A group of single payer advocates confronted Senator Chris Dodd and Obama health czar Nancy-Ann DeParle in a public meeting in Derby, Connecticut on Saturday.

When Dodd took the microphone at the beginning of the meeting, Russell Mokhiber of Single Payer Action rose to challenge Dodd and DeParle and asked why they have taken single payer national health care off the table.

“Does it have to do with your corporate connections?” Mokhiber asked Dodd and DeParle.

Jerry Kann of Single Payer Action also rose to challenge Dodd.

Kann wanted a public discussion of single payer at the beginning of the meeting.

Both Mokhiber and Kann were escorted out of the meeting by police officers. (See video clip here.)

After Mokhiber and Kann were escorted out, Dodd, DeParle, and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro took questions from the audience.

The question period was dominated by citizens who wanted a single payer health care system.

A group of five medical students from Yale Medical School implored Dodd to push for single payer. (See video clip here.)

“We and myriad other medical students, physicians, health care providers, small and large business leaders, and community members in Connecticut and across the United States want to see a single payer, publicly financed, privately delivered health system in this country that guarantees comprehensive and quality health care to all Americans,” said Whitney Sheen, a medical student at Yale School of Medicine and President of the Health Policy Action Team at the school.

“Single payer is the most cost-effective and quality driven plan that exists. It is also the only plan that would allow all Americans true choice of provider and hospital, which would drive positive competition and innovation in health care delivery more than any other plan,” said Sheen. “Finally, it is the plan with the largest amount of physician and health care provider support. This is the plan that the experts in medicine and health care, the doctors and nurses on the frontlines of health care delivery, want and are demanding. It must be on the table in this reform.”

“Obama, Dodd, DeLauro and the corporate Democrats have sided with the insurance industry and taken single payer off the table,” Mokhiber said. “So, we are here today to ask them to reverse course, side with the majority of Americans, and put single payer back on the table.”