Conyers Welcomes Michael Moore to Capitol Hill,
Urges Congress to Implement Single Payer Universal Health Care

WASHINGTON D.C. — Today, Congressman John Conyers, Jr., hosted Michael Moore and Americans featured in his new documentary, ‘Sicko,’ to highlight the failure of our nation’s for-profit health care system and the crisis of the uninsured and underinsured. Conyers said:

“The need for universal health care has never been more urgent. There are now 47 million Americans with no health insurance at all, including 8 million children. Another 50 million Americans are underinsured, meaning that they have health insurance, but with inadequate coverage or unaffordable deductibles and co-pays. According to the Institute of Medicine, 18,000 Americans die each year as a direct consequence of being uninsured. These facts are unacceptable in the richest country in the world.

On June 29th, Michael Moore’s new documentary, ‘Sicko,’ will open in theaters across the country. ‘Sicko’ illustrates the human impact of a health care system based on profit instead of patients. Today, we screened clips from ‘Sicko’ for Members of Congress and heard testimony from Mr. Moore as well as Americans featured in the film. The heartbreaking stories of Dawnelle Keys, Julie Pierce and Andy Bales give voice to the millions of Americans who are shut out of our hospitals and doctors’ offices. They are impossible to ignore, and that is why I believe that the release of ‘Sicko’ is one of the most important developments in our public debate since the Clintons tried to pass universal health care legislation in 1994.

Today’s events are part of a series of activities I will be sponsoring on America’s health care crisis throughout the 110th Congress. On July 17, the Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law will be holding a hearing on medical debt as a contributor to bankruptcy. Today I put in a request to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to further examine the problems with our current system. I also asked the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to do a cost estimate for establishing a system of single payer health care.

I have introduced legislation that would give all Americans access to high-quality, affordable health care. H.R. 676, The United States National Health Insurance Act, would establish a publicly financed, privately delivered single payer health care system based on expanding and improving Medicare. H.R. 676 currently has 74 cosponsors in Congress and is supported by 8 international unions, 14,000 physicians, two State Houses, and dozens of county and municipal governments across the country. These supporters have come to recognize a fundamental truth, as have the governments of all the other industrialized countries of the world: single payer financing is the only way we can afford to cover all our citizens with high-quality health care.”