Baucus Balks and Blinks; Will Meet With Single Payer, Universal Health Care (Impressively Credentialed) Advocates
His office(s) must have been inundated with messages and the demonstrations, including pressure from Montana constituents, may have given him (or his staff) pause or hives.
Senator Max Baucus will be meeting with medical community representatives (whose credentials are impressive, by the way) of single-payer, universal health care advocates
From the Great Falls Tribune (MT) via CommonDreams comes this:
"Sen. Max Baucus is set to meet with five single-payer health care advocates in Washington, D.C., this week.
"Baucus, as chair of the Senate Finance Committee, has made health care reform his top priority this session. However, Baucus has consistently said single-payer - a system in which the federal government acts as the nation's sole health insurance provider - is off the table.
" 'For more than a year, Senator Baucus has met with thousands of people, representing hundreds of views on how to reform our health care system,' Baucus spokesman Ty Matsdorf stated in an e-mail. 'This meeting is no different. Max hopes to talk, and listen, to these folks totry and find the best way to make sure every Montanan has access to quality, affordable health care.'
Yeah, right. And pigs can fly.
"According to the Web site SinglePayerAction.org, Baucus will meet with Dr. David Himmelstein, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP); Dr. Marcia Angell, senior lecturer, Harvard Medical School and former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine; Dr. Oliver Fein, associate dean, Cornell Weill Medical School and president of PNHP; Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association; and Geri Jenkins, president of California Nurses Association.
"Angell said the group plans to urge Baucus to give serious consideration to Congress' two primary single-payer bills, S. 703, by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and H.R. 676, by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich.
"We will make a case that there should be full hearings on Sanders' bill, and we'll make the case that the (Congressional Budget Office) should cost-out the Sanders and Conyers bills," Angell said in an interview Monday. "We'll make the case that single-payer advocates should have a chance to meet with the president. We will argue for holding public hearings on health reform that include single payer witnesses."
"Matsdorf said the June 3 meeting was scheduled prior to last week's well-attended health care listening sessions, but Angell said she believes the pressure Montanans put on Baucus in recent weeks helped open the door for Wednesday's meeting."
For almost a decade, tens of millions of Americans have had no health care coverage, millions more are losing their limited employer based system because of job loss and these and millions more regular Americans like them are held hostage by the criminal stranglehold of the private, for gargantuan profits, health care industry that provides health care for the healthy in this country and causes tens of thousands of needless deaths yearly while yet another government miserably fails the American people with continuing inadequate and ineffective Band-Aid measures, filling the pockets of weasels like Rick Scott and former senator Bill Frist, while other industrialized countries have had universal, single payer, government administered health care for decades.
Instead of the Obama adminstration and Democratic controlled Congress staying busy getting dizzy pushing their pathetic version of health care reform let's have health care officials and regular citizens from Canada, France, Sweden, etc. explain in public hearings about their long experience with single payer, universal health care programs and have the White House and our representatives on Capitol Hill quit acting like ostriches in the 21st century Internet instant information world, making pathetic excuses and telling outright lies about HR 676 and S. 703, single payer bills introduced in the House and Senate.
Meanwhile, President Obama, Senator Baucus, and those hypocrites on Capitol Hill who are defying single payer, universal health care coverage, are covered by excellent government provided, top quality health care yet have the audacity to deny it to the rest of the people in this country offering a "reform" that isn't and "change" that is more of the same.
While his meeting may not alter the senator's mind set considering the control and influence of his health industry campaign contributors, you never know.
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