Single Payer activists attack the real enemy of health care..Howard Dean.

[madfloridian]

Run time: 06:44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amYta8J4gVU   Posted on YouTube: March 17, 2010 By YouTube Member: Singlepayeraction Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: March 18, 2010 By DU Member: madfloridian Views on DU: 2188

 
Today on Capitol Hill we found out the true enemy of health care reform.

From the Single Payer Action site.

Single Payer Activists Rip Howard Dean, John Conyers

At a gathering on Capitol Hill earlier today, Dean had just started in on his talk – titled “Why This is the Moment for Reform?” – when single payer activists began criticizing him for supporting Obama’s health care legislation.

..."Single Payer Action’s Russell Mokhiber accused Dean of being a “shill for the biotech industry.”

Over the past year, Dean has been with the corporate law firm of McKenna Long & Aldridge – representing biotech companies seeking to defeat regulation of biologic medicines. Mokhiber also ripped Conyers for failing to take a stronger stance for single payer.

Kevin Zeese of ProspertyAgenda.us was critical of Dean for flipping in favor of the Senate bill.

“Americans are going to be forced to buy this corrupt, flawed product,” Zeese said. “The bill will send hundreds of billions of dollars to the health insurance industry. How much of that is going to be kicked back to members of Congress in campaign donations? How many tens of millions of dollars a year are members of Congress going to get from these corrupt insurance executives?”

“How can we expect ever to see real reform if this bill passes? This bill is a disaster. And I’m sad to see you are on the wrong side of it,” Zeese told Dean. “I hope you will rethink your position and come back out the other way. There is no way with this bill passing that we are going to see good health care in the United States. We are going to see insurance industry domination of Congress, consumers, doctors and nurses.”

I believe Kevin was chairman of Kucinich's campaign for president.

Dean had a response through the yelling.

Dean said that he has a fundamental disagreement with single payer advocates.

“Americans want choice,” Dean said. “We are an essentially libertarian country. Libertarians aren’t only on the right with tea bags hanging from their hats. They are also on the left. I just had lunch with Alan Grayson (D-Florida). He also is a libertarian. Nobody in America likes the government telling them what to do. I believe that if you give them real choices and you make those choices fair, that they will vote with their feet and reform the system themselves.”

This is not the first time that group has heckled Howard Dean while he was speaking.

Howard Dean heckled by single payer advocates at Portland book signing.

Dean was going to begin by signing books but since some people had taken their lunch break to attend he switched gears and launched into a clear and passionate speech about the problems we face and how we can fix them. Just moments into his speech, a heckler starts harassing him about single-payer healthcare. The heckler was roundly shushed by the audience and Gov. Dean asked him to please respect other people’s time and when it comes to Q&A he will be called on to speak. However, the guy wanted to be a pain and he was eventually asked to leave by Powell’s employees. Another heckler attempted the same thing shortly after and was again shushed by the crowd and asked to leave by employees. After that it went without a problem and was very informative.

Odd to see the group that worked against the public option targeting the main person who has spent years advocating for health care reforms.

[bluestateguy]

1. At least Howard Dean is a grownup

Hell, even Kucinich proved he is a grownup today.

These are just a bunch of whining children.

[Mithreal]

9. They are misdirecting their anger but don't call them whining children.

This adults are in charge/grownup/children bullshit needs to stop. Not directing this at you personally but at your framing.

Emotions are very high. If these folks had access to Obama, I am sure they would be closer to the one who stood in the way. Why the need to diminish people who are frustrated beyond any capacity a human being should have to bear?

Misdirected anger should be called that, but calling these people whining children is ridiculous as well.

[skeptical cynic]

2. I think the bottom line is...

If a HCR bill passes that doesn't have at least a public option, then Democrats are going to be testing the theory that they don't need progressives to win an election in 2010.

[pennylane100]

3. I think they will start working on a public option

after this bill has passed. While it certainly leaves a lot to be desired, it is a start and I think Obama is aware of what happened to Hillary Clinton's efforts to change the system in one step.

[skeptical cynic]

4. I don't believe that will happen, but...

if this bill does pass, I hope you are correct.

[liberation]

5. Here is a revolutionary concept: why don't we enable a public option or single-payer system now?

I know, it makes too much sense.


And when is that "later" going to happen? Given there are no deadlines, road maps, or even a mandate in the bill to pass a public option, much less a single-payer system.

No for nothing, but I simply don't take at face value a verbal promise, without any specifics, from people with a track record of lying. Esp. since once this bill is passed, there is even less of an incentive for any Dem to push further reform... since the private insurance lobby will have even more time to mount an effective opposition to neutralize further chances.

