Berkeley Springs, Morgan County, West Virginia, to be exact.
Where our member of Congress — Shelley Moore Capito (R) — comes to see us maybe twice a year.
Will citizens be allowed to ask her some questions?
Depends on which citizens you are talking about.
And it depends on what questions you might want to ask.
If you want to ask her about the arts and future earmarks to the Ice House — sure, no problem.
But yesterday, we wanted to ask her about campaign cash.
Specifically, campaign cash she has taken from the insurance industry.
Over $330,000 over the course of her career.
And is that why she opposes a single payer national health insurance reform?
The only reform — according to Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine — that would cover everyone and control costs.
Or the over $300,000 she has taken from the mining industry.
Is that why she supports moutaintop removal — a mining practice that is destroying the state’s most valuable resource?
Or the more than $400,000 she has taken from Wall Street interests.
Is that why she opposes new financial regulatory reform?
Or her ongoing support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And when you look up Capito’s donors from Morgan County — they are dominated by the more than $20,000 from Ted and Patti Morgan — Ted being the CEO of STS International — Morgan County’s premiere defense contractor — and Patti being his wife.
So, yes, these were informed questions.
Based on public documents.
But they were reasonable questions.
That your average corporate controlled politician could swat away with the flick of a dismissive sound bite.
But not Capito.
Capito doesn’t want to confront the corrupt reality that she is mired in.
Instead, she calls the police to cordon off the questioners.
This happened last August when she came to Berkeley Springs for a ribbon cutting ceremony.
She said she wanted to hear concerns from citizens — but only certain citizens and certain concerns.
Yesterday, Capito was in town to hand over a U.S. government check for $200,000 to the Morgan Arts Council.
The event took place at the Ice House.
About 30 citizens attended the event.
Two of us – Russell Mokhiber of Single Payer Action and Berkeley Springs High School student Emily Yarrington – stood stage left as Jeanne Mozier and Bob Marggraf gave introductory remarks.
And Mozier and Marggraf accepted the ceremonial check from Capito.
During the event, we were surrounded by two state police officers and two police officers from the Town of Bath.
Two citizens.
Four police officers.
After the event, as we approached Capito, the police surrounded her.
Capito ignored a question about her opposition to national health insurance.
Yarrington had met Capito at a Girls State event in Wheeling last week.
She did get a question in.
Did Capito think that there were any problems with the current health care system in America?
Yes, Capito said.
The new health care law would force employers to switch insurance.
Nothing about tens of thousands dying from lack of health care.
Nothing about people going bankrupt because they can’t afford health insurance.
If you wanted to play ball with Capito yesterday, you got the check, felt good and had a good time.
If you wanted to confront the ugly reality Capito represents, you were surrounded by police, made to feel like an intruder, and left thinking that silence is golden.
Ralph Nader wants movement on single payer national health insurance.
And now.
Nader said that weeks ago, Congressmen John Conyers (D-Michigan) and Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) personally assured him that they would bring together the more than 80 professed House supporters of single payer and jump start the movement for HR 676 — the single payer bill in the House.
But so far, nothing.
Zippo.
Nada.
So, last week, a clearly irritated Nader wrote a letter to Conyers and Kucinich.
“In individual telephone conversations with each of you, I was given to understand that you responded clearly and affirmatively to my request that you relaunch the single payer movement in Congress at a news conference that you would sponsor with other House supporters of HR 676 and leading citizen group advocates of full Medicare for all with free choice of doctor and hospital—a much more efficient and humane system,” Nader wrote.
“These assurances were made several weeks ago, shortly after the vote to fix a broken system with a broken piece of legislation was sent to the White House.”
“You may recall I took note of the utter dismay of many people and groups who supported HR 676 only to be abandoned by all 80+ supporters. If you want to rescue withdrawal and political cynicism, you need to restart what you believe in.”
“Are you going to announce this news conference, since both of you assured me that you would be in touch with one another about so doing?” Nader asked.
Here’s a simple rule for single payer advocates – don’t trust the Democrats.
Even those that say they support single payer, when push comes to shove, they won’t.
They’ll put the needs of the Democratic Party ahead of the needs of the American people.
Take the case of Robert Kuttner.
Kuttner is a Democratic Party liberal.
He says he supports single payer.
