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At least Bill Moyers hasn’t forgotten about the fight for straight-up single-payer (aka "Medicare for All") healthcare financing.
This Friday, he interviewed Margaret Flowers, MD, Congressional Fellow with Physicians for National Health Program, fresh from yet another arrest attempting to keep single payer on the table.
Last week, Dr. Flowers and her colleague Dr. Carol Paris were arrested in Baltimore attempting to respond to the President’s disingenuous call in his SOTU address. You know the line:
If anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen medicare for seniors and stop insurance company abuses, let me know. Let me know. Let me know. I’m eager to see it.
They were attempting to deliver yet another request for the White House to examine single payer on the merits, especially since it meets all of Obama’s stated criteria for ideas worth entertaining. Instead, they got arrested.
Dr. Flowers was arrested last May, as part of the Baucus 13, attempting to get the Senate Finance Committee to include single-payer advocates in their hearing. Moyers subsequently devoted an entire show to single payer, on May 22.
By the way, in case you didn’t know, Bill Moyers’ Journal and its sister program, Now, are about to go off the air. More on that, including PBS’s cardboard-flavored response to a petition to keep progressive voices on the network, from FAIR.
(Photo of Dr. Flowers speaking in Washington on September 30, 2009, at the rally marking the end of the nationwide trek of the Mad As Hell Doctors)
46 Comments
I’m assuming my photo will appear briefly after the FDL computers chat with Flickr’s.
I’m assuming you’re the one with the mustache.
No, I’m the other one.
Yes
Hi ralph, Thanks for this one. I covered much the same ground here but with a few differences.
Thanks, lets, especially for the tip on MF’s live-blog on correntwire. (I was amazed at how many of us became members over there within a few weeks of each other.)
Thank you both for your reports on Dr. Flowers. imo a true hero.
you are way cuter than I imagined *winkity*
I startled my wife when I screemed at the TV at that point in the poser in chief’s latest display of gormless fatuity that was the State of the disUnion Speech where he said he was open to better ideas. I thought the very same thing the lovely Dr. Flowers thought! —”Single payer you effing IDIOT!” But the feckless dolt of a president wasn’t speaking to Dr. Flowers or to me. He was speaking to the actual OWNERS of this god forsaken country. Dr. Flowers found this out when she was arrested (again) trying to do exactly that! (Tell the empty void shell of human nonbeing president about a better way). Dr. Flowers had better watch her backside since the latest nightmare at 1600 Penn has seized upon “licenced to kill” a way to deal with a problem. How far we have fallen so fast!
good goddess they are dropping MOYERS????? that’s the most interesting and informative venue for progressivism on teebee.
should we lobby cspan to pick it up?
“Dr. Flowers and her colleague Dr. Carol Paris were arrested in Baltimore attempting to respond to the President’s disingenuous call in his SOTU address”
Why?
Monkeys are not allowed contact with the zoo keepers
Flowers is amazing. Lots of respect for her
I called your (Mad as Hell Doctors) ground team a bit too late to be able to have our town (Athens Ohio) put on your stop list.
If you folks hit the road again. Sure willing to volunteer some time stirring up press coverage and support.
Thanks so much to all you folks.
Book Salon up at the Mothership with Jessica Clark and Tracy Van Slyke’s Beyond the Echo Chamber: How a Networked Progressive Media Can Reshape American Politics hosted by Matthew Kerbel
The zoo keepers are the monkeys. Something went wrong with evolution. It’s going back to the monkeys.
Except for Moyers and Now PBS only shows the real interesting stuff during their pledge drives.
Moyers will be missed ! Don’t know if I’ll be watching much PBS
Margaret is a strong woman. More courage in her pinkie than in Obama’s whole body.
Here’s something to do for giggles, or if you’re waiting for the Stupor Bowl to end: go over to DailyKos.com and visit Cedwyn’s execrable diary “Which is worse? Passing nothing or the Senate HCR bill?” — now, vote in the poll at the bottom of the text.
Yes indeed.She is a real hero:fighting to save the lives of ordianry Americans.
