Thanks for the question, Mr. President

[slipslidingaway]

Letter to the Editor
New York Times
To the Editor:

http://pnhp.org/news/2010/january/thanks-for-the-question-mr-president

"President Obama’s State of the Union address had a high point when he pledged that anyone with a “better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know.”

Thank you, Mr. President. The answer is the reform supported by 65 percent of the public and even 59 percent of physicians. It’s remarkably simple, and the nation has already had 44 years of successful experience with it in financing health care for our elderly and the totally disabled.

It is, of course, Medicare-for-all, single-payer, not-for-profit national health insurance. Its superiority lies in excluding profit-seeking insurance companies and Big Pharma from controlling and undermining our health system. This is your answer, Mr. President.

Quentin Young
Chicago, Jan. 28, 2010

The writer, a doctor, is national coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program."


http://www.democracynow.org/2009/3/11/newly_formed_150_000_strong_nurses

"AMY GOODMAN: While Orszag says all options are on the table, President Obama has already rejected the idea of creating a single-payer national health insurance. White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs said last week, quote, “The President doesn’t believe that’s the best way to achieve the goal of cutting costs and increasing access.”


Meanwhile, single-payer solutions get almost no space in the debate. A study has just been released by the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. It found that in the week before Obama’s healthcare summit last week, 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.


At the healthcare summit itself, initially not a single advocate for single-payer healthcare was invited. Congress member John Conyers is the sponsor HR 676, legislation that seeks to create a single-payer program. But when Conyers directly asked President Obama at a Congressional Black Caucus meeting if he could attend the summit, he was not immediately invited.


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 he asked to bring Dr. Quentin Young, perhaps the most well-known single-payer advocate in America. Dr. Young was Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.’s doctor when King lived in Chicago. But he came to know Barack Obama even better. Though his medical partner was Obama’s doctor, Dr. Young was his neighbor, friend and ally for decades. After much outcry, Conyers was invited, along with Oliver Fein, president of Physicians for a National Health Program. Dr. Young was not invited..."

[gratuitous]

1. "All options" means

Anything that keeps the health insurance industry in the mix.

[slipslidingaway]

2. ALL ... ain't what it used to be, very true. n/t

[TCJ70]

3. Medicare needs to be looked at...

...otherwise it won't be around in the future. Allowing people to pay a premium to be on a medicare plan could help solve its funding issues. Tie it down with a few more tax brackets added in for higher incomes and a removal of the cap on social security collections and we've saved two of the most beneficial government programs around while also bringing capital to repay our ridiculous debt.

[slipslidingaway]

4. Agreed, Medicare will have major problems in the coming years with ...

the enrollment of the boomers and in addition payment of the money borrowed from SS.

A big reason to establish a national HC system now where everyone pays in and is eligible for services. Instead we are letting the private insurers keep the healthiest segment.

:shrug:

[slipslidingaway]

5. 'There is a better health plan, Mr. President'

http://pnhp.org/news/2010/january/there-is-a-better-health-plan-mr-president

"Rising to President Obama's challenge to others in his State of the Union address that they come up with a better approach to health care reform than his own, physicians who advocate for a single-payer program stepped forward this morning to again make the case for their alternative, which they say has solid public support.

Among them is Dr. Margaret Flowers, a pediatrician and congressional fellow for Physicians for a National Health Program, an organization of 17,000 physicians who support a single-payer system, who is traveling to the White House today to deliver an open letter to the president calling on him to meet with her and other Medicare-for-All advocates.

Also speaking out today are Drs. Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein, co-founders of PNHP, primary care physicians in Cambridge, Mass., and professors at Harvard Medical School, who provided commentary in a blog in today's New York Times.
In her letter to Obama, Flowers notes how surprised she and others were when single-payer advocates were excluded from the early stages of the discussions on health reform. Flowers was one of several physicians, nurses and reform advocates who were arrested at Senate Finance Committee hearings last spring for standing up and asking in a dignified way why the Medicare-for-All option was "off the table."

[slipslidingaway]

6. Dr. Quentin Young, Longtime Obama Confidante and Physician to MLK ...

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/3/11/dr_quentin_young_obama_confidante_and

"While the Obama administration claims “all options are on the table” for healthcare reform, it’s already rejected the solution favored by most Americans, including doctors: single-payer universal healthcare. We speak with Dr. Quentin Young, perhaps the most well-known single-payer advocate in America. He was the Rev. Martin Luther King’s doctor when he lived in Chicago and a longtime friend and ally of Barack Obama. But he was noticeably not invited to Obama’s White House healthcare summit last week..."

AMY GOODMAN: This brouhaha over the last week with the White House healthcare summit, 120 people, there were going to be no single-payer advocates. Congressman Conyers asked to go. At first, he was told no. He directly asked President Obama at a Congressional Black Caucus hearing. He asked to bring you and Marcia Angell ...


AMY GOODMAN: —former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine. You weren’t allowed to go. Do you have President Obama’s ear anymore? You have been an ally of his for years, for decades.


DR. QUENTIN YOUNG: Well, it’s mixed. I think we’re friends, certainly. At this gala that you mentioned, which was embarrassing, he did send a very complimentary letter. And I appreciate that, but I’d much rather have him enact single payer, to tell the truth. And we did—it’s fair to say, after a good deal of protest, I think we were told there was a—phones rang off the hook. They did allow our national president, Dr. Oliver Fein, to attend with Dr. Conyers—Congressman Conyers. That’s fine, but we need many more people representative of the American people at large to get this thing through the Congress, and Baucus, notwithstanding, be overruled..."


http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2008/12/doc-young-frets-that-pols-including-hhs.html

"...Then-State Sen. Barack Obama helps celebrate
Doc Young's 80th birthday in 2003..."