He agrees that the Obama health care bill was a bad bill.
Written by the health and pharmaceutical industries.
To protect their profits.
And yet, when push came to shove, Kuttner folded.
And stood with Obama.
It happened on the Bill Moyers Show in December 2009 with Matt Taibbi.
When pressed by Moyers whether progressives should support or oppose Obama’s bill, Taibbi said he would oppose it because it doesn’t control costs or address the bloated bureaucracy and because “it’s a big giveaway” to the insurance industry.
Kuttner on the other hand said he would hold his nose and vote for it because if the bill went down, it would make it easier for the Republicans to take control of the Congress in 2010.
Kuttner appeared at Public Citizen last week to promote his new book A Presidency in Peril: The Inside Story of Obama’s Promise, Wall Street’s Power, and the Struggle to Control our Economic Future.
We asked him about his decision to abandon the single payer movement – which stood strongly against the health insurance industry and Obama’s bill.
“Moyers asked – if you were in the Congress, would you vote for it or against it,” Kuttner recalled. “Taibbi said against it. I said for it. Moyers looked stunned, just as you looked stunned. And he asked why. And I said – at this point in time, it would be better for the Democrats to win than to lose. But I agree with you that it would have been still better to go for single payer.”
“One of the things that is wrong with the Democratic Party is that they are too much in the pockets of the insurance industry and the banking industry. And it’s up to all of us to change that.”
Kuttner response raises an interesting question.
Do we continue to stand with the corporate parties – as Kuttner would have us do – and try to make them better?
“I avoid the heartbreaking stories of human suffering because they do not work.”
There is so much human suffering.
More than 45,000 Americans who die every year from lack of health care.
And we know that single payer will drive that number down to zero.
And yet here comes a single payer advocate who tells us that he avoids telling these stories of human suffering “because they do not work.”
Why?
“Unlike most progressive individuals, I read the conservative manifesto Atlas Shrugged at the age of 14,” says Lex Tinker-Sackett author of the newly published Single Payer Solution: America’s Health Care Cure (Ixaco Press, 2010). “I was raised as an objectivist and fully understand the rhetoric and goals of the conservatives. That is why I purposely left out the heart rending stories of victims of private health insurance and our for profit health care system. They simply do not work.”
“My book deconstructs the economic foundations of the conservative argument for profiting on human suffering,” Tinker-Sackett says. “I attack the assumption of a free market in health care and expose the graft and corruption that actually limit competition. Conservatives expect justice in the free-market, if not elsewhere. This strong tendency forces them to actively listen to the arguments in my book.”
Tinker-Sackett’s father was an insurance salesman and underwriter.
In 1969, his father came up with a plan that would fix the dysfunctional health insurance system in America.
His plan – a private company that would pay 100 percent of all claims.
Dad’s point – get everyone into one program so as to spread the risk and minimize premiums.
“As an avowed Libertarian and Ayn Rand devotee, my father believed that the free market could solve the problem, and he recognized that the only business structure that could maintain such a goal was a monopoly,” Lex Tinker-Sackett writes. “This made insurance sense to an insurance expert – the largest possible pool of clients would create the minimum premium and 100 percent payment of claims would simplify administration. The fact that such a business would rightly crush all competition was only logical. That private monopolies are illegal in the United States was, to him, a problem with our government.”
“Dad recognized the problems with health insurance back in 1969, before I was born,” Lex Tinker-Sackett writes. “His single payer proposal left out the idea that a non-profit federal government should be the company.”
Lex lives in western Wisconsin with his wife and five children.
He worked in a health insurance claim processing center and in health insurance sales.
He currently owns a small business and is a computer systems analyst.
Tinker-Sackett brings a businessman’s sensibility to the single payer movement.
And of all the books about single payer – and there are many – this slim volume stands out.
It’s only 66 pages.
(With about 40 pages of appendices – most of it the text of HR 676 – the single payer bill in the House.)
But in this case, less is more.
We will win single payer in the United States.
But to win it, we must take the campaign into America’s heartland.
And if you donate $100 or more, we’ll send you a copy of In the Shadow of Power -this poignant and haunting collection of photographs of the other Washington, D.C. – with an introduction by Ralph Nader.
And we’ll send you a copy of In Pursuit of Justice – the classic collection of columns by Ralph Nader.
