Chuck Pennacchio visits with PDR at Netroots Nation 2022 to discuss healthcare reform on a state-by-state basis and his group OnePayerStates.
Chuck Pennacchio on One Payer States.
It was a pleasure meeting up with Chuck Pennachio, the Co-founder/President of the One Payer States network and associate professor of history and politics at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. We had a lot to talk about.
Pennacchio explained his organization’s lofty goal. It is already coming to fruition in several states.
“One Payer States is an organization that has been around since 2009,” Pennacchio said, “We formalized our group as a C4 organization, as a political organization four and a half years ago. And we’re geared up to winning Universal Healthcare at the state level. We’d like to get it adopted in one, two, three, or four states, model it as a successful program, and then go national with it similar to the way Canada got to it one province at a time. It started in Saskatchewan. All the other provinces looked at it jealously and said we want to do that too, healthcare for everybody. cheaper and better. It helps the economy, helps people, So it’s really a very powerful movement that we’ve got involved here.”
Pennacchio understands that his success depends on a bottom-up approach. In that light, he said we need a mass movement which is clear he is an instrumental part of with his organization, that gets people involved, informed, and aware. He said in the process one must connect all generations and classes ensuring that justice is an overriding tenet.