Senator Baucus during his May 8, 2009 Senate Hearing on Health Care Reform calls for "More Police" as single payer advocates are escorted out of the room, yet soon after his crony-CEOs of the health care industry get the mike and plenty of air time. Please watch:

http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3665&updaterx=2009-05-07+12%3A35%3A22

The health care reform discussions have never honored the true meaning of "round table" in considering the sanest, most humane and affordable, health care reform proposals. The Single Payer Medicare-for-All Plan is a structure with boundaries from the get-go. This structure is clear and simple and, again, a structure, so it can’t by eroded by corporate-political cronyism and semantic gymnastics (i.e., what happens to words such as "robust" or even "the public plan" itself, "the" … as if there is or was ever a stable version).

Matt Taibbi describes the May 8th hearing for us in his widespread article Sick and Wrong:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/29988909/sick_and_wrong

"… It was Baucus’ own committee that held the first round-table discussions on reform. In three days of hearings last May, he invited no fewer than 41 people to speak. The list featured all the usual industry hacks, including big insurers like America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), Blue Cross and Aetna. It’s worth noting that several of the organizations invited — including AHIP and Amgen — employ several former Baucus staffers as lobbyists, including two of his ex-chiefs of staff.

Not one of the 41 witnesses, however, was in favor of single-payer — even though eliminating the insurance companies enjoys broad public support. Leading advocates of single-payer, including doctors from the Physicians for a National Health Program, implored Baucus to allow them to testify. When he refused, a group of eight single-payer activists, including three doctors, stood up during the hearings and asked to be included in the discussion. One of the all-time classic moments in the health care reform movement came when the second protester to stand up, Katie Robbins of Health Care Now, declared, "We need single-payer health care!"

To which Baucus, who looked genuinely frightened, replied, "We need more police!"

We need more police? Now, judging from the video, he seemed more smirking than anxious when he asked for more police, at least the second time he said it. But I am sure Taibbi is right, that there was great fear in him of those strong "truth-to-power" people. The strength of their proposal would illuminate the taxpayer-betrayal-cronyism of his.

Taibbi continues:

The eight protesters were led away in handcuffs and spent about seven hours in jail. "It’s funny, the policemen were all telling us their horror stories about health care," recalls Dr. Margaret Flowers, one of the physicians who was jailed. "One was telling us about his mother who was 62 and lost her job and was uninsured, waiting to get Medicare when she was 65." The protesters were sentenced to six months’ probation. Baucus later met with them and conceded that not including single-payer advocates in the discussion had been a mistake, although it was "too late" to change that.

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/7911
(Here were my two cents in a diary in response to Taibbi’s disclosure:)

I guess that was a pretty good sign that Obama and Baucus and the Congress people with all that [bribe] money tucked in and spilling out of their suits, dresses, jackets, pants, pockets, cuffs, bra cleavages, etc. were not about to get serious about a single payer option that would make the health care industry irrelevant but at the same time save 22,000 American lives a year, 60 a day, from death due to inadequate health care, or save one American from going bankrupt every 30 seconds.

Taibbi reported that Obama refused to let Conyers bring two physicians for single payer to a health care summit in March. Obama’s own physician for 22 years, David Scheiner, a single payer advocate, three months later was “mysteriously" bumped from a prime-time forum on health care, after being invited to ask the president a question. His own physician. I mean political cronyism vs. long term acquaintanceship with your own doctor?

Now the Congressional Progressive Caucus has 80 members who have staunchly supported single payer health care but they backed down on going to bat for the single payer plan when Rep. Pelosi promised to push for a strong (robust) public option. Something like the single payer. (HAH!)

Taibbi:

But one of the immutable laws of politics in the U.S. Congress is that progressives will always be screwed by their own leaders, as soon as the opportunity presents itself. And with a bill the size and scope of health care, there was plenty of opportunity.

