Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana) has agreed to ask prosecutors to dismiss “disruption of Congress” charges against thirteen single payer advocates.

Baucus met for 45 minutes today with single payer advocates after facing intense negative public reaction to his decision to bar those advocates from testifying last month at three days of health care reform hearings before the Senate Finance Committee which he chairs.

Forty-one people testified at those hearings – not one of which was an advocate for a single payer health care system.

After the meeting, the advocates, along with Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), held a press conference.

Dr. David Himmelstein of Harvard Medical School and Rose Ann DeMoro of the California Nurses Association both said that Baucus agreed use his office to seek dismissal of the criminal charges against the Baucus 13.

The thirteen stood up before the start of the hearings on May 5 and May 12 and asked that single payer advocates be allowed to testify.

The Baucus 13 were arrested and charged with disruption of Congress.

Their next court date is June 22 before Judge Harold L. Cushenberry.

At the press conference, the single payer advocates were not optimistic that their meeting moved Baucus to put single payer back on the table.

Himmelstein said that other than Baucus’ commitment to seek dismissal of the charges against the Baucus 13, there was “not very much in the way of concrete movement.”

Himmelstein said Baucus did indicate that it was “probably a mistake not to give a full hearing to single payer in the past.”

But Baucus gave no indication that he intended to “open up hearings on single payer in the future.”

“We will therefore need to continue to press him, not on ideological grounds, but on the grounds that it is what our patients desperately need,” Himmelstein said.

“Senator Baucus can’t continue to entrust our health care system to the private health insurers,” Himmelstein said. “Some of the largest investors in tobacco stock are insurance firms. That illustrates the immorality of the insurance industry.”

(See video clip of Dr. Himmelstein remarks here.)

Dr. Marcia Angell, editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, said the “elephant in the living room is costs.”

“If costs were no object, we could give everyone all the health care they need,” Angell said.

“Everything now being considered in Congress would – yes – expand coverage slightly. But by pouring more money into an already dysfunctional system, we simply will not have an affordable or sustainable health care system. The only way to do that is through single payer health care. It’s not the best option. It’s the only option. You sometimes hear that a single payer system is unrealistic. But in fact what is unrealistic is everything else. This is the only way to provide universal health care at a cost we can afford and to stop the rapid inflation of costs.”

(See video clip of Dr. Angell’s remarks here.)

Rose Ann DeMoro, head of the California Nurses Association, said there was “a conspiracy of silence in Congress” on single payer.

“The President wants a victory,” DeMoro said. “Well, there is not going to be a victory when it comes to nurses and physicians in an insurance-based scheme. Everything we have seen from the administration keeps the insurance industry in the game. Is it politically viable to let people die and suffer from a lack of political will? I’m sympathetic with Baucus. He’s the front person who is taking the heat for the Congress, which refuses to act.”

DeMoro called single payer “the most conservative financial position.”

“The government will fund, not control, the health insurance system,” DeMoro said. “There is no argument here. There is a lack of political will and a lack of courage.”

(See video clip of DeMoro remarks here.)

Himmelstein, DeMoro and Angell all believe that only single payer will fix the current broken health care system.

But Senator Sanders appears to be willing to vote with his Senate colleagues for something less than single payer.

When asked by a reporter whether Senate Democrats would lose Sanders’ vote if they went for a public option and not single payer, Senator Sanders said it was too early to say.

Sanders was challenged by Single Payer Action’s Russell Mokhiber on whether President Obama was responsible for the failure of single payer to move in the Congress.

“President Obama, in 2003, when he was a state Senator in Illinois, said he supported single payer and all we would have to do is take the White House, the House and the Senate,” Mokhiber said to Sanders. “Now, he has taken the White House, the House and the Senate. And now he’s opposed to single payer. Doesn’t President Obama bear some responsibility here?”

“And the answer is – give the President a ring,” Sanders said.

But don’t you believe President Obama bears some responsibility for not taking a leadership role for single payer?

“I’m not going to – you can call up the President and get his views,” Sanders said.

(See video clip of Sanders response here.)