Ralph Nader and Bill Moyers Weigh in on Health Care

As the debate over health care rages on, there are a couple of items that I wanted to point your attention to.

Consumer Advocate Ralph Nader has a new piece over at CommonDreams.org which discusses the efforts of six physicians from Oregon. They have embarked on a cross-country journey in a Winnebago to 30 cities to discuss health care, debate critics, and push for a single-payer health care system that would cover all Americans.

The tour is called the "Mad as Hell Doctors" and they plan on arriving in Washington D.C. on October 1st. They have requested a meeting with President Obama, but the White House has turned them down. From Nader's piece:

The White House turned them down flat, not even leaving the door open for reconsideration. Mr. Obama has met countless times with the CEOs of large corporations, whose greed and callousness causes so much of this crisis. Though he believes in single payer "if we started from scratch," he has yet to meet with any single payer delegation.

The White House has shown that it lacks smarts. The formless, waffling Obama health insurance proposal is being shattered by the Republican cluster of Limbaugh-driven lies and the Blue Dog renegades in the Democratic Party, who are busy cashing mounds of campaign checks from the so-called health business. By ignoring and excluding the majority-supported single payer approach, the White House stifles any kind of insurance reform worthy of the name.

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As with war, truth is the first casualty when it comes to the health care debate. The Democratically-controlled Congress, on its return after Labor Day, needs a wide-ranging personal, evidence-based series of public House and Senate hearings to again publicize the compelling story of avoidable suffering, fraud, waste, egregious profiteering and top executive self-enrichment - all subsidized by taxpayers.

Journalist and television host of The Bill Moyers Journal, Bill Moyers, was on Bill Maher's program the other evening discussing health care and other various issues. The three videos of his 30-min. long interview are below and are well worth your time:







Locally, Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-OH) is having another public meeting on health care this evening at 7PM at the 20th Century Theater in Oakley. As I have reported, both of his previous meetings have brought out protesters against health care reform, supporters of reform, and protesters who are in support of a single-payer system. It is expected that tonight will bring out many of the same sentiments. I will be there to get reactions from outside the meeting.

I will take this opportunity to mention two items that are somewhat related. First, while I will be shooting video at tonight's event, my editing software has been giving me all kinds of fits. I have ordered new software which should alleviate the problem, but it is not yet in my possession. Hopefully I will be able to post some of the material that I will shoot later this evening, but as I have learned, no guarantees. Secondly, I will be travelling beginning on Thursday and will be back in town on Monday. Blogging will be little to non-existent over this time period, but please take the time to still visit and catch up on many of the videos that I have posted that you may not have had the time to watch.