Watch the Single-Payer Hearing in House, Wed. June 10
The Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee of the House Education & Labor Committee will hold a hearing titled “Examining the Single Payer Health Care Option” this Wednesday, June 10th at 10:30 am in 2175 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C.
For those of you who would like to attend in person and can make the trip to Washington, D.C., hearings are open to the public. Just make sure you get there early, so you get a seat.
You may be able to watch via webcast here: http://edlabor.house.gov/hearings/2009/06/examining-the-single-payer-hea.shtml
Contact C-SPAN and let them know you would like them to broadcast the hearing. C-SPAN’s Main Number is: (202) 737-3220
Stan Brock gives thousands of People in Tennessee free health care …want to see something pitiful ? Watch it on YouTube …I watched all of them and I seen a doctor cry and made me cry …I have beeb forwarding the videos to the White House web site ..Please help if you can and do the same and send to CSPAN and mmflint ..
Today will be very interesting ! Has everyone made the call to the White House today ? 202-456-1414 ?
You can watch the whole meeting on YT I thought it went really good !Please make comments
I watched this. A lot more enjoyable than watching the senate drag singlepayer folks out.
Those frightened about a single-payer system because of it’s administration by the government should pay attention to the Veteran’s Administration EHR system – VISTA. It has been deployed in over 100 VA hospitals and is even used in Finland. Texas Tech is also a user.
If their concerns is that the government can’t administer something as big as health care for all. Consider that the VA developed this system internally and is the only system that can be considered a successfully deployed EHR system. I won’t even go in to the success of Medicare and its low cost.
Two thoughts:
1. Dennis Kucinich might have deflated the insufferable Dr. Gratzer with this question: “Tommy Douglas is well known in Canada as the father of the Canadian Healthcare systm, which he fought into existence over 40 years ago. In 2004 Canadians voted for ‘The Greatest Canadian of All Time’. Alexander Graham Bell came in ninth; Bobby Orr was 19th. Please tell us who came in first, as the Canadians’ choice for ‘The Greatest Canadian of All Time’?”
(It was, of course, Tommy Douglas, and I would love to have seen Dr. Gratzer answer this question.)
2. The health care providers all gave graphic evidence of the need for real healthcare reform, and many of the problems of plans designed to keep the insurance companies in the act. But I wish someone would point out that Medicare gets by nicely on a markup of less than 5% of the goods and services they pay for (as do supermarkets), whereas the overhead imposed by the health insurers is almost 50% of the cost of the healthcare they pay for. The only positive value-add they provide for this is risk pooling, worth maybe 3-4%, the rest is all either neutral, a simple waste to the policy holder, like profits and executive salaries, or actually negative, like treatment denial and “campaign contributions” to politicians for voting against the interests and wishes of policy holders.
That 50% overhead beyond the cost of healthcare services adds up to over $1 billion per day, more than $2500 per year per covered person, all down the drain.
For what? What value do the insurance companies even pretend to add to justify this expenditure, adding up to over $3 trillion in the course of ten years? “Choice”? Nonsense – they offer less choice of doctor than does Medicare. “Shorter waiting times”? Than Canada’s would be if its healthcare system were funded at twice its current rate, which is what HR 676 would do in the US? Again, arrant nonsense.
I think is is important to pucture theses two myths, that private insurance offers more “choice”, and that Canadians, suffering under their system, dislike it.
And BTW, Obama wants to allow those who “like” their insurance to keep it. A substantial majority of those in bankruptcy due to medical bills had health insurance at the outset. It would be truly interesting to know how many of them “liked” their insurance before it refused to pay their medical bills and threw them into bankruptcy.