Dr. Pat Salomon was arrested last month for demanding that single payer be heard by the Senate Finance Committee.

“The Congress is just bought off,” Dr. Salomon told Single Payer Action last week. “They will not hear single payer. Why won’t they hear it? What’s so dangerous about hearing about single payer? Understanding the fiscal principles behind it, the clinical principles behind it, the moral principles behind it. They won’t even give it a hearing. Why, what are they so afraid of?”

Why not just pick up the phone and call or write your congressman?

“I’ve done that multiple times,” Dr. Salomon says. “I’m lucky enough to have a congressperson – Donna Edwards – who is a single payer advocate. But visiting my Senators – Barbara Mikulski and Benjamin Cardin – is a different idea. My senators just give me gobbledy gook.”

“They say that Medicare isn’t working. Well I now am I a Medicare recipient myself and I know its working. I know I have my full choice of doctors. I can decide and make decisions with input from my physicians when I need specialty care. And I go get it and that’s my privilege as a person over 65. Why shouldn’t everyone in this country have that privilege? It’s working well with a three percent overhead.”

So if single payer is such a good deal then why doesn’t Congress pass it?

“I wake up every day and ask myself that. How is it that they can’t see the logic of it, the morality of it, the fiscal soundness of it? How is it possible they’re missing it? And the only explanation I can come up with is that they’re simply bought off. They are bought off. They’re not open to this possibly. There’s too much money they’re getting in their election coffers from the pharmaceutical industry, from the owners of the large health care provider networks. It’s the only explanation I can come up with because it’s not making sense on a rational basis. These reforms are what we need.”