But you wouldn’t see her appearing on the so called “librul shows” on MSNBC cuz what she is doing is not appealing to the “hoi poli”,limousine libruls but moreover it contradicts the WH and it’s advocates in the media narrative,The reason we can’t get robust HCR is cuz of the GOP.
obamarahma is looking for good ideas to fix so many problems with our economy. What a laugh! He already danced that dance and froze out the economists that had the ideas when he held his big conference early in his administration. His continued lying replays the bush playbook but with more coherent statements. Drs. Flowers and Paris are trying to do the right thing and take him at his word. Too bad his word is as empty as any other corporatist.
To those who say that we need to give him more time: he has made no real attempt to change anything in Washington. The republicants have made clear from day one of his election that they have NO INTEREST in voting for anything he says that he wants or working with him on problem. In fact, I think that they are doing their “obstruction” because he plans to give them what they want. To anyone doubting that, just look at his record to date.
Good gravy, Leen, I was joking. I attended the rally with letsgetitdone and montanamaven; drove down from New York for the occasion. But I’m not affiliated with the MAHDs.
If you haven’t already done so, watch the youtube video at letsgetitdone’s post. That shows the whole scene and circumstance of the arrest. Unlike the Baucus 13 actions last May, this latest arrest was unplanned.
I believe this was Moyers’s decision. However, I’m pretty certain that the other show, Now on PBS, which was originally hosted by Moyers, is getting the ax involuntarily.
Actually, Margaret Flowers appeared on The Ed Show on MSNBC after her arrest in the Baucus hearings last May. One of the Mad As Hell Docs also appeared on that show during their cross-country tour. I don’t know if Maddow or Olbermann have had single-payer advocates on.
Dr. Flowers and Dr. Parris ,I am a nurse and in full support for your speaking out for American Health Care so eloquently. What ever it takes to get Congress to stop fiddling to the corporations tune. A Simple change in medicare legislation fine print to include all Americans; and up or down vote by the corporate supported Senate would stop all this. It would give all democrats including Baucus, Landrieu, Nelson, Lincoln a leg up in the elections. ( Unfortunately for Americans)The only reason the Senate won”t vote for it is Corporations will not allow it. Shame. Republicans will win too many seats in 2010 and it will be the fault of Obama’s mismanagement and lack of leadership and his spineless Democrats lead by the spineless Reid.
The Senators seem to realize We the people are no longer in control of our own country.
Both Pied Pipers for the PTB. They know where their bread is buttered. Fast Eddy reeled me in again last year with his tough talk on HRC but since his Christmas break he’s been singing the Donkey (aka Jackass’) tune. Somebody must have told him to straighten up and fly “RIGHT” as in the corporatist direction. His side kick NorMan GoldMan ain’t any better… a chip off the big fat red block. Nobody tells is like it is for leftys or libertarians.
Yes Olbermann is very pro Single Payer:
part1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvVujTAeiCM
part2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=118CToJNUOs
part3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWzU3xtSynM
part4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAN5nwYPwDY
one of Kieth’s best!
I think that the reason that Obama won’t say “Single Payer” anymore is that Beck, and Lumpy, and Sarah and “the baggers” and the MSM would be screaming SOCIALIST!!!
I agree – no Moyers – and PBS has gone for non-analytical balance in its equating right wing fact free nut programing with real world discussion considered “left” because as we all know – reality has a left bias.
Single payer makes logical sense – but Obama is a corporate president who does not give a damn about the left – the base – except at Nov election time and when he needs at least some of the base to defeat women like Hillary.
Thank you Dr Flowers. This is the only way to have health care chang that makes any sence at all. That is why the Republicans are so agenst it. Man if they even here the Universal they go insain.
touch
Great idea!
Check the video here, and you’ll get the other side’s “reasons.”
That’s really a serious matter. PNHP, Margaret, and MadASHellDoctors, tried like hell to get some coverage; but the media were too busy covering tea bagger crap.
Rachel and Keith gave MAHD’s leader Paul Hochfeld some coverage, but there was very little else from the national media that I recall. Here’s an account of the MAHD rally in DC in early October. It has useful links to MAHD and associated organizations. ralphbon, montanamaven, my wife, Bonnie, and I were the FDL contingent in attendance as far as we know.
One of the big problems we have is that the free press no longer includes the big media organizations which all follow corporates. I’m afraid we are the closest thing America now has to a free press.
