Sen. Max Baucus, Chair of the Finance Committee announced last week: "Single-payer option is not on the table because it cannot pass." A week earlier, a rally, co-sponsored by one of the main advocates of single-payer system, CNA/NNOC took place on Capitol Hill. Hundreds of nurses, doctors and health care reform advocates gathered to express their opinion on the health care issues.
Produced by Ania Smolenskaia
Comments from Registered Members | (Register or log in to make your comment.) | davsea 2009-06-03
It is interesting the way people get irritated at politicians. They are legal voted-in conmen, who would rather lie than tell the truth. They are in the business to make money, "not" to help the people of the USA.The only way to beat them is to actually vote out every incumbent with and independent REP or Senator. Until that happens we are at the mercy of our "HONERABLE REPRESENTATIVES" | punk-rawker 2009-06-01
This man is truely scum. Blood money is lining this mans pockets, and protesters are banging on the doors and calling for public health care across the country. What does it take for people to see that representative democracy is a sham, and direct control must be introduced into the system. Electing a rich man to be bribed for you, and then ignore the public is not democracy. | betsyw 2009-05-31
Clearly, our elected officials cannot comprehend the plan that is needed to reform health care. They are of the consciousness which created this health care disaster!
We need a new congress, but until we can elect better representatives of we the people, massive protest will have to do. Congress apparently does not yet believe that Americans are waking up and, every day, become more willing to take action to fulfill the promise of democracy. | bdcastrantas 2009-05-30
Dear Senator Max Baucus,
Please try to put your personal interests aside and consider for a moment the requests of the people who elected you to represent them.
Thank you.
| Lipshon1097 2009-05-29
On Friday, PBS had a Bill Moyers Journal about Single Payer Healthcae. You can go to
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/index-flash.html to watch the show and get more information. He had healthcare professional advocates on and they show some of the protesters in Washington D.C. They showed the marches, and people getting aressted for trying to talk during a congressional discussion. The show discloses who IS allowed to speak at the meetings. Please visit this site, do some exploring and get some REAL information.
| Lipshon1097 2009-05-29
These are legislators who are trying to get REAL healthcare reform going. If you google their names you will find thier websites and a "contact" tab to email them your stories. Even if these people aren't "your" states reps, you can still contact them.
Harry Reid, Max Bacus, Evan Bayh, John Ensign, Blanch Lincoln, Ben Nelson, and Bill Nelson.
Contact these legislators and tell them your stories, your families stories, your thoughts your feelings, and ask them to support a Single Payer Healthcare System. Then go to WWW.SICKOCURE.ORG and sign the petition, contact your state representatives, and get more information about Singl Payer Healthcare.
| Lipshon1097 2009-05-29
This is the list of the United State Committee on Finance. They need to be contacted about a Single Payer healthcare system. Tell them your story, your families and friends stories, and tell them you WANT a Single Payer healthcare sytem. Tell them we HAVE to have a health care system that covers EVERYBODY. Then, tell all of your friends and families the same. Go to WWW.SICOCURE.ORG to sign a petition, contact your local reps, and get information. Go to WWW.PNHP.ORG to get information, if you , or someone you know is a healthcare provider, tell them to go to the site and sign up. Keep applying the pressure, tell them what you want, make sure they know that if they don't do what you want, you will vote them out. Understand that you do NOT have to be a resident of their state to write to them.
To get EMAIL information for any of the below, Google their names and you will be taken to their homepage.
From the website WWW.CITIZEN.ORG
DemocratsREPUBLICANS
MAX BAUCUS, MT
J | rons7538 2009-05-29
Single-payer is so obviously the way to go for the Country. It's painful to watch politicians like Baccus and all his industry bought ilk fog and smog the issues.Single-payer is a MAJOR issue for us 2nd only perhaps to public financing of federal political
campaigns so we the citizens don't have to put up with
these slimey,double talk position charades. | gegenwarst 2009-05-29
I'm really concerned why TRNN is not covering the ongoing events in the Korean Peninsula...I can fairly assume they don't have qualified analysts who can explain the brute and ignorant American populace that a delicate situation like the one occurring in that part of the world can affect everybody in this planet...disappointing indeed.. | dart 2009-05-28
It`s great to see real democracy in action.The health care issue was predicted to be the No.1 post election issue by Chomsky.The US has a great opportunity to start universal healthcare learning from the mistakes of others but instead of investing in its own people it is the sole proposer of a space weapons programme to resume a new cold war and kill people. | brian 2009-05-28
We need to write to our Senators and Representatives and tell them that single pay WILL be on the table and it WILL pass....or they WILL NOT be there come election day! | ltaracha 2009-05-28
Great Story.