[snip]

Once single-payer was off the table, the Democrats lost their best bargaining chip. Rather than being in a position to use the fear of radical legislation to extract concessions from the right — a position Obama seemingly gave away at the outset, by punting on single-payer — Republicans and conservative Blue Dog Democrats suddenly realized that they had the upper hand. Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would now give away just about anything to avoid having to walk away without a real health care bill.

http://s267910656.onlinehome.us/wordpress/archives/627

Alison Landes (www.passHR676.org) shares the above video on her website and also soberly writes:

Advocates fighting for real health care reform need all the support it can muster. The old fable, Beware of Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing holds an important message for anyone sorting through the contradictions and confusion.

Divided We Fail.org is a coordinated effort spearheaded by several well funded organizations that are not friends of single-payer. They use a lot of the right buzz words, but their proposals will not bring the long term health care reform we seek;

AARP, which receives substantial income from selling United Health Care, would not support single-payer because they earn considerable income from selling health insurance, the Business Roundtable, representing 150 major corporations, has not been a friend of single-payer or public option, the SEIU (Service Employees International Union) its national office did not support single-payer while many of its chapters do and the NFIB (National Federation of Independent Business) which is not a friend of single-payer or the public option. You can find out more about its focus by googling; NFIB who are its members.

Let me add here some relevant wisdom from Samuel Adams:

“The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men." Samuel Adams”

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/8313

And from my earlier diary, How Many Lobbyists Does It Take To Screw A Lightbulb Country? (Taibbi’s Take on Health Care):

We are the only industrialized country in the WORLD that doesn’t provide universal health care for its citizenry.

Hundreds of billions of dollars of waste from excessive administrative costs and outrageous levels of executive compensation for the insurance and pharmaceutical corporations have ruined America’s health care system.

Our vendors of health care, VENDORS — this is what these corporations are, Ralph Nader emphasizes, not our authoritarian leaders — do not deserve a second chance. Like vendors who give shabby service, they do not get a do-over. They have betrayed us and will continue to, just as the banking institutions are proving to, despite the insanely generous second chance given to them by our too easily trusted representatives.

A Single Payer Medicare-for-All health care system is the only sustainable, long term plan that will enable our citizenry to ever enjoy their basic civil right of humane and affordable health care. 20% of doctors are still on board with this choice, 80% favor a public option which would afford some of the single payer advantages, at least.

Yet, apparently, this, the only feasible and practical answer, is not feasible or practical, because the representatives we have empowered as our proxies have betrayed us by accepting such scandalous amounts of lobby-bribe money from the VENDORS. They now must compensate their bribers by ensuring that their profiteering will be sustained at the cost of the welfare of the taxpayers, at the cost of thousands of deaths of these taxpayers.

With the help of corporate media and especially with about 60,000+ anti-government-paranoids on the right, both groups hell-bent to rescue the perpetrators of our economic plight, we the citizenry are being pressed to SETTLE for what we do not deserve. We are being pressed to believe our only choice is to ENABLE THE ENABLERS of the moneyed corporate-pirates by letting them turn health care reform into even deeper amoral opportunism.

Dennis Kucinich contends Obama’s stance on mandatory health care will force 30 million new customers to sign up, whether they can realistically afford health care or not. Reform for citizenry is a Trojan Horse for the medical industrial complex.

Eat sh*t and try to smile, America. Not quite the change you wanted to believe in, huh? This is your tax dollars at work, along with the bribe money. Can you imagine how much these corporations will be making on our backs, if they are lobbying an average of $2 million a day, added to the millions already extended to our government representatives … to the President?

I am stunned by the reluctance and hesitation by the progressives to straight out demand the BEST CASE, DESERVED SYSTEM OF HEALTH CARE REFORM. SHOOT THE MOON. What more can we lose? Why don’t we insist on an end to cronyism? Why don’t we call them on it FIRMLY? Why don’t we exit denial that the prostituting representatives are remotely sincere in writing our health care bills?

We must NOT cooperate by enabling the enablers of the corporations.

There are two Congressional Single Payer Medicare-for-All bills presently being ignored, maligned or given short shrift by the citizenry, Congress and the media. They hold the true, sustainable, organically practical answer for this country.

The bills, H.R.676 and S.703.