[pattmarty]

6. Why don't you explain to us here exactly how a public option.................

......can be had AFTER this crap is passed? After Nov the Dems will have less seats in both houses than they do now. You think a PO could be passed after that and how? They won't be able to do it before then. I got some news for a lot at DU that think the bill (actually law once it is passed) will be "fixed". It ain't gonna happen. The Dems are not going to get any where near healthcare and get beat up in the media AGAIN.

[Lorien]

11. They know that they'll lose seats, but that's perfect political cover

for not passing progressive legislation from that point forward.

[pattmarty]

13. I agree. It seems that all they do is look for excuses.

[pennylane100]

22. I also think this bill stinks but

having really messed up the introduction of health care reform and falling over backward to get bipartisan input, Obama finally wised up. He remembered the time tested adage that when you find your self in a hole, stop digging.

This (if it passes) will allow him to alleviate as much damage as possible in the next election and I firmly believe that he did not get the public option supporters on board without promising a better effort next time.

I do not like the bill, but I do not want to see a massacre in the next election and I could be wrong but I think this is the best we can make of a very bad hand (that we dealt ourselves).

[pattmarty]

24. It's shit and I don't support it. My opinion is it is worse than nothing.

[rpannier]

23. No they won't

These people won't even stand up to protect the integrity of their retirement system

They're going to declare victory and move on

[watajob]

7. Can I get ...

... an amen, brothers and sisters?

[skeptical cynic]

8. Nothing about writing that makes me happy

I don't know what happened to the Democratic Party. I don't know how the party that I identified with the civil rights movement of my youth slowly drifted so far to the right that it's only slightly distinguishable from a morally and ethically bankrupt Republican Party that I associate with everything wrong with this country. When did Democrats buy into the simple-minded war mongering of the Republicans? When did they replace confidence with fear of a nebulous enemy manufactured to replace the Cold War enemy that justified corporate welfare? When did they become prostitutes of industry? When did they buy into all the Milton Friedman free-market crap that a lobotomized president parroted so faithfully from 1980 to 1988?

[Mithreal]

12. Maybe it was when they decided to be the party of big corporations.

Republicans had nowhere else to go but the bat cave.

I am no historian.

I just know it has absolutely nothing to do with the DLC. Some DU'ers told me so.

[Lorien]

10. You got it. nt

[4dsc]

25. WORD!!!

I like your thinking. I wonder how the democratic party is going to do anything this fall when progressives and proud liberals sit at home.

[emsimon33]

28. Which only shows how they have misjudged

Single payer heath care is not a liberal/progressive issue. A majority of Americans are fed up with health insurance companies and their control and greed. People voted for change and the Democrats can't deliver nor can they find the will to hold those who crashed the country accountable.

2010 could be the end of the Democratic Party.

[DFW]

14. Are there any allies out there that some of us have NOT tried to destroy yet? N/T

[knixphan]

15. Zactly.

Plus, how many folks have volunteered for progressive primary challengers in their districts?

[BrklynLiberal]

16. Guess there truly can be irrationality on all sides of the spectrum...

[mmonk]

17. Keep in mind single payer advocates were kept out of the debate

while corporate lobbyists wrote much of the Baucus Senate Bill. Also, any who attended the Baucus sessions were arrested. No say so or input whatsoever. If you want to be "fair and balanced", it may be worth thinking about the reasons behind the anger and disappointment. That being said, I'm a single payer advocate that will not say negative things about Howard Dean. I know he wanted better than we are getting.

[Jefferson23]

18. I have to wonder that Howard admires these people regardless, as

he does certainly understand the kind of fight and balls it takes to stand up to the status quo.

[h9socialist]

19. Well, Howard, when you get attacked from the Left . . .

. . . then you know the world's moving in a progressive direction. If you're attacked only from the right there's the possibility that you are very lonely out on the left-wing.

[pundaint]

20. I like Dean, but I can understand the frustration that people have, that they have

no strong voice representing their interests. I know that Dean and Kucinich, Weiner and Grayson, and Franken, get it. It's hard to accept advocacy of a bad bill when one knows it is only cynical politics, and not the People's interests they are supporting.

[madfloridian]

21. Dean is not the problem with health care. Why make him their target?

[Matt Shapiro]

26. I'm surprised you don't understand

why single payer advocates would be angry at someone like Dean. Practically all of your posts are insightful, especially the ones on the destruction of public education. As someone who also retired from teaching after 33 years, I have the utmost respect for you.

People -- improved Medicare for All advocates like me -- are angry with Dean because he and DFA have co-opted the single payer message. While he/they like the idea of single payer, it is supposedly not politically viable (despite repeated 60% approval ratings in fairly designed polls). "The" public option (whichever version he/they are referring to at the moment) is the politically possible solution, and he/they say vehemently, again and again, that a bill without it is not health care reform, but a giveaway to the insurance industry.

