On Saturday, June 8, 2019, at 1:30 PM CST at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois Headquarters, 300 E. Randolph St. in Chicago, students, physicians, nurses, unions, and single payer activists from around the country will unite to protest the annual meeting of the American Medical Association (A.M.A.).

The action was initiated by Students for a National Health Program (SNaHP), the medical student affiliate of Physicians for a National Health Program. The All Unions Committee for Single Payer Health Care is among a broad range of co-sponsors of the event.

The AMA has joined with the leading insurance, pharmaceutical, and hospital companies to form the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future to campaign against national single payer health care.

The June 8 Action will call on the AMA to withdraw from this corporate front group.

From the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Headquarters the demonstrators will march to the Hyatt Regency Chicago at 151 E. Wacker Dr., to call on the American Medical Association to stop actively campaigning against Medicare for All, which 55% of physicians and the vast majority of people in the US support.

The AMA’s opposition to Medicare is longstanding.

In 1968, Dr. Sidney Wolfe, co-founder and director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, politely and briefly took over a microphone at the American Medical Association’s national meeting because of the A.M.A.’s opposition to the right to health care.

Fifty-one years later, the A.M.A., along with its well-financed corporate partners in the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, is still leading the charge against universal, single-payer health care, also known as Medicare for All.

There is a brief video of Dr. Sidney Wolfe at this link.

The website for the event is here and the facebook page is here.

2019-06-03