Doctors, Single Payer Activists Arrested, Make History at Senate Finance Roundtable
For an account of Senator Max Baucus corporate contributors, click here.
For a website tracking how money enters (and corrupts) the political process, click here.
By Donna Smith-(in Health Care Now’s website)
It has finally happened right here in the United States. Citizens who believe healthcare is a human right have been arrested and are being processed like criminals through the Southeast District of Columbia police station. Their crime? Asking for single payer healthcare reform – publicly funded, privately delivered healthcare – to be discussed during the Congressional hearings on reform.
Doctors and other single payer activists were handcuffed and went to jail today speaking up for single payer to be at the table in the Senate finance Committee’s roundtable discussion on healthcare access and coverage. In stark contrast, Karen Ignagni, head of the industry lobby group American Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) was escorted into the room like royalty by staff members of the Senate committee. Clearly, the position of the United States Senate is not with the majority of Americans who support a national, public insurance system.
It made me physically ill to see Maryland pediatrician Margaret Flowers cuffed like a criminal and pushed out the door as the Senators waited to begin their staged roundtable discussion. It made me want to scream. It made me proud of them for being bold but ashamed that not one Senator spoke up for their own citizen-protestors and asked that they at least be allowed to speak. But the insistence that the citizens rising in protest be arrested continued from the chair with each incident.
Simply asking to have single payer be included and fully vetted is a crime. Profiting as the for-profit health insurance companies do at the expense of 22,000 American lives every year, however, gets you a run of the table in this healthcare reform discussion. Just ask the Senators who are drafting what this nation’s health system will look like – and watch their behavior today – if you want evidence of how your voice will be heard in the process.
The protestors were stoic and respectful but direct. One by one they stood. One by one they asked why single payer reform was not “at the table” of 15 witnesses Senator Max Baucus and his finance Committee gathered to map out what sort of coverage Americans might expect in the Senate reform bill now being crafted.
Sen. Baucus eventually spoke and indicated that he was respectful of those who believe in single payer – as he acknowledged many of his constituents in Montana do – but he made no attempt to explain why no single payer voice has been included in any Senate discussion to date. He urged any others in the audience who might have any designs on speaking up like the protestors did to not do so, and then he moved on to his roundtable discussion.
The press seated comfortably at the press table first looked amused and then puzzled by the procession of protest in the chamber. The C-SPAN cameras fixed on both the Committee’s table at the front of the room and the witness table directly across from them could have easily picked up the protests but the network chose to keep their cameras fixed only on Chairman Baucus – though the protestors’ words could be heard in the audience. Only two reporters of the 20 or so assembled were curious enough or industrious enough to rise and exit the room to see the arrests being carried out in the hallway.
While neither the Finance Committee or the press allowed their proceedings to be disrupted for very long, the air in the room and the atmosphere had changed – the giddy and gleeful assembly of industry lobbyists who had been chattering in rapt anticipation of the coming of their carefully chosen witnesses could not deny that some brave and patriotic fellow citizens had just been hauled out for arrest for nothing more than demanding that a point of view held by a majority of patients, nurses, physicians and other healthcare providers be included in the national discussion.
While this Congress may pass something very different than single payer reform, it will not do so without hearing the cries of the people left so openly exposed to personal health and financial ruin by the corrupt system that celebrates only profit. The citizens who stood for the thousands and thousands of dead today will not let this democracy give itself completely over to the big money interests in healthcare. Not without a fight. Not on their lives or yours or mine.
For a video clip of the protest click here
These are, among others, the reasons we need rational planning in health care. The UK’s socialized medicine system (publicly funded and delivered) has excellent ways to create the right system of incentives so that people have reason to choose primary care, hence the UK’s excellence in preventive medicine (and no, they do not eat more broccoli than Americans!).
Moreover, Britain’s medical education system does not leave newly minted doctors burdened with students’ debt. Much medical education of it is publicly funded as well.
Here’s a PBS production that shows this and other system’s nicely (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=frol02p101&continuous=1).
And of course they all have problems, as critics of single payer point out. But that is no good argument against single payer, let alone a argument for the mess we have.
So yes, I think medical students and residents have a huge role to play in demanding the sort of health care reform that will put ordinary people first.
Recently, others have appeared to express understandable concern about the apparent endangerment of primary care doctors (PCPs) in the United States.