I particularly like how you break down this confusing debate and make it so transparent. Thank you!!! | Hoop 2009-05-28
Not politically feasible. Well we all know what passes for politics these days, influence via campaign contributions and lobbying. So....yeah. It's not politically feasible. True statement.
Thanks TRNN for taking up this issue. It's vitally important. And thanks for including singlepayeraction.org. | agstreet 2009-05-28
Good job on this. Thanks! | sunrise 2009-05-28
please spread the "off " mainstream radar news: Brasschecktv.com, and The Real News by Paul Jay, we no longer allowed to send out mass e-mail, with limited resources, we need united, help each other, transfer the news that forbidden by the mainstream channels, and fight the system from slavery all of us. The Real News also provide a rare public forum that you can add web-site, and books to inform the viewers. see http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7535755025025800195; obama is the president promote the benefit of meg-insurance, corporation $etc.donate to pual jay, we need his web-site to provide us public forum, info.and knowledge. thanks. | sshenfield 2009-05-28
Interesting when Senator Baucus says he doesn't want to frighten "people" off and then it turns out that "people" means "industry representatives." The rest of us are nonpeople. This also explains his "all proposals are on the table": it isn't a lie as it may appear, he is just assuming his fellow crooks will understand it means all proposals from people, not from nonpeople. He's getting quite close here to revealing the class reality of the American political and economic system. Of course, he will never be completely explicit -- in public. |
VOICEOVER: On Wednesday, May 13, hundreds of nurses, doctors, and health-care-reform activists gathered on Capitol Hill to rally in support of the single-payer health plan, also known as John Conyers' House Resolution 676. ZENEI CORTEZ, PRESIDENT, CNA/NNOC: We want to tell our elected officials and we want to tell President Obama that as registered nurses, as front-line registered nurses, we need to be included in the debate.DR. CAROL RITTER, PHYSICIAN: This issue is so important to me that I closed my office to come down to support the nurses and to be part of the Physicians for National Health Care. I'm just tired of insurance companies dictating what we physicians have to do.ALLEN FITZPATRICK, BOARD OF DIRECTORS, CNA: The people who are having input now are the pharmaceutical companies, the hospital industry, and the health-care industry, the insurance companies. And the people who are advocating for a government-run health-care system like most other industrialized countries have, you know, in Europe and Canada and everywhere else in the world, that isn't on the table. So what we're supporting, really, is a government-run health-care system much like Medicare, which is what you get in this country now when you retire and you're over 65 years of age.ADRIAN CAMPBELL MONTGOMERY: At the age of 22, I was diagnosed with cervical cancer. My doctor rushed me into surgery. Weeks later, I got a denial letter from Blue Cross Blue Shield. They said the type of surgery I had was only recommended for women 26 years of age and older, see, and I was 22. I was left paying out of pocket $8,000 for my cancer surgery. Now I am 27, uninsured, and just battled cancer again, only now I am over $10,000 in debt so far. I am now cancer-free, but financially ruined. We have to take the profit out of health care. FITZPATRICK: Thirty percent of the premiums go towards profits and administration. So we're saying, let's just get rid of them. Let's do it like Medicare, where the government runs it, the overheads a couple of percent, and we can save money that way and we can insure more people.VOICEOVER: The chair of the Finance Committee, Senator Max Baucus, one of the largest recipients of insurance and drug companies money within the Democratic Party, put forth a plan which is supposed to guarantee that everyone has coverage.Courtesy: Kaiser Family FoundationSEN. MAX BAUCUS (D-MT): And so we're going to come up with a uniquely American solution, which is also going to be public-private, not, you know, too far to one side, not too far to the other.VOICEOVER: When delivering remarks to the press at the Kaiser Family Foundation last week, Senator Max Baucus reiterated once more that everything is on the table.BAUCUS: Everything's on the table. Everything. All proposals, all ideas groups may have are on the table, and they're going to stay on the table. We're going to discuss them. And if anyone finds something on the table that he or she has a negative reaction to, I say: suspend judgment, hold off judgment, suspend judgment, at least for 15 minutes. Try to see if there's a way to get to yes. Think about it. There might be a positive angle here.VOICEOVER: When confronted by a single-parent advocates outside the building, Senator Baucus refrained from answering why single-payer was not on the table.GROUP: Senator! Senator! [crosstalk] People before profits, Senator.VOICEOVER: Half an hour later, a journalist at the press conference raised the same question.