Craven Democrats - Ralph Nader

If you listen to the Democrats, you would think that they were fighting on the side of the American people. And against the health insurance companies.

Or as Howard Dean put it last week:

"This is a vote about one thing: Are you for the insurance companies or are you for the American people?"

President Obama said that he and the Democrats had pushed back against the "special interests."


In fact, the bill that was passed by the House Sunday night was a result of a deal President Obama and the Democrats cut last year with the pharmaceutical industry.

And it was written with the help of former insurance industry lobbyists.

Or as the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne put it - the Democrats are fighting for a Republican health plan.

Last year, former CIGNA executive turned whistleblower Wendell Potter called the bill "a joke" and "an absolute gift to the insurance industry."

Dr. Margaret Flowers of Physicians for a National Health Program called the bill "a step backwards."

"This bill further enriches the industries that are the problem," Dr. Flowers said.

Chris Hedges put it this way:

"This bill is not about fiscal responsibility or the common good."

"The bill is about increasing corporate profit at taxpayer expense," Hedges wrote.

"It lavishes hundreds of billions in government subsidies on insurance and drug companies."

"The some 3,000 (corporate) lobbyists in Washington, whose dirty little hands are all over the bill, have once more betrayed the American people for money."

"The bill is another example of why change will never come from within the Democratic Party. The party is owned and managed by corporations."

"What is the point in supporting any of the Democrats?" Hedges asked. "How much more craven can they get?"

For the past year, all around the country, Single Payer Action has been confronting and exposing the craven corporate Democrats.

Just last week, Single Payer Action directly confronted Howard Dean on Capitol Hill about Dean's lobbying for his biotech industry clients - lobbying that resulted in a multi-billion dollar patent windfall tucked neatly into the health care bill that Congress just passed.

And Single Payer Action will continue to expose, confront, agitate and organize for single payer Medicare for all.

Why?

Because as Dr. Marcia Angell - former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine - puts it - single payer is the only health care reform that covers everyone and controls costs.

Because most of the health insurance coverage mandated by the Democratic bill does not come into effect until 2014 -  by which time 180,000 Americans will have died because they were unable to afford health insurance to cover treatment and diagnosis, according to Harvard Medical School researchers.

Because the main saving grace of the Democratic bill is that it is so inadequate and so delayed in implementation that the position supported by the majority of people, physicians and nurses - single payer full Medicare for all - will have abundant opportunities to build around the country.

And because the ever spiraling price hikes by the insurance industry are sure to spur the single payer movement to new popularity.

So, please, help us keep building this movement.

Donate now whatever you can to Single Payer Action.