Calendar

TELEVISION PROGRAMS
For 22 years the Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation has produced one-hour TV programs on issues related to peace, social justice, economics, the environment, and nonviolence. The Olympia FOR’s program airs on Thurston Community Television (TCTV), channel 22 for Thurston County’s cable TV subscribers. Each program airs every Monday at 1:30 p.m. and every Thursday at 9:00 p.m. for a full month. This creates many opportunities to watch each program.

JUNE: “Folk Music’s Power for Peace and Justice”
People have performed music for thousands of years to create beauty, to express what they felt, and to communicate meaningful messages to other people. So it’s not surprising that music has played powerful and important roles in movements for peace and social justice.

The Olympia FOR’s June TCTV program focuses on using folk music to support movements for peace and social justice. Our guests, Holly Gwinn Graham and Tom Rawson, have delighted audiences with powerful and engaging songs – and with their infectious joy and wit.

Holly and Tom perform lively songs throughout the hour to illustrate their conversation about folk music’s history and evolution, ways to activate an audience, the process of writing folk music, and more.
This program is informative – as are all of our TCTV programs – and it is also full if life, wit and joy. Be sure to watch!

JULY: “Health Care Reform: Single-Payer Is the Solution!”

Everybody knows that our health care system is broken. The US’s health care is by far the most expensive in the world, but we lag behind a great many countries in access, outcomes, and other measures of effectiveness. (The World Health Organization ranked us 37th.) What makes US health care so expensive, yet so ineffective?

Our system is bogged down with insurance companies that rip off nearly 25% of our health care dollars without providing any real health care. Other national governments pay for their health care directly, without insurance companies’ overhead.
The public, media and politicians all talk about reforming our health care system, but they are only tinkering around the edges so long as they ignore this elephant in the room. Republicans and Democrats alike refuse to eliminate this waste. They may talk about “universal coverage” in terms of “insuring everyone.”  But – with the exception of Congressmen Kucinich, Conyers, McDermott, and a few others – they simply want a scheme to push everyone into the arms of the insurance companies, and use tax dollars to subsidize “insurance’ for those who lack it.

Obama’s plan for a “public option” would create a publicly funded track for people with serious health problems, but it anticipates that most people would continue dealing with insurance companies, which skim off the healthiest people and exclude those with pre-existing conditions and other health risks. This will force the people with the most expensive health care needs into the public option. As a result, the public option won’t be as economical as it should be, and the capitalistic insurance companies would continue to reap big profits. Both of these results would keep overall system costs high.
In contrast, the single-payer solution would replace private insurance with a nationwide system in which everyone is in the same “pool” and the government pays the costs. The single-payer solution would treat the entire population equally, so the publicly funded program would avoid getting only the sickest people dumped into it. It would eliminate private health insurance and all of its waste.

The current system of capitalistically owned insurance companies is terribly wasteful. Each insurance company has its own bureaucracy, its own rules, its own payment rates, its own claim forms, its own high-paid executives, its own advertising, and its own high profits. Patients and medical providers waste terrible amounts of time figuring out how to navigate those many redundant systems.

Insurance companies make profits by taking in more money than they pay out. Therefore, they employ many persons whose jobs are to figure out ways to deny coverage, so sick people can’t get the health care they need. Our insurance premium dollars pay for bureaucrats who are working against our interests!

Also, a single-payer system would achieve economies of scale in administering the program. It would have the power to require low prices from pharmaceutical companies and hospitals.

Of course, politicians rely upon privately owned hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and insurance companies for campaign contributions. This is a major reason why politicians refuse to consider the single-payer solution.

The Olympia FOR’s July TCTV program will explain how the single-payer solution is the only way to solve the various problems efficiently, economically, and democratically. The single-payer solution can cover everyone, improve health care results, and save money.