Of course, we know that a weak public option, like the one in the House-passed bill, does not change the fact that the biggest effect of the bill is to throw hundreds of billions of dollars at the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries, since that small PU would be too weak and tiny to provide any significant competition to the insurance giants. Nevertheless, Dean sounds good as he marginalizes the single payer movement.

Single payer advocates were angry with Dean even before today's reversal because we knew he understood, and he undercut the real health care reform movement anyway.

The only chance we ever had of true health care reform was a united front by the entire progressive community. If that had happened we would have had a chance of ending up with a strong public option that applied to 125 million people, providing real competition, instead of this travesty. It would not have been single payer, but it would have been a worthy beginning.

Instead, groups like MoveOn, HCAN, AFL-CIO, SEIU, DFA and others chose the "insider" approach. In exchange for their seat at the table of Democratic power, they advocated -- from the very beginning -- for the centrist view of what they considered the best we could get. An idiotic negotiating strategy that was always doomed to failure.

A giant single payer movement could even have succeeded. The message is simple. Everybody gets Medicare, but we make it even better, and it costs less because we get rid of the 30% the insurance companies take off the top and we reduce drug prices dramatically because pharma would have no where else to sell their wares. It would have been a populist battle that the average American would easily have understood, instead of this complex 2000 page bill that no one really understands fully.

Sure, the right wing tea bag nuts would have called us socialists and communists. But guess what -- they did that anyway. And the health insurance industry would have fought against us, which, of course, they did anyway. The point is that the majority of the American people would have clamored for Medicare for All, not just supported it in a theoretical poll. And even if we were forced to compromise in the end by the power of money, it would have been a real compromise.

So we are rightfully angry at the leaders and groups that should have been there with us but chose to undercut us. Dean takes a little more heat because we know he understands exactly what he did. His hypocritical last minute reversal really changes nothing, other than to give us yet another reason to yell at our TV screens.

[madfloridian]

27. Welcome to DU and no, I do not understand that kind of treatment.

I believe in targeting the right people who are really screwing us.

I highly disapprove that single payer activists worked against a public option.

I have not expressed much opinion about this bill right now, because I don't really know the full details.

But I know that these folks targeted someone who was on our side.

[pundaint]

30. There are more than two sides. Bill wonks see huge downside lurking just behind a smattering of

appeasements. We've been informed by these very same people as to why this legislation is a bad deal for the People, and we've found them to be correct. Apparently in response to the Republicans making this about Obama, Our former champions are no telling us to ignore the truth they formerly spoke because now the Man who led us to this very bad bill, is more important than the People who will be so poorly served by it. Obama campaigned for a public option and ridiculed forced insurance buy in, Dean agreed, Dennis stood up and said not without a public option. Truth doesn't change because those three moved to the other side.

[madfloridian]

31. Single payer groups worked AGAINST the public option.

That says it all. Their favorite target is a man who ran for president because he was a doctor who wanted health care fixed.

They demanded perfection they would not get, and they made him their scapegoat.

[Matt Shapiro]

32. For someone who admittedly doesn't "know the full details,"

you are nevertheless so absolute in your view of the subject. In fact, your headline has it backwards. It is the public option groups who vocally worked against single payer, mainly using the most powerful PR tool -- ridicule -- and made it impossible to even attempt. You just did the same thing by using the term "perfection" in describing the single payer goal. Single payer is not a utopian dream. It exists in every other major industrialized country. It does not deserve ridicule.

And Howard Dean, whom you obviously like, is not the favorite target of single payer activists. Not by a long shot. Barack Obama has that honor. He is the one who made the deals with Big Pharma, the health insurance giants, and the hospitals, while pretending to be the transformational leader who will bring hope and change. If there is one person who is responsible for this fiasco, it is the President. Just as it is he, not any of his subordinates, who is responsible for the policy that is intended to destroy our public school system, for protecting the Bush Administration criminals instead of holding them accountable for their crimes, for adopting the Bush Administration unconstitutional invasions of our privacy, for pursuing a policy of increased war and military spending that is bankrupting the country, and for bargaining away a woman's right to choose without even a care or a mention.

Howard Dean is certainly not THE ENEMY. He is just a big disappointment. A lot of people who believed in him find it hard to forgive his about-faces.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, is not disappointing at all. Anyone with political savvy saw him for what he is even during the primary campaign -- a corporate Democrat with a silver tongue who admires the transformational Ronald Reagan. He has single-handedly moved the political center further to the right than even the previous record holder Bill Clinton. His health care "reform" giveaway is just the latest example of that.

Please give my previous comment another read. And if you want to learn more about improved Medicare for All, and how that differs from the many forms of public option (from extremely weak to fairly strong), take a look at the websites of Physicians for a National Health Plan (PNHP), Health Care Now, and Progressive Democrats of America.

[emsimon33]

29. Well said! And welcome