Concert for 100% Free Health Care

May 2014

At the World Famous Apollo Theater

According to a Daily News article, “Another unhealthy year for Harlem:”

• Central Harlem had the highest death rate of any community in the city with 8.8 deaths per 1,000 people in 2009, compared with 6.1 deaths per 1,000 people citywide.
• East Harlem ranked third in the city with a rate of 8.3 deaths per 1,000 people.

According to another report by the Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York, the child poverty rate is 35.8% for Central Harlem and 44.2% for East Harlem. Compared to city-wide of 30.0% and 22.1% for Manhattan.

The human right to health means that everyone has the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, which includes access to all medical services, sanitation, adequate food, decent housing, healthy working conditions, and a clean environment.

On “The Opinion Pages” of The New York Times, David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler write about the benefits of a single payer system:

A single-payer reform — a public, national health insurance plan that pays virtually all medical bills — would fix the health care mess; and, like Medicare, it’s clearly constitutional. Single-payer would save $400 billion wasted each year on insurers’ overhead and the paperwork burden they impose on doctors and hospitals.

Himmelstein and Woolhandler are internists and professors of public health at the City University of New York. They are co-founders of Physicians for a National Health Program.