Mass Single Payer Action at Blumenauer’s Office
By Single Payer Action –
About 75 to 100 single payer activists surrounded Congressman Earl Blumenauer’s Portland, Oregon office this afternoon.
The activists insisted that the Congressman from Oregon’s third district join 77 of his colleagues in the House and sign on to HR 676 – single payer legislation in the House of Representatives.
The protest was organized by Single Payer Action and included doctors, nurses and activists from Physicians for a National Health Program, Portland Jobs With Justice Healthcare Committee, and local unions.
Twenty of the protesters entered the Congressman’s office, delivering a letter signed by over sixty citizens asking again that he co-sponsor HR 676.
The twenty activists then laid inert in his office for twenty-two minutes – in memory of the 22,000 who, according to the Institute of Medicine, die every year due to lack of health insurance.
Those who couldn’t fit in the Congressman’s office were strewn across the hall outside and scattered on the sidewalks in front of his office.
Portland police were present, but the protesters were allowed the entire twenty-two minutes of the “die-in” without anyone being asked to move.
The event ended peacefully with a call to those present to mobilize for a town hall meeting on healthcare to be held by Congressman Blumenauer and Howard Dean on June 5 at 3:00PM at Portland Community College’s Cascade Campus.
“Sixty Americans die every day due to lack of health insurance,” said Single Payer Action’s Philip Kauffman. “Sooner or later, we will get single payer in this country. To save lives, it’s better that we have it sooner rather than later. Congressman Blumenauer needs to get with the single payer program and put the lives of innocent Americans above profits for the health insurance industry.”
It’s time to tell Washington, Stop the killing and start the healing. Like that fine British gentleman said at the end of world war II, if we can afford to build military bases and kill Germans, than we can afford to heal our own citizens and build schools and hospitals.
Again, I ask you. Is this clearly unresponsive government the same one you advocate placing in charge of our health care? You can’t even get on the ballots.
Of course, we both know that the purpose is not to save anybody. You are simply fulfilling your duties to your Marxist masters, enacting the Cloward-Piven strategy to give the illusion of a mass movement.
Don’t like insurance companies? Neither do I. But I also detest government tyranny and refuse to allow my health care to be dictated by the whims of a careless and self-absorbed government.
Marxism had its chance already. It failed. Why go down the same doomed path?
In response to Mockbadoc–true enough, right now, our public servants/government leaders seem quite “self-absorbed.” However, please do keep in mind that our U.S form of government is “of the people,by the people, and for the people” and yes, that is You and me, bub. I’d much rather have my government oversee a fair and just non-profit delivery of health care to ALL of us citizens, than have self-interested, for-profit insurance companies dictate my health care. The real “tyranny” of which you speak comes in the form of the corporate power of the insurance industry. It is the “absolute power” of the corporate boards of insurance companies across the nation that “exercise power Unjustly” and sometimes “cruelly” in their decision making process as to who lives or dies. (ie who gets coverage and who does not.)
Supporting a single payer solution to our nation’s health care crisis, is far from “Marxist.” It will save our nation and it’s citizens far more money in the long run, free doctors and health care providers from excessive paperwork (filing all those insurance papers/claims)so that they can devote more time to our health and bottom line? It’s the morally right thing to do. I’d much prefer to pay a slightly higher payroll tax for a national health plan than pay the obscenely high premiums for health insurance that barely covers anything.
I invite you to come away from your Ayn Rand altar and take a good look at how even you will benefit from a “healthy” single payer/national health care plan. If you haven’t found the answers you need here, then take a look at this: http://pnhp.org/