By Julian Pecquet
The Hill, Oct. 1, 2010
[PNHP note: This article in The Hill, published on the eve of the Oct. 2 “One Nation” march in Washington, was one of several news reports about the participation of single-payer, Medicare-for-all advocates in the gathering of 175,000 at the Lincoln Memorial. Early on Saturday morning, Mara Liasson on NPR mentioned that doctors were marching “and they want single payer,” and later that day The Associated Press noted, “There were people with union T-shirts and others participants who carried banners advocating expanding Medicare for all Americans.”]
Physicians who want a single-payer government health plan will be marching at Saturday’s “One Nation Working Together” rally in Washington, D.C. While the main focus of the march will be on jobs and the economy, part of the rally’s theme — “demanding the change we voted for” — relates to dissatisfaction with the health care reform law, according to Physicians for a National Health Program.
The group’s 18,000 members don’t believe the new health care reform law will put an end to rising health care costs, but rather it will make things worse by entrenching the role of private insurance companies.
“Reforming our health care system is unfinished business,” PNHP President Oliver Fein said in a statement. Physicians will be marching “to say we need a massive movement to press forward to the only rational remedy for our nation’s health care crisis: single-payer Medicare for all.”
http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/122093-doctors-to-push-for-single-payer-at-workers-rally