Baucus Regrets Killing Single Payer Health Plan
(Why would there not be a discussion about single-payer health care? Follow the money. The Democrats have been bought off by the insurance-health care lobby. Whatever we eventually arrive at in health care legislation will be pre-approved by the lobbyists who have bought off a majority of our senators. Our senators will advertise the new legislation as change, but it will be mush. Once again Obama and the Democrats will let America down and change will just be window dressing.)
Published on Wednesday, June 3, 2009 by Huffington Post Max Baucus Regrets Killing Single-Payer, Sanders Says by Huffington Post
WASHINGTON – Sen. Max Baucus met with advocates for single-payer health care in a closed meeting on Wednesday and expressed regret that he had not included them in the earlier negotiations for reform.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, talk with reporters after a closed-door committee meeting on financing an overhaul of the health care system, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, May 20, 2009. Baucus is under pressure from the White House to get a health care bill to the Senate floor quickly, say single-payer advocates who met with the Senator today, and that it is too late to include them and further hearings. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)Health-care point man Baucus (D-Mont.), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, took a statewide beating [1] last week for dismissing the possibility of a single-payer system early in the debate — leading to the meeting with health care professionals and Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who is the sponsor of the Senate’s only single-payer bill.
“I don’t like paraphrasing other people, I don’t like being paraphrased, but I think it’s fair to say that what he said is that when he said something to the effect that single-payer is off the table, I think he regrets having said that,” Sanders said following a morning closed-door meeting with Baucus. “I think in retrospect he thinks there probably should have been hearings, it should have been part of the process, and then it would have been rejected.”
Baucus is under pressure from the White House to get a health care bill to the Senate floor quickly, saying according to those in the meeting, that it is too late to include them and further hearings.
The Montana senator did, however, agree to use the power of his office to fight for leniency on behalf of the dozen or so doctors and nurses who had been arrested for demanding a single-payer program during committee hearings on health care.
Sanders and the assembled single-payer advocates said they remain committed to advancing a universal, government-run program, though without Baucus that task is much tougher.
“I find it somewhat incomprehensible that if we are serious about getting to health care reform, if we are serious about tackling the outrageously high cost of health care, that we are not engaging in serious discussion about a single-payer health care system,” Sanders said.
Apparently Bernie Sanders can’t be bought off.
© 2009 Huffington Post