Primary Care For All Americans

Become An Important Part of Community-owned Healthcare That Improves Health And Lowers Costs

This is my first invited post and it is written by Dr. Michael Fine, a family practitioner who founded Primary Care for All Americans. He has impressive credentials. He directed the Department of Public Health in Rhode Island. He is on the board of the Lown Institute. Dr. Bernard Lown is a hero of mine. He reported on his experience with optimal medical therapy for heart artery disease long before others were even thinking about it. Dr. Fine has written four books and his contributions to better health care are too great to review further here. We are both convinced we need an organization that brings together all stakeholders in healthcare— patients, employers, community leaders, doctors, nurses, physician assistants, pharmacists, nurse practitioners, health coaches, nurses, LPNs, medical assistants, and mental health professionals who understand that bringing basic primary care to all Americans is the most important thing we can do to pull out of our healthcare crisis. We must create the mass to move to a better system. What follows explains Dr. Fine’s initiative in his own words

***********************************************************************************************************

We all know it is long past time to build a health care system for the U.S. that is for people, not for-profit, to replace the ridiculous, insulting, and exploitive mess that passes for healthcare in the U.S. – and replace that mess with a system that provides primary care to all Americans, in every American neighborhood and community.

Primary Care for All Americans is a social movement modeled on the Civil Rights Movement and we’d love you to join us. We’ll start with a series of short national teach-ins, Zooms, webinars, and videos about why providing primary care to all Americans matters to our public health, our economy and our democracy. Then we’ll form and support local action networks to help twenty-five communities provide primary care to every resident of those communities.  Understanding that each state and community is different, we’ve assembled a menu of strategies and tactics that can and will propel meaningful local health care reform forward. 

We’ll also work on the state level, supplementing work that has already begun in many states, helping people understand how states can provide primary care to all their citizens. And we’ll form a national coordinating council that will develop strategies to turn federal health policy to focus on providing primary care for all Americans.

But strategies and tactics don’t change anything by themselves. Many people, working together, toward a single goal – that’s what we need to get this done.

What will move us forward is if you will join us and bring your colleagues and friends to this effort.

So I’m not asking you to sign a petition or to send us money.  I am asking you to join one half hour PC4AA Community Teach-and-Learn-In on Zoom every two weeks or so, and if you like what you hear, to bring one colleague to each of the Community Zooms that follow.  Our next PC4AA Community Zoom features Jerome Adams MD, the 20^th US surgeon General and is on January 9 2024 at 830 pm EST.  Join Us!

And please take a look at www.primarycareforallamericans.org, which lays out exactly how we are going to build this movement, with your help. Please click Join Us and fill out the form that comes up.  That will get you invited to our Zooms and will connect you to other information about Primary Care for All Americans as we grow and develop.  Then click Volunteer to tell us how you can help.  And Donate if you can, to help us all pay it forward.

Enough of the $10.5 billion dollar deals for primary care groups!

Enough of EMRs that exist only for billers!

Enough of too little time, too much busy work, and not enough time or space to be with and listen to the people who are our patients!

Enough already! Let’s change this together at last.

Michael

Michael Fine MD

President and Board Chair

PS In the event you are willing to help fund this effort, here’s how to make a fully tax deductible contribution

Click Donate on www.primarycareforallamericans.org and follow the directions.

To make an electronic fund transfer:
Incoming funds:  All incoming electronic funds for Primary Care for All Americans Inc.

Account Name: Global Impact

EIN 52-1273585
Subtitle and Account Numbers:
Fiscal Sponsor – 166008719
Bank Name: City National Bank
ABA: 122016066
SWIFT: CINAUS6L

To send us a check

Check contributions can be mailed to
Global Impact, 1199 N. Fairfax St., Suite 300, Alexandria, VA, 22314.
Any incoming funds (whether electronic or check) should be clearly notated as intended for Primary Care for All Americans Inc.