Excellent ... this is how ya counter the bullshit townhall GOP driven bullshit gathering of lies

[doc mercer]

A SMALL group of Oregon-based doctors and their supporters is getting ready for a cross-country tour to demand health care reform that will actually work to end the crisis--a government-run single-payer system that would cover everyone and cut out the private insurance industry. The doctors' "Care-A-Van" will start out September 8 on a journey from Portland, Ore., to Washington, D.C.

The trip will include town hall meetings on health care along the way. But these forums won't be like the ones sponsored by Washington politicians, where right-wingers denounced all reform...Even before those town halls occurred, the Democrats conceded on a series of crucial questions, leaving their legislation "toothless" and giving the insurance industry everything it could have hoped for.

In contrast, the town halls organized for the six physicians, who call themselves the "Mad As Hell Doctors," will seek to educate people about single-payer and get people involved in the movement fighting for a rational health care system.

...the vast majority of the U.S. public supports some type of global government-run system for all citizens. Yet the term "universal health care" has been expropriated by Democrats to mean "mandated coverage"--something like the health care scheme imposed in Massachusetts in 2004 that requires all residents to purchase some form of coverage, likely from a private company, or face tax penalties...

Getting real information about single-payer out there is half the reason for the Mad As Hell Care-A-Van, according to Dr. Mike Huntington, a radiologist from Corvallis, Ore...

http://socialistworker.org/2009/09/01/mad-as-hell-cross...

[doc mercer]

The Drive for Single Payer


by Ralph Nader

August 31, 2009

After several weeks of protests at Senate hearings and health care events by single payer advocates (visit singlepayeraction.org), six physicians from Oregon, with 191 years of combined real-world medical experience, are crossing the country in a 27-foot Winnebago making stops in nearly 30 cities, to debate, educate and advance full medicare for all. Everybody in, nobody out.

Calling themselves “Mad as Hell Doctors,” these physicians are already drawing crowds and expect thousands to turn out at each city that they visit, culminating in a large arrival demonstration in front of the White House around October 1. (Visit www.madashelldoctors.com )

They have written President Obama asking for a meeting “to discuss the future of health care as well as the moral, social, and fiscal imperative of enacting a single-payer system for America at this moment in our history.”

The White House turned them down flat, not even leaving the door open for reconsideration. Mr. Obama has met countless times with the CEOs of large corporations, whose greed and callousness causes so much of this crisis. Though he believes in single payer “if we started from scratch,” he has yet to meet with any single payer delegation.

...

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2009/08/31/the-driv... /



ON SEPTEMBER 8TH, A CARAVAN WILL CROSS AMERICA TO DELIVER A CLEAR AND SIMPLE MESSAGE TO OUR ELECTED OFFICIALS IN WASHINGTON:
HEALTH CARE FOR PEOPLE - NOT PROFIT!

Mad as Hell: You CAN handle the Truth

There's no nice way to say it. The financial cost of health care is killing our citizens, hobbling our economy, crushing small business, and threatening the solvency of our government. In the meantime, the Health Care Industry is spending almost two million dollars a day lobbying Congress and manipulating public opinion to accept “reform” legislation that leaves a vicious, for-profit system intact. The "public option" is a trap. We need real reform that finds immediate savings, controls costs, and accomplishes the moral imperative of true Universal Access. A Single Payer plan is the only real path to a Health Care System that is socially, ethically and fiscally responsible. And yet, our elected officials refuse to even discuss the possibility of a Single Payer plan!
If that doesn't make you mad, we recommend checking your pulse.

The "public option" is doomed.

First: we will still have a dysfunctional health care system designed around insurance companies. Second: it will be impossible to cover everyone without raising taxes. The Obama administration is already saying it is acceptable to leave out 15 million people. Which 15 million? Will you be one of them? Who gets to decide? Third: in a "post-option" environment you can bet that the health insurance industry will manipulate the rules so that the sickest, most expensive patients will gravitate toward the public plan, which will cause it to fail. When it does, the opponents of real reform will point to the "public option" and scream: "See! Single Payer won't work!"

www.madashelldoctors.com /