If you listen to the Democrats, you would think that they were fighting on the side of the American people.
And against the health insurance companies.
Or as Howard Dean put it last week:
“This is a vote about one thing: Are you for the insurance companies or are you for the American people?”
President Obama said that he and the Democrats had pushed back against the “special interests.”
In fact, the bill that was passed by the House Sunday night was a result of a deal President Obama and the Democrats cut last year with the pharmaceutical industry.
And it was written with the help of former insurance industry lobbyists.
Or as the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne put it – the Democrats are fighting for a Republican health plan.
Last year, former CIGNA executive turned whistleblower Wendell Potter called the bill “a joke” and “an absolute gift to the insurance industry.”
Dr. Margaret Flowers of Physicians for a National Health Program called the bill “a step backwards.”
“This bill further enriches the industries that are the problem,” Dr. Flowers said.
Chris Hedges put it this way:
“This bill is not about fiscal responsibility or the common good.”
“The bill is about increasing corporate profit at taxpayer expense,” Hedges wrote.
“It lavishes hundreds of billions in government subsidies on insurance and drug companies.”
“The some 3,000 (corporate) lobbyists in Washington, whose dirty little hands are all over the bill, have once more betrayed the American people for money.”
“The bill is another example of why change will never come from within the Democratic Party. The party is owned and managed by corporations.”
“What is the point in supporting any of the Democrats?” Hedges asked. “How much more craven can they get?”
For the past year, all around the country, Single Payer Action has been confronting and exposing the craven corporate Democrats.
Just last week, Single Payer Action directly confronted Howard Dean on Capitol Hill about Dean’s lobbying for his biotech industry clients – lobbying that resulted in a multi-billion dollar patent windfall tucked neatly into the health care bill that Congress just passed.
And Single Payer Action will continue to expose, confront, agitate and organize for single payer Medicare for all.
Why?
Because as Dr. Marcia Angell – former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine - puts it – single payer is the only health care reform that covers everyone and controls costs.
Because most of the health insurance coverage mandated by the Democratic bill does not come into effect until 2014 – by which time 180,000 Americans will have died because they were unable to afford health insurance to cover treatment and diagnosis, according to Harvard Medical School researchers.
Because the main saving grace of the Democratic bill is that it is so inadequate and so delayed in implementation that the position supported by the majority of people, physicians and nurses – single payer full Medicare for all – will have abundant opportunities to build around the country.
And because the ever spiraling price hikes by the insurance industry are sure to spur the single payer movement to new popularity.
So, please, help us keep building this movement.
Donate now whatever you can to Single Payer Action.
And if you donate $100 or more now, I’ll sign a copy of Venezuelan photographer Kike Arnal’s just published hard cover photo book - In the Shadow of Power – with an introduction by yours truly.
(In the Shadow of Power is a stunning, poignant and haunting photo book that documents the other Washington – with high rates of infant mortality, teenage pregnancy and AIDS infection – and where 16 percent of the children live in extreme poverty.)
I’ll also sign a copy of my own book of collected writings – In Pursuit of Justice.
That’s where hostages have positive feelings towards their captors – feelings that appear irrational in light of the danger and risk of the captivity.
Now we have a derivation –
Hartford Syndrome.
That’s where Americans have positive feelings toward their insurance industry captors – feelings that appear irrational in light of the danger and risk of the captivity.
(Hartford, Connecticut is one of the poorest cities in the country – despite being home to some of the wealthiest insurance corporations in the world – corporations that dominate its economic and political landscape.)
Wendell Potter has come down with a bad case Hartford Syndrome (HS).
Potter is the former insurance industry executive who for more than 15 years worked for CIGNA – many of those years in Hartford.
Last year, he quit, and became a whistleblower.
In September 2009, Potter said that the Senate health care plan was an “absolute gift” to the industry.
“It’s just an absolute joke,” said Potter. “It is an absolute gift to the industry. And if that is what we see in the legislation, (America’s Health Insurance Plans chief) Karen Ignagni will surely get a huge bonus.”
Potter told reporters at the time that the proposal would not provide affordable coverage, it gives the industry too much latitude to charge higher premiums based on age and geographic location, fails to mandate employer coverage, and pushes consumers into plans with limited benefits.
