Update: Senator Baucus and single payer

The following is from the Daily Kos and deals with nurses and Senator Baucus. Baucus sits down with single payer folks:


Inside the Baucus Single-Payer Meeting--What Was Said, What's Next
by National Nurses Movement

title:'Inside the Baucus Single-Payer Meeting--What Was Said, What's Next',
url:'http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/3/738531/-Inside-the-Baucus-Single-Payer-MeetingWhat-Was-Said,-Whats-Next'},

Wed Jun 03, 2009 at 02:26:08 PM PDT
Today’s meeting of the nation’s leading single payer activists with Sen. Max Baucus was historic, and a recognition of the power of the tens of thousands of nurses, doctors, and grassroots activists across the country who have been turning up the heat on the policy makers in Washington.


Make no mistake – your voices are being heard. And, the protests and pressure will continue.
As Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, told Baucus, "there is a groundswell" across the country that will continue to press for single payer reform, and Baucus and other policy makers in Washington "are going to get to know us very well." In a later press conference, DeMoro blasted the conventional wisdom that single payer is not politically viable. "Is it politically viable to let people die and suffer from a lack of political will?" Noting the fight for women’s suffrage and the civil rights movement, she emphasized, "we’re going to have to turn up the heat. Women did not get the right to vote by voting on it."

-------------rest of the blog entry deals with more: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/6/3/171427/8822?new=true

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this is part of the rest:
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Baucus talked about his own positive experiences in Canada where he inspected the Canadian healthcare system first hand, "I was very impressed," during the healthcare debate in the early 1990s, noting the contrast between a Montana hospital which has an "entire floor" of people devoted to billing, and other administrative paper work, and a nearby Canadian hospital which does it all "in one room."

He agreed to use the power of his office to have charges dropped against the Baucus 13, nurses, doctors, and activists arrested for raising their voices in the committee hearings.
While Baucus continued to aver that single payer can not pass the legislature, the nurses and doctors pressed him to: • Hold a hearing in which the merits of single payer can be contrasted with the plans now rapidly advancing in the Senate. While Baucus said the tight timeline made that very difficult, Sanders noted that Sen. Chris Dodd is considering a health committee hearing on single payer, which Baucus could co-sponsor. Baucus said, "let me think about it." • Have the Congressional Budget Office score, do a financial analysis, of single payer legislation in addition to other health bills it scores. • Support legislation to allow federal waivers for individual states to enact single payer systems as national role models (another Sanders bill). • Assist in arranging a similar meeting between single payer leaders and President Obama.

Ultimately, Baucus threw the ball back to the President, citing the demand of the President to Congress to have a bill on his desk by October. "He wants a big win on healthcare reform," Baucus said. But the rush to adopt a flawed bill would hardly serve the Senate or the President well, DeMoro noted. "The President would be putting himself in a very bad position. We don’t want that to happen."

One after one, the other participants made compelling cases for single payer. Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, noted that only single payer can achieve effective cost controls. The alternatives being considered are "all unaffordable and unsustainable. Why pour more money into a dysfunctional system."

PNHP co-founder Dr. David Himmelstein said "the decision should be made on what’s going to work." He cited the Massachusetts law, where he lives, which is considered a model for both the Baucus proposal and the pending Kennedy bill. The bill is rapidly "fraying," said Himmelstein. Some 28,000 state residents are about to be cut off of subsidized coverage because the state can’t afford it, and new studies show conditions for many state residents back to where they were before the bill was passed with inadequate or no coverage, and medical bills they can’t pay.
Geri Jenkins, RN, Co-President of CNA/NNOC, said "we need evidence based policy," and all the evidence shows that single payer is the best way to contain costs, improve quality, and achieve universality.

PNHP President Dr. Oliver Fein cited the study last year reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine that 59 percent of physicians support a single-payer type system, and a new study showing doctors waste three to four weeks a year on paperwork that could be spent caring for patients. Sanders later praised the efforts of nurses, doctors and activists who have made single payer an inescapable part of the public discourse. "When you have the nurses and physicians saying the current system is not working," scores of people saying health care is a right and single payer the most cost effective approach, we’re seeing this grassroots movement growing and gaining momentum.
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One wonders if a person should "trust" folks that publically side with the thieves of Wall Street. One wonders how honest a person can be that accepts millions from these folks.

I suspect a bit of "fence mending" was the object of this meeting, not real substantial fact finding and opinion sharing.

One also wonders that as the "single payer folks" get organized to fight for single payer; how many single payer folks will hold their leaders responsible for their stacking the deck in favor of big business?

Democrats note: if you like the majorities you hold in congress, one had better listen to the American people. Yes, only 60% of folks favor a "public" health insurance; there are many more that have never heard of program proposals like HR676. I know of hard core Republicans whom favor a HR676 type program in Missouri.