people from across the country lobbying in DC, supported by calls and
letters, such as that which follows the lead article. For DC contact
information, click on www.VoteSmart.org. Sorry I didn't catch this
earlier, but both article and letter are informative and the demand for
serious national health care is rapidly gaining momentum.
As I write, Amy Goodman honors the day with startling clips of a series of
breakthrough comments at yesterday's second Senate panel on health
as well as wonderful interviews of principals and a slogan to remember:
"We need health care, not health insurance!"
It's time to join in. -Ed
http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/who_will_be_at_the_table_7.php?page=all
Who Will Be at the Table?
Baucus evicts single-payer advocates from his hearing
By Trudy Lieberman
Columbia Journalism Review: May 8, 2009
During the campaign, Barack Obama promised his cheering crowds that, when he
rolled up his sleeves to work on health care, he would "have insurance
company representatives and drug company representatives at the table. They
just won't be able to buy every chair." Now is a good time to look at just
what kind of seats special interest groups will have at Obama's table and
what they're doing to bring the public around to their ways of thinking.
This is the eighth of an occasional series of posts that will analyze their
activities and how the media are covering them. The entire series is
archived here.
Single-payer advocates are definitely not at the table, and health care
reform is getting nasty. This week, Sen. Max Baucus, whose Finance Committee
holds the keys to health care reform, called the Capitol police to eject
single-payer advocates from his roundtable discussion. The advocates were
protesting their exclusion from the committee's witness list. The event was
one of several discussions the Senator has been holding to let stakeholders
talk about which route reform should take.
The fifteen witnesses read like a Who's Who of health reform
bigwigs-representatives from the Business Roundtable, the Heritage
Foundation, the National Federation of Independent Business, Families USA,
AARP, America's Health Insurance Plans, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the
New America Foundation, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners,
Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, the SEIU, the National Governors
Association, and a law professor from George Washington University. The
Kaiser Family Foundation got two spots on the witness list. It's fair to say
that this cast of characters has been seen many times before-at committee
hearings and in the backrooms of the Capitol, where the deal-making has
begun.
Single-payer reps have been marginalized since the beginning of this round
of reform, and they're mad about it. At first, the President did not invite
them to his summit. Only when they threatened a protest in front of the
White House did they get a last-minute invite. Tuesday they got their chance
to protest, and eight single-payer supporters stood up, one by one, to say
their piece. "We need to have single payer at the table," one said. As they
stood, police removed them from the room.
"It made me physically ill to see Maryland pediatrician Margaret Flowers
cuffed like a criminal and pushed out the door as the Senators waited to
begin their staged roundtable discussion," wrote Donna Smith of the
California Nurses Association on the Web site of the Physicians for a
National Health Program. Smith observed that not one senator defended the
protestors, or asked that they be given a chance to speak.
A YouTube video showed Baucus trying to maintain order, calling the
protestors' comments inappropriate and urging others not to stand up.
Finally, the chairman said that he "deeply, deeply respects the views of
members of the audience." He added that single-payer is an option supported
by many, and that people in Montana also share that position. He also said
there were other approaches he respected, and he was trying to determine
"the best option."
The protest didn't get much MSM pick up-the AP moved a short story on its
wires, reporting that "when one protestor shouted 'we want a seat at the
table,' Baucus responded 'We want police.'" But the news traveled quickly on
the Internet.
If the pols aren't keen on seating single-payer folks at the table, neither
are some of the Third Way health care reformists named on the Finance
Committee's witness list-those who favor a pragmatic, centrist position that
neither qualifies as single-payer nor the conventional Republican nostrums
of tax credits and personal responsibility.
This has long been evident to us at CJR and to Newsday columnist Saul
Friedman, who for months has been questioning the single-payer embargo. A
prominent health care blogger wrote to CJR, saying that single-payer should
be excluded from the discussion because "single-payer advocates don't
understand (or don't want to understand) the economics of health care."
"I think we should avoid giving single-payer too much ink," she said.
"Single-payer won't happen-not now. Their refusal to accept that fact is
muddying the waters."
John Rother, AARP's chief lobbyist, told Saul Friedman:
Folks who oppose the Obama approach on the grounds that it's not 'good
enough' are just playing into the opposition. We can't afford that. I
certainly hope you recognize the need to get something important done on
health reform this year, and won't join the opposition.
Journalists don't take kindly to censorship, or attempts at censorship.
That's
not what we're about. For more than a year, Campaign Desk has observed that
the health reform debate has been too narrow; that the same sources are
quoted again and again. We have urged the press to be more inclusive of
other voices, even if politicians aren't. Health reform may or may not pass
this year, but all Americans must have their say. Democracy is messy.
Stifling dissent is just not cool.
***
http://capwiz.com/pdamerica/issues/alert/?alertid=12402271
Hope and Healthcare in 2009
A letter to your congress representative
By Progressive Democrats of LA: May 12, 2009
Congressman John Conyers has reintroduced HR 676, his single-payer
healthcare bill in the 111th Congress. Please ask your representative to
cosponsor the bill and actively work with Rep. Conyers to gain additional
cosponsors. In order to ensure HR 676 is part of the healthcare discussion
in Congress, we need 150 cosponsors.
Former Sen. Tom Daschle called for "a government-run insurance program
modeled after Medicare," as part of the solution to our healthcare crisis in
testimony before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and
Pensions. His plan also includes health insurance corporations. We already
have a public-private system which doesn't work.
For-profit health corporation-friendly bills, which put private profits over
public health, will not and cannot solve our healthcare crisis. I understand
that only HR 676 would implement a sustainable, fair, and cost-efficient
solution to the healthcare crisis.
Some argue that HR 676 is "not politically feasible," but that's a facile
truism, not an acceptable position. We elect our Congress to serve the
public interest, and the public overwhelmingly supports a national health
plan.
HR 676 would help control costs by emphasizing prevention and universal
access to basic care instead of reliance on emergency room care--the most
costly and least efficient method of healthcare delivery. We can't afford
not to adopt HR 676.
HR 676 would improve healthcare outcomes and eliminate racial, geographic
and other disparities which currently plague our nation.
All the other advanced democracies adopted national healthcare, none have
seriously considered eliminating these systems, and all enjoy better
healthcare results than we do including: longer life expectancy, lower
infant mortality rates, fewer work-days lost to illness, and many other
measures of health and wellness.
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