In the Monthly Review, By Dr. Paul Hochfeld
In a brash move, the White House is again demonstrating the exclusion of those who advocate for real health reform. At the end of August, in response to the heated Town Halls and the opposition to health reform, Physicians for a National Health Program and the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care sent letters to President Obama requesting a meeting. As the legislation that Congress was putting together was falling apart, we asked, again, to work with the president for real health reform. It would be a win for the people in America and a win for the president. Yet, he refused to meet with us.That is because the insurance, pharma, and even healthcare industry has him by the gonads. Our politicians can't get elected without them. The will of the people in this country has been left out of the discussion for healthcare reform in Washington D.C.
In early September, a group of physicians representing the Oregon Chapter of PNHP, known as the Mad As Hell Doctors, also wrote to the president. On September 8 they left Oregon in a Care-a-van, stopping in towns along the way to speak out for single payer and hear what people had to say. They asked for a meeting with the president upon their arrival in Washington. Again, the president refused. Thousands of people sent letters to the White House asking the president to meet with the Mad As Hell Docs, and yet, again, he refused. The only response they received was a request to stop sending so many emails.Don't bother the white house we have already made our alliances in back door meetings. We have helped the insurance industry figure out how to sell insurance to everyone. We are assisting big pharma to continue to sell Americans overpriced and often dangerous medications. We are so sick of your emails begging us for help. The white house complaining about emails being sent to complain about an urgent issue by the people who understand it so intimately is very telling. It also means there were huge numbers of people emailing the white house about it. Feeling guilty at the white house?
On September 30, the Mad As Hell Docs arrived in Washington, D.C. and held a rally in Lafayette Park in front of the White House. Doctors from across the country attended. They told the crowd why they believed, based on their years of practicing medicine and the stories they heard during their tour about the unimaginable suffering and deaths, that single payer is the solution. Their voices were not heard in the White House -- or were they?
Yesterday Dr. Paul Hochfeld one of the Mad As Hell Doctors managed to get into the white coat show President Obama had at the White House. I made it clear in my post yesterday I thought it was just for show. President Obama never had a meeting with this group even one time.
‘Mad Docs’ crash White House party
By Bennett Hall, Gazette-Times reporter:
President Barack Obama assembled more than 100 doctors outside the White House on Monday morning to enlist the medical profession's backing for his proposed health care reforms.
But at least one attending physician was there to express a dissenting opinion.
Dr. Paul Hochfeld crashed the Rose Garden party in hopes of bending the president's ear. The Corvallis emergency room physician has spent most of the past month on a national tour with an Oregon group called the Mad As Hell Doctors to promote single-payer medical coverage.
If he thought he might win a personal audience with the president, he was disappointed.
"It wasn't really a meeting," Hochfeld said in a phone interview afterward. "It was a photo op for the president to show he had the support of all those physicians."
A hoped-for meeting with President Obama to discuss single-payer health care never materialized. But on Monday, Hochfeld was one of 15 members of Physicians for a National Health Program trying to get into the Rose Garden event.
Mark Almberg, a spokesman for Physicians for a National Health Program, said his organization considers the president's health care plan dangerous because it gives the appearance of reform without addressing fundamental flaws in the system.
In other words the health care reform we are getting is for show also. It is designed to make us think we are getting health care reform when we are rearranging the structure a little and still allowing the insurance industry to use our health care dollars to make huge profits.
Hochfeld said he wasn't sure why he was the only one from the PNHP group who made it past the gate, unless it was plain stubborn persistence.
"I wasn't invited to the meeting. I was just following the white coats," Hochfeld said. "I didn't really expect to get in, but I wasn't going to go away until it was clear there wasn't a chance."
"We all have a role to play in this drama," Hochfeld said. "I feel strongly that my role in this drama is to continue to advocate for universal health care, and we're never going to have universal health care until we have something that looks like single-payer."
I am beginning to believe John Pilger is right. In America we clearly have an invisible government. The MSM has given a tiny sliver of coverage to those working for real healthcare reform. They work for the invisible government.
