Re: Media Blackout on Single-Payer Healthcare?
...The genuine reform proposals supported by the nation's caregivers, and much of the American people, may not have a place at the table in the debate Baucus is conducting, but at least today, thanks to criticism from across Montana and around the country, they will have a place in Baucus' office.
He has refused to debate or even allow discussion of the idea of single-payer or guaranteed healthcare. Under this model, physicians and hospitals are private, and everyone is covered by a national, non-profit health fund; it's as if Medicare were improved and made universal. In Taiwan, Canada and most of Europe, single-payer healthcare is outperforming the American system at about half the cost.
Instead, Baucus, the No. 3 recipient in Congress of fundraising donations from health insurance corporations, supports proposals to help these insurers sell more policies to patients like me and you and reap more profits out of our healthcare system. In his role as chair of the Senate finance committee, he has opted to limit debate to just these proposals — the ones his insurance donors approve of....
Baucus is listening but not hearing — not yet...
...In Helena, angry voters delivered to Baucus the same message that the caregivers had: "A majority want single-payer healthcare." "The word ‘insurance' does not equal health care," Janelle Kuechle from Polson argues at a Baucus forum last week. "If I have to pay a $900 premium to have health insurance with a $10,000 deductible, that is not health care." When a Baucus staffer dismissed these concerns, only 10 of the 275 people in the audience indicated that they like the insurance products they've been forced to buy, which jibes with national polling that a majority of the American people want real change....
http://www.mtstandard.com/articles/2...jdjhhhfhha.txt 
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