A single payer health care system - at the federal or state level - remains the best solution for the

A vote for Howie Hawkins, the Green Party candidate for Governor, is a great way to show politicians that you still want a single payer, improved and expanded Medicare for All health care system. Eliminate the waste and red tape of private health insurance. Make health care a right. If the Greens get 50,000 votes, they become an official party again. The Democrats and Republicans understand that this is a critical threshold, giving greater credibility to the issues that the Greens advocate for.

Hawkins wants New York to be the first state in the country to implement a single payer Medicare for All program that would save New Yorkers $28 billion annually by 2019 (compared to the Congressional insurance mandate) according to a recent state-funded study.

Hawkins agrees with American voters that the recent Congressional health care reform did not go far enough in solving the nation's health care crisis. A new poll finds that Americans who think the law should have done more outnumber those who think the government should stay out of health care by 2-to-1. Congress left tens of millions of Americans outside of the system and forced far more to buy expensive, inadequate health insurance that will not enable them to obtain needed care.

The Green Party nationally has actively promoted single payer. The Greens have been active in NYS. Gloria Mattera, the Lt. Governor candidate, is a health care work in the NYC hospital system who is a long time board member of NY Metro PNHP. Mark Dunlea, Hawkins's campaign manager, is a co-chair of Single Payer NY.

Hawkins has been active on universal health care reform for decades, including actively supporting Cong. Ron Dellums proposal for a National Health Services Act. Hawkins was arrested last year for criminal trespass when executives at the Syracuse office of WellPoint, the nation's largest private health insurer, refused to accept a letter from single payer protesters demanding that WellPoint stop denying care to policyholders and spend their premiums on health care instead of exorbitant executive salaries and profits. Hawkins was arrested the day after he received 41% of the vote for City Council.

"Over the years the Democrats have continually moved to the right on health care reform as their campaign funds have swollen with massive contributions from private insurance companies, drug companies, and for-profit hospital chains. They moved from a national health insurance program to an employer mandate to an individual mandate," noted Hawkins.

Liberal Democratic groups like the Working Families Party opposed single payer in Congress, even though they admitted it was the best solution. Instead they promoted a flaw public option proposal. Their main accomplishment was to weaken the single payer effort. In the end, they passed something which they told their supporters 18 months ago that they strongly opposed - a mandate for individuals to purchase health insurance if they don't get it from the employer or the government. Having defeated real health care reform, they called it an historic victory.