Bill Moyer’s: Single Payer Health Care. Why isn’t it on the table? [View All]

It's all about the WH and congress bowing to the insurance industry!!


http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/index-flash.html

Bill Moyer’s: Single Payer Health Care. Why isn’t it on the table?



Transcript:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05222009/transcript1.html




May 22, 2009

BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the JOURNAL. Health care reform. It's the talk of the town - if the town is Washington, D.C. But some possible reforms aren't being talked about at all. Not officially, that is.
The White House and Congress have kept the lid on one of the most controversial but popular options, known as single-payer. It's a story the mainstream press has largely ignored and that's why we are covering it in this broadcast.
You don't expect to see these people demonstrating in our nation's capitol. You'll most likely encounter them in the examining room, the operating theater, the clinic or the laboratory.
They're doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals, unaccustomed to making themselves heard in the streets.
GERI JENKINS: People are fed up with seeing the process hijacked by the insurance industry. So, we have to keep the heat on. We have to keep putting the pressure on them to have the voice of the people heard and what people in this country really want is, which is a single-payer system, publicly funded, privately administered. And we're going to keep pushing to make sure that message gets out there. …………………………………………..
………….BILL MOYERS: That's exactly what brought them here. They want the White House and Congress to know they can't do their job taking care of us under the health care system the way it is today.
DR. MARGARET FLOWERS:I wanted to take care of patients. And to have insurance companies and administrators that don't know anything about medicine, telling us what we can and can't do, was really ridiculous to me. You know, I couldn't understand it.

………………BILL MOYERS: They've come here to tell policy makers how the life-and-death choices they make in caregiving are affected by decisions made in corporate board rooms and behind closed doors in Washington.

DR. PAT SALOMON: There were all these arbitrary decisions, which were not about people's health care. They were about profits. How can I get away with the least amount of care offered to this person, so that their premium is going to give me the most profit? That's not the way health care decisions should be made. It's wrong. It's wrong for us as a nation.

GERI JENKINS: We're there around the clock. So we feel a real sense of obligation to advocate for the best interests of our patients and the public. You know, you can talk about policy but when you're staring at a human face, it's a whole different story. So I think sometimes people who define policy haven't seen the human side up close and personal like we see it every day.
BILL MOYERS: What the protestors want is single-payer health care - a non-profit system that would remove the role of the insurance companies and unify the financing of the health care system under one entity, a government run organization, like Medicare, that would collect all health care fees, and pay out all health care costs.
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