Old news, but I'm adding here because this doctor (and all the other citizens who protested Baucus' corporate "public hearings") deserves to be applauded -- and the issue of single-payer needs to be repeated over-and-over again.
And borrowing from Rick Rantelli: Are you listening,
President Obama????http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/may/doctor_jailed_after_.phpDoctor jailed after health care protestLeonardtown psychiatrist pushes Congress on single-payer coverage
By KAYLEIGH KULP
The Enterprise
Friday, May 8, 2009
Dr. Carol A. Paris spent Tuesday in jail — all in the name of health care reform.
“I interrupt this so-called public hearing to bring you the following unpaid, political announcement: Put single-payer on the table. My name is Dr. Carol Paris, and I approve this message,” Paris said as she was taken out of a congressional public hearing by police for disorderly conduct, as several other protesters with Paris who are part of Physicians for a National Health Program also shouted similar messages.
Paris said she did it because she is sick of seeing patients suffer. It was because she wanted to help them that she became a psychiatrist. But the Leonardtown resident’s remedies only work if people seek treatment, and too many people do not because they are uninsured and can’t afford it, Paris said.
So she’s doing her part to advocate for what she believes is the best solution — single-payer health care. She attended the Senate Finance Committee hearing on health care reform chaired by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Montana) to protest that no single-payer advocate was represented in the roundtable of 15.
Paris’ preferred single-payer health plan care — which she calls Improved Medicare for All — is a system that essentially eliminates multibillion-dollar private insurers in the marketplace. Everyone would get health insurance. It would be financed with money the federal government already contributes to health care through Medicare and other programs, with the help of a new, mandatory employee wage tax. All health care payments would be administered by the government (the single payer). Patients would choose who treated them.
President Barack Obama has promised to reform the health care system since his campaign began and finding the right solution has been a hot topic on Capitol Hill.
“We have tried to do this following the appropriate channels,” Paris said in an interview after the hearing. “We have written letters. We have visited congressional offices. We requested to be invited and we’ve been denied and so we felt that our only recourse was to create a disturbance.”
“We deeply, deeply respect the views of … all Americans … who feel deeply about health care reform, especially those who believe the single pay system,” Baucus said during the hearing. “For those of you in the audience who may be inclined to stand up out of order … I encourage you not to do so … we aren’t going to get the best result here” unless the discussion is orderly.
“I hear from
every single day about their woes … who can’t afford their co-pays,” Paris said in an earlier interview. “It’s fragmented care and inadequate care when all I can do is prescribe medication when they need” a full medical regimen with help of other specialists. As a psychiatrist, she said, she treats patients whose financial stress is causing mental and physical problems... 
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