Write Baucus to Hold Fair Hearings on Single Payer
ProsperityAgenda.US
Monday, June 1, 2009
Senator Max Baucus and the Finance Committee are feeling the pressure.
This Wednesday Sen. Baucus will meet with a delegation of leading single payer national health plan advocates.
The delegation includes: 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.
But we know that a private meeting with single payer advocates does not mean that single payer is on the table or will get a fair hearing.
We are pleased Sen. Baucus is feeling the pressure and reacting but an off-the-record meeting is not enough. We want single payer on the table and really being considered. We know that on every measure: cost, patient choice, improved health care and covering all people — single payer wins every argument. It isn’t even a close question which is why a super majority of Americans support single payer — improved Medicare for all.
Please take action and write Senator Baucus and the Senate Finance Committee today. Tell them that while we appreciate a private meeting for single payer — that is not good enough. Single payer needs to be on the table, because with fair consideration single payer will be the health care plan adopted by the nation. Click here to send a letter now.
The multi-payer system that Senator Baucus is pushing will be a gift to the insurance industry that has so generously supported him throughout his political career. It will push, perhaps even force, people to buy insurance, it will subsidize the industry even more than it already is, it will not control costs indeed it will increase taxes to pay for insurance subsidies, and, if there is a public insurance option it will have so many strings attached that it will fail. This is not reform that provide health care to all at a price the nation can afford.
We’re making progress. Please take action now to keep the pressure on. Click here to take action.
It is time to put single payer on the table, indeed it is time to make it America’s national health policy. A private meeting should spur our movement to increase the pressure senators are feeling. We want real change not symbolic meetings.
Sincerely,
Kevin Zeese
Executive Director
ProsperityAgenda.US
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