Now, just a few short months later, Hartford Syndrome has kicked in.
And Potter is having positive feelings for the insurance industry that held him hostage for all those years.
Potter is now appearing with Nancy Pelosi and the other corporate Democrats captured by the insurance industry – supporting basically the same bill that Potter called “an absolute joke” and a “gift to the insurance industry” just a few short months ago.
Moyers told Angell – this is all about politics now – it’s not about pure health care reform.
“Well, I think you really do have to separate the policy analysis from the political analysis and I’m looking at it as policy,” Angell said. “And it fails as policy. Moreover, a lot of people say, ‘Let’s hold our nose and pass it, because it’s a step in the right direction.’ And I say it’s a step in the wrong direction.”
Angell’s take – single payer is the only reform that both controls costs and covers everyone.
Apparently, Potter took offense.
“Well, that sounds terrific,” Potter wrote on a blog this week. “It’s a wonderful sound bite, and it can actually be accomplished in a classroom at Harvard. It cannot be done in the real world we live in, certainly not the political world that is Washington. To suggest otherwise is being naive at best and disingenuous at worst.”
Potter now wants Congress to pass this “absolute joke” and “gift to the insurance industry.”
Who’s being disingenuous, Wendell?
Single payer is possible.
But we can’t get it done with leaders afflicted with Hartford Syndrome.
First, Potter and Pelosi have to stop being in denial.
And admit that they have HS.
Then they have to directly confront their captors.
Shake them off.
Stand with the American people.
And push for single payer national health insurance.
If Potter and Pelosi and others afflicted with HS had stood from the beginning with the majority of the American people, with Dr. Angell and the thousands of doctor members of Physicians for a National Health Program, then single payer would have had a chance.
But they didn’t.
And it didn’t.
Instead, they continue to make excuses for their captors.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Just yesterday, for example, Stephen Lynch (D-Massachusetts) announced that he was going to vote against the insurance industry bailout – also known as Obamacare.
“We’ve paid the ransom, but at the end of the day the insurance companies are still holding the hostages,’’ Lynch told the Boston Globe. “This is a very good bill for insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies. It might be good for Nebraska, I don’t know. Or Florida residents. But it’s not good for the average American, and it’s not good for my district. Or for Massachusetts.’’
“There’s a difference between compromise and surrender, right?” Lynch said. “And this is a complete surrender of all the things that people thought were important to health care reform.’’
Stop being naive Wendell.
There is a difference between compromise and complete surrender.
In the wake of the Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) flip-flop and flameout this morning, single payer activists were in no mood for lecturing from Howard Dean and John Conyers (D-Michigan).
At a gathering on Capitol Hill earlier today, Dean had just started in on his talk – titled “Why This is the Moment for Reform?” – when single payer activists began criticizing him for supporting Obama’s health care legislation.
Dean wrote in December that the Senate bill would do “more harm than good” and that if he were a Senator, he would vote against it.
Single Payer Action’s Russell Mokhiber accused Dean of being a “shill for the biotech industry.”
Mokhiber also ripped Conyers for failing to take a stronger stance for single payer.
Kevin Zeese of ProspertyAgenda.us was critical of Dean for flipping in favor of the Senate bill.
“Americans are going to be forced to buy this corrupt, flawed product,” Zeese said. “The bill will send hundreds of billions of dollars to the health insurance industry. How much of that is going to be kicked back to members of Congress in campaign donations? How many tens of millions of dollars a year are members of Congress going to get from these corrupt insurance executives?”
“How can we expect ever to see real reform if this bill passes? This bill is a disaster. And I’m sad to see you are on the wrong side of it,” Zeese told Dean. “I hope you will rethink your position and come back out the other way. There is no way with this bill passing that we are going to see good health care in the United States. We are going to see insurance industry domination of Congress, consumers, doctors and nurses.”
“Why should the working poor be forced to spend eight percent of their income to fund CEO salaries at an average of $11 million year? The working poor can’t even make ends meet. They can’t even put food on the table. Ninety percent of African American kids in this country are going to be on foods stamps at some point in their life. Now they are being forced to buy corrupt corporate products?”
“This is a charade. And it’s been a charade from the outset. At President Obama’s first town hall meeting – the first speaker was from an insurance company. And the last speaker was from the insurance company.”