This depletion exists both presently, as well as in the years to come due to a number of variables.
Less than 20 percent of medical school graduates go for primary care as a specialty as a residency program today, it has been reported.
In fact, this demonstration was just illustrated this year with medical students selecting their specialty.
Typically, the main reason believed for this shortage is lack of pay compared with other medical specialties.
Some anticipate a shortage of 60 thousand or so PCPs in the future within the United States.
Many of the PCP doctors who practice right now would not recommend their specialty, or even their profession, it has been reported.
I believe the tremendous value as PCPs has not been acknowledged to others as it should, nor do I believe their income where it should be for what they do.
It is estimated that the U.S. needs presently tens of thousands more primary care physicians to fully satisfy the necessities of those members of the U.S. health care needs, who are the citizens, now and in the future.
Ironically, PCPs have been determined to be and likely are the backbone of the U.S. Health care system- they are specialists of everything medically.
Yet if this is true, it is not reflected in many ways compared with their peers of other medical specialties.
For example, PCPs manage the many chronically ill patients who benefit the most from the much needed coordination and continuity of care that PCPs historically have strived to provide for them.
Nearly half of the U.S. population has at least one chronic illness- with many of those having more than just one of these types of these illnesses.
A good portion of these very ill patients have numerous illnesses which are chronic.
The chronically ill are responsible for well over 50 percent of the entire Medicare budget, who are largely cared and treated by PCPs.
The shortage of primary care physicians is possibly due to other variables as well- such as administrative hassles that are quite vexing for the physician vocation overall.
In addition, the PCP continues to experience increasing patient loads that is complicated by the progressively increasing cost to provide care for their patients due to decreasing reimbursements from various organizations the doctors receive for the services they provide.
For reasons such as this, it is believed that some PCPs are retiring early, or simply seeking an alternative career path.
Those in medical school now seem to be aware of the demoralization of this profession.
As mentioned earlier, the PCP specialty is not desirable choice for a late stage medical student, so this is quite concerning to the public health in the United States.
The number of medical school graduates entering family practice residencies has decreased by about half over the past decade or so, and this number continues to be progressive.
PCPs also have extensive student loans from their training to complicate their rather excessive workloads as caregivers with decreased pay, so I can understand if they are a bit demoralized.
Despite the shortage of these doctors, primary care physicians do in fact care for the populations they serve and are dedicated to their welfare and restoration of their health- as difficult as it may be for them at times.
Studies have shown that mortality rates would decrease due to increased patient outcomes if there were more PCPs to serve those in need of treatment.
This specialty would also optimize preventative care more for their patients if allowed to do so.
Studies have also shown that, if enough PCPs are practicing in a given geographical area, hospital admissions are decreased, as well as visits to emergency rooms.
This is due to the needed continuity in health care these PCPs provide if numbered correctly to serve a given population of citizens.
In addition, PCP care has proven to improve the quality of care given to patients, as well as the outcomes for these patients as a result are more favorable.
Most importantly, the overall quality of life for the PCP patients is much improved if there are enough PCPs.
Presently, PCPs are obligated to handle the overwhelming load of responsibility they presently have due to this shortage of their specialty.
The American College of Physicians believes that a patient- centered national health care workforce policy is needed to address these issues that would ideally be of most benefit for the public health.
Policymakers should take this into serious consideration.
“In nothing do men more nearly
approach the Gods then in giving health to men.” — Cicero
Dan Abshear
This is the most important issue of our day. I have been in a quandry why health care fell through the cracks ON DAY ONE and is currently being stomped through to the other side.
WE NEED THIS DONE AND NOW IS OUR TIME.
Keep up the list of enemies of SINGLE PAYER and we can use it as a tool to throw the bums out of office. We need to RISE UP to fight this cause in the SAME NUMBERS that rose to elect Obama.
Agreed 100%. Which is why we all need to stand up!
Bravo to the 8 brave, peaceful protesters! Thank you to Donna Smith for her excellent article.
It is appalling that the majority of Americans have no voice, and are blatantly ignored by Max Baucus, Grassley and much of the Senate who apparently are beholden to the health insurance companies and their lobbyists. I thought our Senators were there to represent their constituents. They should be voted OUT of office. The brazen corruption is disturbing.