Nurses Applaud 26 New Cosponsors for Illinois Single Payer Bill

SPRINGFIELD –  HB 311, the single-payer bill which would provide healthcare for all Illinois citizens, gained 26 new co-sponsors this week and was advanced out of the "Healthcare Availability and Access" committee on an 8-4 vote following a hearing on Tuesday afternoon.

Rep. Mary Flowers, D-31, Chicago, led the hearing that featured testimony from representatives of the National Nurses Organizing Committee, Physicians for a National Health Program, and members of several single-payer advocacy groups from throughout Illinois. 

New cosponsors include several member of the House leadership in Illinois.  The bill will now move on to the full Illinois House for further action at a date to be announced later.

Though the full floor debate on HB311 is yet to come, Flowers said, "I am optimistic that all the people of the state of Illinois will finally have a chance to get healthcare.  I am anxious to see medical decisions go back to doctors and patients instead of being made based on business decisions."

HB311, the Health Illinois Act, was first introduced during last year's legislative session by Rep. Flowers, who had grown weary of hearing from constituents, including nurses, fighting the failures of the for-profit health insurance industry and the reform and revenue issues in the Cook County Bureau of Health Services.

More than 900,000 Cook County residents have no health insurance coverage at all, and the numbers of uninsured jumps to 1.5 million statewide.

"Nurses see firsthand the damage to patient care from the for-profit health care system," said Brenda Langford, RN, of Oak Forest Hospital and of NNOC.  "We know how much our patients would benefit and how much our professional lives would improve with passage of HB311, single payer healthcare, in Illinois."

Illinois is not the only state working on single-payer reform.  NNOC also supports national reform as written in HR676, The National Health Insurance Act, whose chief sponsor is Rep. John Conyers of Michigan.  Conyers spoke to a Northwestern University law and medical school audience last week in Chicago, and told the audience that his national bill now has 88 cosponsors. 

The National Nurses Organizing Committee and the California Nurses Association, with more than 80,000 members nationwide, support the publicly financed, privately delivered single-payer reform measures as the most fiscally and ethically responsible means to deliver healthcare to every American citizen.