An Interview with an Emergency Room Doctor and the "Inalienable
Right" to Health Care vs the Heath Insurance Industry Tyranny


Paul Hochfeld, MD who is an emergency room doctor in Corvallis
OR spoke with me on January 11th this year in an interview about
the need for single payer, as it provides quality health care for all
at less expense and provides for "someone" to run such a system, and
we now have no system, but a complete mess insuring a shortage
of primary care doctors. Dr Hochfeld has made a documetary on
the health care crisis in this country and what should be the solution
with single payer. I have to add with some person or persons in
charge of such a system in the federal government, we could have
accountability which is now completely and absolutely lacking.

Now the Wall Street Journal, the voice of big business in this country
no less says we have a shortage of surgeons so severe that people
are now getting surgeons who are temporaries going from one town
to another. The American College of Surgeons condemns this practice
The media mouthpiece for big business says this shortage of surgeons
has been going for 25 years and is most pronounced in rural area. This
has literally then become a matter of life or death, and especially in
these rural areas.

Most doctors, most health economist, and most of the American people
back single payer, Dr Hochfeld has said in an article which came out
December 30th last year in the Corporate Crime Reporter.

Why hasn't this country adopted single payer which would, as it
should, establish health care for all as an "inalienable right" as Thomas
Jefferson would so aptly put it?

Start with what ought to be clearly and absolutely obvious to everybody.
The health insurance and pharmaceutical insurance industries having it
so good riding a gravy train and making piles of money, and thus aren't
the least bit interested in single payer, which is so predictable. They
just want to keep their gravy train going.

It's greed trumping need as I would hasten to add.

AARP is right in there with the health insurance and pharmaceutical
industries fighting single payer, while putting on act of being a good
guy as Dr Hochfeld says. They makes a pile of money from the profit
side of the organization and talk as if their non profit and profit side
are completely separate, but AARP is in this fight, not for anybody's
but for the money.

Furthermore, AARP's influence is pervasive as successful as it at passing
itself off as the good guys as Dr Hochfeld points out. Dr Hochfeld also said
that AARP has even threatened legislators in Oregon who vote for single
payer that AARP will make sure they're defeated. This organization, Dr
Hochfeld says, has been spending piles of money lobbying to stop single
payer for years. Dr Hochfeld tells how AARP seeks to demonize single
payer with the "socialized medicine" label.

This is the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries' line as well
along with all the talk about people losing their choices, which health
care as the health insurance now runs it, means no choice. The health
decides who can see which health care provider, what health care that
person can get, how much, the amount to pay, the amount of coverage
by the health insurance industry, and this includes pharmacies to go to
get prescriptions, which ones are allowed, which amount of coverage,
the payment, and right on through-- no choice. With Single payer, all
the people any damn health care provider they want to see, when they
want to see that provider as long as that provider is available and it's
for needed health care, and nobody goes without health care. Add to
that a good estimate is that it would save a third of trillion dollars. But
that would take money away from the bean counting, parasitic health
insurance industry and its welfare program for itself.

AARP along with the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries want
the kind of "change" they can believe in, change in their pockets which they
line with our money. They just want to have funds.

Having joined this outfit just as I retired years ago when I thought it was
an advocate for retired people, I just continued my membership, but the
things AARP says in its magazine show what it's all about, and that's good
to know to insure I know how phony it is and how this outfit puts its greed first.
Then it's "divided we fail" if the hierarchy in AARP doesn't get what it wants.
As a member of AARP, I happen to know first hand how this organization,
these "good guys" pressed for a "compromise" resulting in cuts in Medicare
coverage of prescriptions, and after that happened AARP was right there
to tap into this new involuntary market to make lots of money. This shows
how much of an axe those running AARP have to grind to make sure single
payer doesn't pass. It would substantially, if not overwhelmingly cut down on
their revenue. Thus we have AARP alligned with those who put greed over
need. AARP has been able to play this role of being an advocate by the US
mainstream media playing right along and passing this off as the gospel truth.

Thomas Jefferson, for all his faults put it so well when he said, "Greed degrades."

Meanwhile the country's mainstream media also fails to or virtually fails to cover
Dr Hochfeld and the majority of doctors favoring single payer. The same is true
of other health care providers who favor single payer. The same media if it does
cover single payer, always comes up with BS put down that could easily be
knocked down by Dr Hochfeld or many other health care providers, but lack
of coverage insures that never happens-- more on this and reasons for same
later.

