Bill Moyers: Single Payer is the only thing that can be done.

[Nikki Stone1]

Run time: 28:31 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-W035ADw0s   Posted on YouTube: July 26, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: October 12, 2009 By DU Member: Nikki Stone1 Views on DU: 686

 
Really interesting and informative discussion.

[joeycola]

1. But the WH and most of Congress is not listening.

[dhpgetsit]

2. They are right.

Single-payer is the solution.

But Americans are going to have to get organized and fight for it. So far the vast majority of Americans are sitting back the waiting for someone else to do the fighting for them.

[waiting for hope]

3. Health Care Reform is not reform

without a single payer/Medicare for all option. And any other plan without it is just plain wrong and a slap to our collective intelligence.

[slipslidingaway]

4. Transcript link...

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07242009/transcript1.html

A few snips...

"MARCIA ANGELL: For whatever price they want to charge. Right. And so, this will increase costs. And let me tell you what he's running into, and he'd like to be able to pull a rabbit out of the hat, but he won't be able to. If you leave this profit-oriented system in place, you can't both control costs and increase coverage. You inevitably, if you try to increase coverage, increase costs. The only answer, the only answer, and he said it at the beginning of his press conference, is a single payer system. In his first sentence, he said, that is the only way to cover everyone.


...MARCIA ANGELL: That nobody is really trying to break their-- except the single payer people -- their death grip on the system. And here you have hundreds of for profit insurance companies that maximize their income by denying care to the people who need it most. And that's the insurance system. That's how we pay for health care.

But you also have to look at how we deliver health care. And we deliver that, primarily or largely, in for-profit facilities -- businesses, hospitals -- whose interest is in delivering only profitable care. So, we have a system that's through and through, in both the payment system and the delivery system, is oriented toward profits. Neither the Senate nor the House is doing anything to change that.


...TRUDY LIEBERMAN: We are having the same debate, almost, that we had in '93-'94. And it's something I've written about for the Columbia Journalism Review. It's actually the same debate we've had decades before. And it's the unwillingness to look at what we could learn from other systems. Single payer, multiple payers, as they have in Germany and Japan. Or even in the Netherlands, where there are private payers. What's really happening there?

So, I think there's an unwillingness on the part of politicians-- on the part of advocacy groups, some advocacy groups, to really educate Americans on what the possibilities are. And we at C.J.R. have been saying we really have not had a vibrant discussion about other possibilities..."

[Overseas]

5. K&R. Excellent show. //nt

[Uncle Joe]

6. I agree Nikki Stone this was a most informative interview, but if 28:31 is too long, at least go to

the 26:56 mark for what I believe to be a critical point being made regarding politicians and advocacy groups reluctance to truly educate the American People as to the pros and cons of other nation's systems, so the American People can make an informed decision. We could pull from the very best ideas of all their systems, but you can't do that if you don't know the what details are and how they work, pro and con.

I believe our national egotistical conscious and subconscious belief of "American Exceptionalism," makes the corporate puppet masters' jobs of brainwashing the American People to act against their own best interests all the easier, in this I believe our national pride can lead to our destruction.


"Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall" (Proverbs 16:18).


Thanks for the thread, Nikki Stone.