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<h3><a linkindex="15" href="http://www.truthout.org/031109HA">Put
Single-Payer on the Table</a></h3>
<p class="article_date">Tuesday 10 March 2009</p>
<p class="jgasm"><a linkindex="16" target="_blank"
href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090310_put_single_payer_on_the_table/">by:
Amy Goodman | Visit article original @ <b>Truthdig</b></a></p>
<p class="alignright"><img src="cid:part2.05010005.08060708@mailbag.com"
alt="photo"><br>
<span class="photo_source">In
front of Blue Cross headquarters, as part of a larger demonstration, a
protester advocates for single-payer universal health care. (Photo:
ChiSPAN)</span> </p>
<div class="article_content">
<p> President
Barack Obama promises health-care reform, but he has taken single-payer
health care off the table. Single-payer is the system that removes
private insurance companies from the picture; the government pays all
the bills, but health-care delivery remains private. People still get
their choice of what doctor to go to and what hospital to use.
Single-payer reduces the administrative costs and removes the profit
that insurance companies add to health-care delivery. Single-payer
solutions, however, get almost no space in the debate.
</p>
<p> A study just released by Fairness and Accuracy in
Reporting, a media watchdog group, found that in the week before
Obama's health-care summit, of the hundreds of stories that appeared in
major newspapers and on the networks, "only five included the views of
advocates of single-payer - none of which appeared on television." Most
opinion columns that mentioned single-payer were written by opponents.
</p>
<p> Congress is considering H.R. 676, "Expanded and Improved
Medicare for All," sponsored by John Conyers, D-Mich., with 64
co-sponsors. Yet even when Rep. Conyers directly asked Obama at a
Congressional Black Caucus meeting if he could attend the White House
health-care summit, he was not immediately invited. Nor was any other
advocate for single-payer health care.
</p>
<p> Conyers had asked to bring Dr. Marcia Angell, the first
woman editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, the most
prestigious medical journal in the country, and Dr. Quentin Young.
Young is perhaps the most well-known single-payer advocate in America.
He was Martin Luther King Jr.'s doctor when King lived in Chicago. "My
15-minute house calls would stretch into three hours," he told me.
</p>
<p> But he came to know Barack Obama even better. Though his
medical partner was Obama's doctor, Young was his neighbor, friend and
ally for decades. "Obama supported single-payer, gave speeches for it,"
he said.
</p>
<p> This past weekend, hundreds turned out to honor the
85-year-old Young, including the Illinois governor and three members of
Congress, but the White House's response to Conyers' request that Young
be included in the summit? A resounding no. Perhaps because Obama
personally knows how persuasive and committed Young is.
</p>
<p> After much outcry, Conyers was invited. Activist groups
like Physicians for a National Health Program (pnhp.org) expressed
outrage that no other single-payer advocate was to be among the 120
people at the summit. Finally, the White House relented and invited Dr.
Oliver Fein, president of PNHP. Two people out of 120.
</p>
<p> Locked out of the debate, silenced by the media,
single-payer advocates are taking action. Russell Mokhiber, who writes
and edits the Corporate Crime Reporter, has decided that the time has
come to directly confront the problem of our broken health-care system.
He's going to the national meeting of the American Health Insurance
Plans and is joining others in burning their health-insurance bills
outside in protest. Mokhiber told me, "The insurance companies have no
place in the health care of American people. How are we going to beat
these people? We have to start the direct confrontation." Launching a
new organization, <b>Single Payer Action</b> (<a
href="http://www.singlepayeraction.org">singlepayeraction.org</a>),
Mokhiber
and others promise to take the issue to the insurance industry
executives, the lobbyists and the members of Congress directly, in
Washington, D.C., and their home district offices.
</p>
<p> Critical mass is building behind a single-payer system.
>From Nobel Laureate in Economics Joseph Stiglitz, who told me, "I've
reluctantly come to the view that it's the only alternative," to
health-care providers themselves, who witness and endure the system's
failure firsthand. Geri Jenkins of the newly formed,
150,000-nurses-strong United American Nurses-National Nurses Organizing
Committee (nnoc.net) said: "It is the only health-care-reform proposal
that can work. ... We are currently pushing to have a genuine, honest
policy debate, because we'll win ... the health insurers will collapse
under the weight of their own irrelevance."
</p>
<p> Dr. Young has now been invited to a Senate meeting along
with the "usual suspects": health-insurance providers, Big Pharma and
health-care-reform advocates. I asked Young what he thought of the
refrain coming from the White House, as well as from the leading
senator on the issue, Max Baucus, that "single-payer is off the table."
"It's repulsive," sighed Young. "We are very angry." But not
discouraged. I asked him what he thought about Burn Your Health
Insurance Bill Day. "Things are heating up." he chuckled. "When things
are happening that you have nothing to do with, you know it's a
movement."
</p>
<p> --------</p>
<p> <i>Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.</i>
</p>
<p> <i>Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily
international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 700 stations in
North America. She was awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed
the "Alternative Nobel" prize, and received the award in the Swedish
Parliament in December.</i> </p>
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