As someone who has experienced this country's health care first hand, I have
personally had to wait at least an hour and a half to see a doctor in an emergency
facility in metropolitan Minneapolis/St Paul. That's long enough that I or anyone
else could easily have died. It's worse in other major metropolitan areas, and the
Nation even had an article showing that at times people would be moved from
one emergency room to another due to the shortage of doctors. Do believe some
have surely died as result of this health care mess. Others have done without care
they need due to the shortage of primary care doctors and often to not having any
health insurance coverage at all. This was years ago, and things are definitely worse
now.

This country thus has endured as Jefferson would say, "a long train of abuses"
It has health care of, by, and for the health insurance industry with the drug industry
and AARP getting a piece of the action and big time money at our expense. The
health insurance industry, though, is the primary ruler here, with other two simply
being along for the ride. But tyranny it surely is, for none of these institutions with
all their power or recognizes they should "derive their just powers from the consent
of the governed." With that in mind, as Jefferson said "governments (institutions
in this case) are instituted to secure "the inalienable rights" of "life, liberty and
pursuit of happiness." With Jefferson also referring at one point to health as being
"essential" for happiness, thus it should be an inalienable right, and when "governments
(again in this institutions) "become destructive" of such rights, then the people have
"a right to alter or abolish" them, and replace them with "new governments" (in this
case a new institution, single payer) providing proper "safeguards" for the people.
This single payer would definitely do, providing health care "of, by, and for the
people" as Abraham Lincoln would say, and thus end the current health insurance
industry tyranny over the people's health care with that industry's arbitrary authority
and abuse of such power in determining who gets to see which health care provider,
get what health care, what coverage, charging as it so chooses with no accountability
nor consideration of those it rules over and consideration of "deriving its just powers
from the consent of the governed," treating these "subscibers" as lowly subjects, making
victims of them victims of this same tyranny. It' time to stop this nonsense of letting the
health insurance industry while the people pay the price.

The US health insurance industry controls health care and maintains it tyranny by
divide and rule strategy of playing off heath care providers against patients. When
talking to health care providers, the industry blames the patient for abusing the "system"
which really isn't a system, by using when they don't need it, thus causing high costs.
When dealing with patients, the industry will blame the health care providers for charging
too much. AARP takes the line that the health care providers are at fault with its members,
overwhelmingly patients, but never gets at the real cause of the problem, the health insurance
industry, as AARP is gettting piles of money off this "system," which puts the quid pro quo
back in the status quo, stressing as it does the buying of politicians to get what they want
monetarily.

With the pharmaceutical industry, the key to their piles of
money lies in the fact that with full private control, the industry
can charge what it likes, as long the federal government, once the
people's government, isn't negotiating prices for prescriptions.
This is the conclusion I'm forced to on this.

We need a system Dr Hochfeld is saying. Currently it's clear we don't
have a system, but hodgepodge and complete mess is the conclusion
I'm forced to.

Now as to the media not covering those health care providers including
doctors who favor single payer. Why would that be? Hey, how about
the huge amount of MONEY these media types get from big business
especially the health insurance and pharmaceutical industry, which they
might lose if they covered such topics as single payer, which one professor
of mine in a University of Oregon journalism program referred to as thematic bias-- certain
topics are just off limits, and this tends to be due to advertising the media
get from certain sources. These media types know which side their
bread is buttered on.

Then the fact that the media itself tends to be a big business anyway, with
the same interests as the rest of big business. Interests overwhelmingly will
determine which side people come down on once push comes to shove,
and the media is no damn exception. That's just plain institutional analysis
or prostitutional analysis. Thus we have what Edward S Herman and Noam
Chomsky would call the media "manufacturing consent."

Dr Hochfeld has said single payer isn't getting discussed at all from what he's
seen.

A grass roots progressive movement has to speak up and speak truth to
power on this one.

What can we do about all this? A start might well be lettting Tom Daschle know
just how much and how strongly the people support health care of, by, and
for the people-- also known as single payer. After all Barak Obama has
put Daschle on the job to reach out to folks to get their input. Hey, let's
do some inputting. With that in mind, the following contact information
is provided, as that University of Oregon journalism professor would say
as mobilizing information. Damn it, I would just love to see some mobilization
on this, and therefore here's the good old mobilizing information to let folks
start putting in with the input. Do keep in mind, Daschle has probably getting
a lot of hot air and misinformation about single payer blown his way and
definitely needs the fresh air of those advocating health care of, by, and
for the people. It's time fight back against the "power of concentrated wealth"
with the people power of a strong nation wide grass roots movement. Let's
do it!

Tom Daschle's email address-- tom.daschle@americanprogress.org.