives are waiting and needing to be saved.

Bless you both for fighting the good fight for what is right and true.

Now if we only had Barack Obama on our side...just think what we could accomplish.