“If this is a disaster for the Democrats, it’s Obama’s making. And it’s sad to see a former head of the Democratic Party going along with that.”
Dean said that he has a fundamental disagreement with single payer advocates.
“Americans want choice,” Dean said. “We are an essentially libertarian country. Libertarians aren’t only on the right with tea bags hanging from their hats. They are also on the left. I just had lunch with Alan Grayson (D-Florida). He also is a libertarian. Nobody in America likes the government telling them what to do. I believe that if you give them real choices and you make those choices fair, that they will vote with their feet and reform the system themselves.”
“The American people want a choice of health care provider and choice of treatment,” Flowers said. “This bill does neither. Let people choose their doctor and treatment. Under private insurance, the private insurers make the decision. This bill would entrench that system of private insurance. It’s going to continue to leave people out – with the resulting suffering, bankruptcy, foreclosure and preventable death. And that’s not acceptable.”
“We were excluded from this conversation,” Dr. Flowers said. “This was not a conversation based on data or evidence. It was based on the fact that the industry had their hand in this throughout this legislation and it was written in their favor.”
Last May, Single Payer Action – along with a group of doctors and nurses – confronted Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana) at a public hearing of the insurance industry-controlled Senate Finance Committee.
Baucus had scheduled 42 people to testify over three days of hearings.
Not one favored single payer.
Single Payer Action demanded – allow one person to testify on behalf of single payer.
Baucus refused.
Instead, Baucus ordered the arrest of 13 doctors, nurses, and other single payer activists.
Ever since, with your generous help, Single Payer Action has been confronting members of Congress – agitating, and pressuring the system at all levels to do the right thing.
To adopt single payer national health insurance.
What Dr. Marcia Angell – former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine – calls the only health care system that will both control costs and cover everyone.
Fast forward ten months.
And what do we find?
The House Democrats – and most shamelessly 87 “progressive Democrats” who are co-sponsors of the single payer legislation in the House – are now lining up behind the pro-insurance industry Baucus-backed Senate bill.
A Senate bill those “progressive Democrats” vowed never to support.
A bill that – as Dr. Angell told Bill Moyers last week – cements the private insurance in place as “the lynchpin of health care reform.”
A prescription for disaster – more lives lost, more unaffordable bills, more bad outcomes.
Why are Congress and the President supporting a bill that former CIGNA executive Wendell Potter called “an absolute joke” and “an absolute gift to the insurance industry”?
One reason – Congress and the President are oblivious to the suffering that surrounds them.
Well paid and well insured members of Congress and the President live and work in a bubble – with corporate executives and lobbyists.
Oblivious to the other Washington – afflicted by poverty, homelessness, AIDS, dilapidated buildings, and intolerable suffering.
Oblivious to the scores who die every year in our nation’s capital from lack of health care.
Several years ago, I asked photographer Kike Arnal to come to Washington.
To photograph the other Washington that Congress and the President rarely see.
And to juxtapose those photos with the corporate bubble in which members of Congress and the President live, work and play.
Kike Arnal arranged those 92 photos in a hardcover book – just published – titled In the Shadow of Power.
You might have seen Kike Arnal recently on C-Span with Brian Lamb.
Or on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman.
I’d like to get this beautiful and haunting book into your hands.
To share with your family and friends.
Kike Arnal’s photos are black and white – stunning and poignant.
And I’ll sign a copy of my book – In Pursuit of Justice.
And send them both to you.
So please donate now.
Whatever you can afford.
If you donate $100 or more, we’ll ship to you In the Shadow of Power and In Pursuit of Justice - both signed by yours truly.
Thank you for your ongoing support.
The rotting edifice of Washington-protected corporatism will crumble of its own greed.
Together we will replace it.
Onward to single payer.
Ralph Nader
The American people are suffering. Pressure is building. Official Washington cannot remain oblivious forever. There will be a decisive awakening. We will get full Medicare for all. Harvard Medical School researchers concluded last year that about 120 Americans die every day because they cannot afford health insurance. We need to drive that number down to zero.
That’s why Single Payer Action continues to agitate, organize, and pressure the system at all levels.
This is only Round 1.
We’re preparing for Round 2.
Keep your heads up. Help us move forward. Step by step.
