This past Friday in Bryant Park New York, Medicare celebrated it’s 45th birthday with a flash mob of over one hundred singing and dancing protesters that warned President Obama’s newly created Deficit Commission to keep their hands off Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
The group’s modified version of the Motown hit “Stop! In The Name of Love” to “Stop! In The Name of Health” presented a refreshing way to express your discontent with the current state of the nation while having a good time and hopefully drawing even more support to your cause.
Though having a good time doing a group dance, these local activists and their supporters say this is a life-and-death issue. Advocates for Medicare expansion cite numbers from Harvard Medical School reporting that 45,000 people a year die in the United States because they don’t have health insurance; the number jumps to 101,000 when including people who are under-insured: they have insurance, but their insurance companies deny them necessary care when they get sick.
Angering many voters who supported him, President Obama created a Deficit Commission that us threatening cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, despite’s Social Security’s $2.54 trillion surplus and solvency through 2037. This anger is reflected in the alternative song lyrics to the original refrain of “after I’ve been good to you,” which became “after I voted for you.”
Julia Willebrand, 77, who is the Green Party’s candidate for New York State Comptroller participated in the flash-mob and stated that “People who voted for him are not happy to see him preparing to cut Medicare. The irony is that a Medicare-for-All system would actually save the country $00 billion a year, because it cuts out the profits and the administrative waste of the private health insurance industry.”
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For More Information:
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http://www.HandsOffOurMedicare.org
http://www.Healthcare-Now.org
