* 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.
If you agree, why don't you fax Max Baucus, maybe a couple times, and let him know that we need real healthcare reform, not lobbyist-driven pablum and nonsense statements.
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David Glenn
Organizer,
National Nurses Organizing Committee - Arizona
NNOC- Az
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