[GPSCC-chat] Fwd: Oblivious

[jgshurt69 at aol.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: Ralph Nader <action at singlepayeraction.org>
To: jgshurt69 at aol.com
Sent: Mon, Mar 15, 2010 7:17 am
Subject: Oblivious


Last May, Single Payer Action - along with a group of doctors and nurses - confronted Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana) at a public hearing of the insurance industry-controlled Senate Finance Committee.

Baucus had scheduled 42 people to testify over three days of hearings.

Not one favored single payer.

Single Payer Action demanded - allow one person to testify on behalf of single payer.

Baucus refused.

Instead, Baucus ordered the arrest of 13 doctors, nurses, and other single payer activists.

Ever since, with your generous help, Single Payer Action has been confronting members of Congress - agitating, and pressuring the system at all levels to do the right thing.

To adopt single payer national health insurance.

What Dr. Marcia Angell - former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine - calls the only health care system that will both control costs and cover everyone.

Fast forward ten months.

And what do we find?

The House Democrats - and most shamelessly 87 "progressive Democrats" who are co-sponsors of the single payer legislation in the House - are now lining up behind the pro-insurance industry Baucus-backed Senate bill.

A Senate bill those "progressive Democrats" vowed never to support.

A bill that - as Dr. Angell told Bill Moyers last week - cements the private insurance in place as "the lynchpin of health care reform."

A prescription for disaster - more lives lost, more unaffordable bills, more bad outcomes.

Why are Congress and the President supporting a bill that former CIGNA executive Wendell Potter called "an absolute joke" and "an absolute gift to the insurance industry"?

One reason - Congress and the President are oblivious to the suffering that surrounds them.

Well paid and well insured members of Congress and the President live and work in a bubble - with corporate executives and lobbyists.

Oblivious to the other Washington - afflicted by poverty, homelessness, AIDS, dilapidated buildings, and intolerable suffering.

Oblivious to the scores who die every year in our nation's capital from lack of health care.

Several years ago, I asked photographer Kike Arnal to come to Washington.

To photograph the other Washington that Congress and the President rarely see.

And to juxtapose those photos with the corporate bubble in which members of Congress and the President live, work and play.

Kike Arnal arranged those 92 photos in a hardcover book - just published - titled In the Shadow of Power.

You might have seen Kike Arnal recently on C-Span with Brian Lamb.

Or on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman.

I'd like to get this beautiful and haunting book into your hands.

To share with your family and friends.

Kike Arnal's photos are black and white - stunning and poignant.

I wrote the introduction to the book.

If you donate $100 or more now to Single Payer Action, I'll sign a copy of In the Shadow of Power.

And I'll sign a copy of my book - In Pursuit of Justice.

And send them both to you.

So please donate now.

Whatever you can afford. 

If you donate $100 or more, we'll ship to you In the Shadow of Power and In Pursuit of Justice - both signed by yours truly.

Thank you for your ongoing support.

The rotting edifice of Washington-protected corporatism will crumble of its own greed.

Together we will replace it.

Onward to single payer.
 

Ralph Nader


The American people are suffering. Pressure is building. Official Washington cannot remain oblivious forever. There will be a decisive awakening. We will get full Medicare for all. Harvard Medical School researchers concluded last year that about 120 Americans die every day because they cannot afford health insurance. We need to drive that number down to zero. 

That's why Single Payer Action continues to agitate, organize, and pressure the system at all levels. 
This is only Round 1. 
We're preparing for Round 2.

Keep your heads up. Help us move forward. Step by step. 
And full Medicare for all will become a reality.           
Donate now whatever you can to Single Payer Action. 

This two book offer is open until midnight March 31, 2010.




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