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GUESTS: Joanne Landy, Executive Director of the New York Metro Chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program, Eric Sawyer, Founding member of ACT UP

Activists will be marching in downtown New York today to demand a single payer health care plan and drug price controls. In commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power or ACT UP, numerous organizations will make stops along the march route to address issues related to health care. The march will end at the Bowling Green bull statue on Wall Street where some of the participants will engage in acts of civil disobedience. Activists will lay out fifty body bags to represent the number of people who die daily due to inadequate access to health care while blocking traffic. Today’s actions kick-off a campaign to make health care a major political issue in the 2008 elections. Health care may finally be on its way to becoming a priority as presidential hopefuls addressed the issue last weekend at a forum in Nevada. Although no Republican candidates turned out for the “New Leadership on Health Care” forum, Democratic candidates in attendance all agreed that the current health care system is untenable. Earlier this week, Senator Hillary Clinton boasted that “We’re going to have universal health care when I’m president, there’s no doubt about that.”

Physicians for a National Health Program is online at www.pnhp.org, and ACT UP’s website is www.actupnewyork.org.