~~~JOURNALIST: You say repeatedly that everything is on the table, but the supporters of single-payer health care point out that their plan is not on the table.BAUCUS: That's true. They do. They've make that very clear.JOURNALIST: And so what do you say to them as they point out that they have significant support, and yet their plan is the one thing that's not is not on the table at the moment?~~~BAUCUS: Well, just to be honest, it's not on the table—it's the only thing that's not—because it cannot pass. It just cannot pass. And I don't know two or three members of Congress who privately, you know, honestly will tell you that it can pass. I don't know any member of Congress who could privately, honestly tell you it could pass. VOICEOVER: There are currently 77 cosponsors of John Conyers' House Resolution 676, single-payer, Medicare-for-all bill.BAUCUS: It just can't pass. Not today. And we can't squander this opportunity. We can't spend—can't waste capital on something that's just impossible.VOICEOVER: According to the AP/Yahoo poll of December 2007, 54 percent considered themselves supporters of a single-payer health-care system. On January 28, 2009, the California Nurses Association and the National Nurses Organizing Committee presented the findings of a new study to congressional staffers. It demonstrated that a "comprehensive Medicare based single-payer system" would not only provide access to quality care for all US residents, but also create 2.6 million new jobs, infuse $317 billion in new business and public revenues, and add another hundred billion dollars in wages to the US economy. Adding all Americans through an expanded, Medicare-based system would cost an additional $63 billion. The $63 billion is far less than the federal bailout for Citigroup, and less than half the federal bailout for AIG. Russell Mokhiber was one of the eight arrested during the Finance Committee hearing on Tuesday, May 5, for demanding to include a single-payer representative in on the discussion. He was also one of the 500 health-care reform activists at the rally.RUSSELL MOKHIBER, SINGLEPAYERACTION.ORG: The only thing that's going to work is save the $400 billion in administrative costs and profits by getting rid of the health-insurance industry, private health-insurance industry, and use that money to insure everyone and to bring everyone in the same system, so every American has a Medicare card when they're born, and they can go to any doctor, any hospital, no bills, no co-pays, no deductibles, no private insurance companies, and it will relieve a lot of stress on the system. It will stop this business of more than half of bankruptcies being triggered by medical bills. And no longer will we have 20,000 Americans a year die from lack of health insurance. That just doesn't happen in count Canada and Taiwan and Japan.~~~GREGORY JUNEMANN, PRESIDENT, IFPTE: When I started bargaining, when I started as a union representative back in the '80s, my first negotiations, we barely talked about health care. It was just presumed the employer would pay it. As we went on through the '80s, then we were told about the rising costs of health care, and it was blamed on the hospitals. And what we were told was we've got this new creation called HMOs. These insurance companies, they're going to drive down health-care costs. Remember? We all bought into that. And that went on, right? So then we find out that insurance companies are really the problem. Up until last weekend, when I saw something in the paper that said don't worry about it now, because a conglomeration of health-insurance companies and major hospitals and maybe the AMA [American Medical Association] were all going to get together and voluntarily drive down health-insurance costs, right? CROWD: Right.JUNEMANN: Does anybody think that that's going to happen?CROWD: No.~~~BAUCUS: I think everything is going to stay on the table, but big portions will be modified and sculpt. One example is the public option. You know, that's a hot button. And I do suspect a version will be there. Now, by saying that, I don't want to frighten people, particularly on the industry side, say, "Oh-oh, here they go. Baucus has said public options," and, you know, the deal is off. All I'm saying is there are ways to skin a cat, there are ways to find solutions, there are ways, I think, to do this, ultimately, in a way that's acceptable.RITTER: Politicians have to stop taking money from the insurance companies, and right now they're saying it's not politically feasible because they're still taking money from that big industrial-medical complex, from pharmaceuticals and insurance companies.LINDA ALLISON: My name's Linda Allison. I work for one of the large corporations here. But I talk to a lot of people about health care. My question is: so many people go bankrupt using their credit cards to pay for health care. Why have they taken single-payer off the plate? And why is Senator Baucus on the Finance Committee discussing health care when he has received so much money from the pharmaceutical companies? Isn't it a conflict of interest? |
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