Action Alert: Expect Better from PBS

Recently, we announced Frontline’s new program, “Obama’s Deal,” which included a segment that featured single-payer advocates arrested in the Senate Finance Committee protesting the exclusion of single-payer witnesses from the proceedings. It exposed some of the sordid deals struck by congressional lawmakers and the White House with the health insurance industry and Big Pharma.

While Frontline extensively interviewed Dr. Margaret Flowers of PNHP, they neglected to broadcast the very reason that she and others risked arrest: to get a single-payer advocate to testify in the Senate Finance Committee hearings on health care. Frontline, rather, depicted these advocates as President Obama’s “liberal base” leaving out any discussion about why nurses, doctors, and every-day Americans would risk being arrested by Federal police.

You can act now and write to the ombud at PBS to protest this exclusion of the single-payer viewpoint. It is wrong for Congress and the media to exclude the most evidence-based solution to our health crisis.

The exclusion of single-payer showed that right from the outset Obama had made a deal with the health insurance, drug, and hospital industries.

We expect better from PBS and Frontline. Contact the ombud today!

For some ideas for your comments to PBS, see Kevin Zeese’s (Exec. Dir. of Prosperity Agenda) response.

3 Comments

  1. Carolyn Taylor on April 21, 2010 at 11:41 am

    How many people will have to die, how many families will lose everything because of un-reimbursed medical expenses before America gets it right? The majority of deaths and bankruptcies happen to those who think they have adequate insurance–that’s the bad joke! Are we a third-world country that we can’t take care of our own people? We have our priorities screwed up! What is a more-important use of the taxes we pay? Get it straight: the reason we don’t have serious national health care is that FOR PROFIT HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES HAVE BOUGHT OFF THE MAJORITY OF MEMBERS OF CONGRESS, AND NOBODY WILL SAY THAT OUT LOUD!



  2. Hamish Gowans on April 21, 2010 at 11:44 am

    At what time marker is the segment with Dr. Flowers?



    • Hamish Gowans on April 21, 2010 at 11:47 am

      Better yet,
      Has someone got the clip on YouTube? The PBS player does not allow one to fast forward.