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.”

Over the past year, Dean has been with the corporate law firm of McKenna Long & Aldridge – representing biotech companies seeking to defeat regulation of biologic medicines.

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.”

Dr. Margaret Flowers of Physicians for a National Health Program told Dean that the American people want choice of doctors and treatment.

“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.”