The single-payer challenge

[dcsmart]

Eight activists stood up in a May 5 Senate hearing chaired by Democratic Sen. Max Baucus to demand to know why Congress won't consider proposals for a single-payer health care system that eliminates the role of private insurance companies and covers everyone under a government program similar to Medicare.
The activists, representing several groups, including Physicians for a National Health Program, Healthcare-Now, Labor Campaign for Single Payer and Single Payer Action--each stood and asked for single-payer to be part of the discussion. Baucus ordered capitol police to arrest the demonstrators.

Donna Smith, who was featured in Michael Moore's health care documentary Sicko and the founder of American Patients United, described what took place.
http://americanpatientsunited.org/



Doctors and health care advocates were arrested for demanding a hearing for single-payer health care (Healthcare-Now)

IT HAS finally happened right here in the United States. Citizens who believe health care is a human right have been arrested and are being processed like criminals through the Southeast District of Columbia police station. Their crime? Asking for single-payer health care reform--publicly funded, privately delivered health care--to be discussed during the Congressional hearings on reform.
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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. It made me want to scream. It made me proud of them for being bold, but ashamed that not one senator spoke up for their own citizen-protesters, and asked that they at least be allowed to speak. But the insistence that the citizens rising in protest be arrested continued from the chair with each incident.
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Sen. Baucus eventually spoke and indicated that he was respectful of those who believe in single-payer--as he acknowledged many of his constituents in Montana do--but he made no attempt to explain why no single-payer voice has been included in any Senate discussion to date
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The citizens who stood for the thousands and thousands of dead today will not let this democracy give itself completely over to the big money interests in health care. Not without a fight. Not on their lives, or yours or mine.
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FULL ARTICLE
http://socialistworker.org/2009/05/08/the-single-payer-challenge


The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
(from The Communist Manifesto)
http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/marxists/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/index.htm

"I recognized my kinship with all living beings and made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class I am in it, while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free." A candidate for president for the fifth and final time in 1920, federal prisoner #9653 received once again nearly a million votes.
Eugene Debs
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Eugene Debs ran for president of the United States on the Socialist Party ticket five times between 1900 and 1920
http://www.aflcio.org/aboutus/history/history/debs.cfm

[ChadwickHenryWard]

1. I've never undertood why we don't have universal healthcare in this country.

I've always found the following analogy apt:

Imagine, if you will, that all advanced nations, and a fair number of unadvanced nations, have adopted the use of electricity; they long ago built the infrastructure necessary for widespread, household consumption, and it is overwhelmingly regarded as a good and even necessary part of civilized society. However, one lone nation regards electricity with suspicion; contrary to all the clear evidence, it is regarded as deleterious to a nation's moral character. The United States is that backward embarrassment.

[Lugnut]

2. K&R n/t

[tucsonlib]

3. The Crucial Battle Won't Be Over Single-Payer

Unfortunately, shifting instantly to a single-payer system is politically impossible. Obama knows this. The critical thing, right now, is to insist that a public option (basically Medicare for all) is included in whatever legislation Congress passes. The insurance industry is vehemently opposed to allowing Americans to have this choice. They even admit that the reason is because it would represent "unfair competition". They know they could never compete with such a system. And as more and more Americans switch to the public system for the superior coverage and lower cost it offers, the insurance companies will eventually go out of business. Voila! We have ourselves a universal single-payer system. I believe (hope) that this is Obama's strategy.

:party: :toast: :bounce:

[dcsmart]

5. that is exactly the strategy of the

private/public health care movement, i am not sure it is Obama's. the logistics of single-payer is monumental. i think that a single-payer is best option in the long run, but if the pub/priv can work well enough that all the people are covered, then i am for it. the bottom line is that you have one entity (profits before people) private, and (people before profit) public which is not realistic mix. i am involved with both groups, single-payer and pub/priv. the goal is to provide health care for all, hopefully a dual provider system will work. the hope that private wins the competition is i think underestimating the financial and political power of the private.

and the fight goes on...

:fistbump:

[quidam56]

4. We need a cure for health care in America

The health care industry has gone the way of Wall St. greed, unfortunately in Tennessee and Virginia, Profit Care comes ahead of Patient Care. I know what's deemed, defended and supported as "the acceptable standards of health care" in E. TN. http://www.wisecountyissues.com/?p=62 It's nothing at all like the snake oil salesmen are advertising. We must demand a single pay system option in health care.

[Earth Bound Misfit]

6. K & R!!

Great post, thanks!:kick: :yourock: