Why We Were Arrested at the Senate Finance Committee Hearings (On National Health Care)

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Why We Were Arrested at the Senate Finance Committee Hearings (On National Health Care)

May 6, 2009
Pay to Play Politics is Unacceptable for Health Care Reform
Why We Were Arrested at the Senate Finance Committee Hearings
By KEVIN ZEESE

Yesterday morning, eight doctors, lawyers and other activists stood up for single payer health care. We stood up during a hearing before the Senate Finance Committee. The hearing was only to hear from the insurance industry, pharmaceutical companies, HMO�s and business interests. They did not want to hear about a real national health care plan.

We stood up to the private health insurance industry, to the corporate power in Congress and demanded a single payer national health care plan where everybody is in and nobody is out. We want a plan that ensures the peoples right to choose their own doctor, hospital and health care treatment. We want a plan that will control costs � something that cannot be done unless the insurance industry, HMO�s and pharmaceutical companies are challenged.

The Senate Finance Committee which has taken millions from the insurance industry, HMO�s, pharmaceutical industry � those that profit from health care in America only scheduled their donors to speak. It was pay to play on display in Washington, DC before the corrupt Senate Finance Committee.

So, yesterday, at 10 a.m., the Baucus Eight, led by Prosperity Agenda and other single payer advocates, took to the Senate Finance Committee. We confronted the committee in front of a room filled with their campaign donors, in front of the American people watching live on C-SPAN and we told the truth. Three doctors joined us, spoke up and got arrested. The effort was endorsed by Physicians for a National Health Program � doctors are standing up for their patients saying �single payer now.�

Last week Senator Richard Durbin said the banks "own" the Congress. This week it is evident, that when it comes to health care the health care profiteers own Congress, especially the Senate Finance Committee. If we do not put forward organized, aggressive, grass roots action we will see a swindle of the American people. In the name of false health care reform billions in tax payer dollars will go to campaign donors and the health care problem will continue to worsen.

It is time for concerted action.

Please read the complete article at:

http://www.counterpunch.org/zeese05062009.html

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Doctors protest exclusion of single-payer at Senate Finance Committee
For Immediate Release
May 5, 2009

WASHINGTON - Doctors and other advocates of a national single-payer health system - also known as an improved Medicare for All - directly confronted senators at a Senate Finance Committee �roundtable� on health reform today.

One-by-one, eight single-payer advocates in the audience stood up during the opening comments of the hearing and asked why single-payer experts were being excluded from the proceedings. They each spoke out in turn until they were removed from the committee hearing room and arrested, one-by-one, by U.S. Capitol police.

The doctors and others said that a publicly funded, privately delivered single-payer system is the only solution to the crisis plaguing our nation�s non-system of health care, noting that single-payer national health insurance would guarantee coverage for everyone and contains costs.

Despite polling that shows a clear majority of public and physician support for a single-payer system, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, has stated on multiple occasions that single payer is �off the table� of health reform.

Today�s round table, the second of three, consisted of 15 witnesses with no single-payer advocates among them. By contrast, several witnesses have direct ties to the for-profit, private health insurance industry.

The doctors and activists were dressed in black, which they said was in memory of the 22,000 people who die every year due to lack of health insurance. They represented a coalition of single-payer advocacy organizations including Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), Healthcare-NOW, Single Payer Action, Private Health Insurance Must Go, the Campaign for Fresh Air and Clean Politics, Prosperity Agenda, and Health Care for the Homeless.

�Health insurance administrators are practicing medicine without a medical license,� said Dr. Margaret Flowers, co-chair of Maryland chapter of PNHP. �The result is the suffering and death of thousands of patients for the sake of private profit. The private health insurance industry has a solid grip on patients, providers and legislators. It is time to stand up and declare that health care is a human right.�

Much to the frustration of Baucus, the multiple disruptions demanding single-payer be on the table set the tone for the second of three roundtables on Health Reform by the Senate Finance Committee.

Katie Robbins, assistant national coordinator of Healthcare-NOW, said: �The current discussion on health reform is political theater at its best. Our elected officials are hosting these events to go through the motions of what developing effective national health policy should look like. There is a big difference between getting health policy experts in the room and the witnesses here today who would profit the most from reform. That difference means our hard-earned dollars will go to further insurance industry profits, not to guarantee health care to the American people.�

�It�s a pretty spectacular display of raw political power,� said Russell Mokhiber of Single Payer Action. �The health insurance industry demands that not one of the 15 people who testified today shall be a single-payer advocate. And the industry gets what it wants. It�s time for the American people to storm the gates and demand - put single payer on the table.�

Single payer is successfully implemented in the United States� own Medicare system providing comprehensive care to the elderly, as well as in many of the best health care systems in the world. A single-payer system, as embodied in legislation H.R. 676 and S. 703, would provide guaranteed, quality care to all Americans with no increase in U.S. health spending.

The single-payer advocates said they will continue to use direct actions and nonviolent civil disobedience to urge the inclusion of a publicly funded, privately delivered system.

Other methods of communication with elected officials have failed in delivering the demand for single-payer national health care as evidenced by the exclusion of single-payer advocates from official hearings on health reform.

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http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/may/doctors_protest_excl.php

- The above is a public news release and is not copyrighted material -

VIDEO footage:
Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) reacts to protesters,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKP05AyfRsI

Russell Mokhiber, Single Payer Action, speaks at hearing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5vhTtxad30

Margaret Flowers, MD & Katie Robbins, Healthcare-NOW
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zOShsL4UJo

Carol Paris, MD, PNHP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdIUcrVxGwA

Mark Dudzic, Labor Campaign for Single-Payer Healthcare
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1nl32aAh7M

Adam Schneider
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I26EkvnjZuQ

Pat Salomon, MD & Kevin Zeese
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDHJH7W-ZEo

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Order in the Senate! Single-Payer Advocates Disrupt Hearing
By Sarah Rubenstein
Wall Street Journal
May 5, 2009

Advocates of single-payer health care are getting feisty!

Eight of them caused a scene at the start of a health-care hearing of the Senate Finance Committee today, getting up one by one and complaining that nobody who shared their view was getting a voice, as Dow Jones Newswires describes it. They were able to continue their interruptions because they were staggered throughout the room. Just as one was escorted out by the police, another would chime in, according to the Dow Jones account.

Sen. Max Baucus, who was chairing the meeting, kept trying to restore it to normalcy. �We need more police,� he said at one point as he tapped his gavel, drawing laughs.

The protesters included Physicians for a National Health Program, a group that had threatened to protest a summit that President Barack Obama hosted on health reform in March. The group canceled that protest after the group�s president was invited to the meeting.

http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/05/05/order-in-the-senate-single-payer-advocates-disrupt-hearing/