Comments on: Sen. Baucus respects our views

By: KYfan676

KYfan676 — Wed, 06 May 2009 18:23:30 +0000

Don McCanne has a great post as usual, but I wonder of the header could be changed. When I picked this blog article up via a Google search this morning, it looked as if PNHP was applauding Baucus!
Now to express our support for the “Baucus Eight.”
Please tell PNHP members how best to do that? Donations are needed but –most importantly– Congress needs to hear from doctors, nurses, and health care workers. A personal visit to your own Rep’s office may be needed. Take a colleague.
Thanks.

By: cmhmd

cmhmd — Wed, 06 May 2009 13:06:19 +0000

Even more problematic was an exchange later in the hearings between Sen. Pat Roberts and Scott Serota, CEO of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.

Sen. Roberts told the tale of how a group of surgeons and anesthesiologists surrounded him after his knee surgery and told him and said they’d all quit if we went to a national health plan or even, I believe, to a public option and their reimbursements were to be decreased.

I don’t have the transcript, but he went on to say something along the lines of how there was no way to control costs in a national health system and then asked Serota what he thought.

Of course, Serota explained in that patrician way of so many how there was no way in the world to produce high quality and lower costs than we have in the US now with private insurance.

Now, if Sen. Baucus doesn’t want single payer advocates around because he doesn’t think it is politically viable, that is one thing. But what he doesn’t seem to realize is that having a knowledgeable single payer advocate and someone knowledgeable about international comparative health care in the room would have resulted in the particular line of BS that Roberts and Serota were peddling to be swatted down without breaking a sweat.

That is why it is so critical to have a broader range of views at the table. There was no one there willing to point out the obvious: Reducing a surgeons income from $500 K to $400 K, for example, will not bring the world to a halt. Essentially every country in the world controls costs and maintains quality at massive savings compared to the disastrously inefficient private insurance industry.

But there was no one at the table to tell them that.

Cheers,

By: Retired ED nurse

Retired ED nurse — Tue, 05 May 2009 22:10:08 +0000

Folks who spoke up at that meeting were arrested and jailed. One person is named as a Dr. Margaret Flowers. Viewed 6 minutes of the proceeding on another site. It was not pretty but the protestors were not given authorization to speak. The main problem is that no single payer advocates were invited to testify. We need to put more pressure on Obama concerning this. At the first White House forum, single payer was only given one place after protests by supporters. Obama can’t control the Senate or House, so we all have to put pressure on our Senators and Congresspersons.