But you can use the links in my earlier blogs to make contact with MAHD. Again it’s here. I have a feeling MAHD will be happy to stop by Athens, Ohio when they do their tour.
Moyers is now 76. It may be too much for him now.
I think both had Paul Hochfeld on, but don’t remember seeing Margaret on Ed’s.
I will occasionally catch a few minutes of the NewsHour to see how the current CW is being spun but that’s about it. I used to watch a little of Charlie Rose for much the same reason but I can’t stomach his inanity anymore. Moyers was the one bright spot on an otherwise dismal network. His was the one show that I would actually try to catch from time to time. What is so extraordinary about Moyers is that what he does is so ordinary. He conducts real interviews with real people, not CW fests with the hack pundit du jour.
Many have commented here thanking Margaret Flowers and Carol Paris for their efforts and expressing support. But it’s doubtful, though not impossible that they’ll be seeing this blog. On the other hand, you can find information and contact points for them at the Correntewire Live Blog that occurred earlier today, and also leave late messages there that Margaret is likely to receive.
Yes, a man who has retained his honesty and integrity through the decades. A gift from the old, real liberalism before the yuppie revolution.
I was completely captivated by Dr Flowers’ talk with Bill Moyers. He had such a relaxed discussion that the profound statements she made just left me stunned.
Can anyone answer this question: When Flowers was asked about the the 180 change in reaction in the white house, when she became persona non grata, she paused and looked up while carefully choosing her words, but With whom had she been in regular discussions? And who ended those discussion?
WHO IN THE WHITE HOUSE? Name Names. It’s obvious that person has a lot of power to disenfranchise 70% of Americans in favor of Single Payer. That’s who we need to target and influence.
View the interview again, or read the transcript. Neither Margaret Flowers nor anyone higher on the food chain at PNHP has been in regular discussions with the White House. Her interview explicitly says that.
She did say that SP advocates have been vigorously lobbying legislators and their staffers. And following the Baucus committee arrests last May, single-payer advocates were allowed to give brief, token testimony in front of a couple of House committees and the Senate HELP committee; see, eg, here and here. But the White House has all but completely shut out anyone advocating single payer and certainly not entertained serious discussion of the concept.
I saw this interview last evening, and it made me really sad. I knew that Dr. Flowers (and others) had done a lot to advocate for single payer and/or the expansion of medicare, etc. Thanks to her for her great efforts. Note that the rightwing media spent the weekend hyperventilating over Bible Spice’s hand job, but where did we see this real news abut Dr. Flowers’ efforts on the “real” behalf of all US citizens?? Yeah, that’s right: crickets except for Moyers.
It’s my understanding that Moyers has decided to retire (more’s the pity). I’m not sure if he really, really, really is ready, or if he got some encouragement. Given his age, he may just be ready, but it’s a shame.
Well, we all know that PBS and NPR are jokes these days, and I hardly watch or listen to either for what they call “news” because mostly it’s just the same old rightwing b.s. spoken more intelligently (sort of like the POTUS).
Like many others here at FDL, I was shrieking single-payer at that empty suit who gave the laughable SOTU. It’s insulting when the POTUS has the nerve to bray out: “if anyone has any good ideas, I want to hear ‘em.” Spare me the insult, Rahmbama, you certainly do NOT want to hear from anyone except your corporate sponsors… in this case Big Ins & Big Pharma.
PS at the end of that Billy Moyers show, he does a brief segment on the corporate sponsorship of ObamaRahma’s big televised “discussion” with Republics at their convention in Baltimore the other weekend, plus the corporate sponsors of some Dem “meeting” at the expensive Fountainbleu Hotel in Miami that same weekend. Moyers ended that brief segment with a comment to the effect of: “Dems or Republics: gold-plated equal opportunity hypocracy.”
Boy will I miss Moyers when he goes, but no doubt the corporations are counting down the seconds until he retires. sigh
thanks.
Ralph,
Perhaps I misunderstood or misstated. What I’m trying to find is someone in the administration who is making the decision to exclude single payer advocates. Is it Rahm or …..?
I think they’re all on the same page on the exclusion; it’s tough enough for the Congressional Progressive Caucus to get an audience with BHO, compared with the Blue Dogs.