Tues: Colbert Report interviews Single Payer Advocate/Doctor

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

The health care debate is heating up. Please help spread the word about our voting bloc so we can keep up the pressure on Congress. Also, please watch The Colbert Report tonight....

On Tuesday, July 21, at 11:30 pm EDT, watch Dr. Aaron Carroll talk about
single-payer health reform on The Colbert Report, the Emmy award-winning
satirical television program on Comedy Central.

Dr. Carroll is a board member of Physicians for a National Health
Program (www.pnhp.org), an organization of 16,000 physicians, medical
students and health professionals who support single-payer national
health insurance.

The episode with Dr. Carroll will also be available online about 24
hours after the initial broadcast at
www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/full-episodes/index.jhtml (Episode #
is 5097). It will be rebroadcast on the Comedy Central network on
Wednesday, July 22, at 2 a.m., 9:30 a.m., 2 p.m., and 8:30 p.m.

Dr. Carroll, who is an assistant professor of pediatrics in the
Children’s Health Services Research Program at the Indiana University
School of Medicine, published a study last year showing 59 percent of
U.S. physicians now support national health insurance, a jump of 10
percentage points from just five years earlier.

In an opinion piece, Dr. Carroll writes: “There are now more uninsured
people in the United States than at any time since the passage of
Medicare and Medicaid in the mid-1960s. … These numbers represent
extraordinary suffering, unnecessary disability and premature deaths —
at least 18,000 deaths per year, according to the Institute of Medicine. …

“There is one sure-fire way to make these numbers come down. It worked
for seniors in the 1960s and it still works for them today. You may hear
politicians demonizing government-run health insurance, but you will
hear none run on a platform of eradicating Medicare; nor will any turn
it down for themselves when they turn 65. Call it whatever you want:
National health insurance, Medicare-for-all, ‘single payer’ or
socialized health insurance; it doesn’t matter. Research shows that
Medicare-for-all could save enough on administrative waste (over $350
billion) to cover all the 47 million uninsured and improve coverage for
everyone else. A single-payer national health insurance system is the
only way to drop the number of people lacking health insurance to zero.”

Rep. John Conyers Jr. has introduced a bill in the House, H.R. 676, that
would implement a single-payer system; the bill now has 85 co-sponsors.
Recently Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced a single-payer bill in the U.S.
Senate, S. 703.

Watch Dr. Carroll on The Colbert Report!

Physicians for a National Health Program
29 E. Madison St., Suite 602
Chicago IL 60602
[phone]
www.pnhp.org

[BattyDem]

1. I'm very grateful to Colbert for doing this, but ...

it's pretty f*cking sad that it takes a comedy program to get a fact-based discussion about single-payer.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

2. the power of the "Court Jester" is amazing

it is historical that the Court Jester held alot of influence.

[gwashington2650]

3. Indeed

Only in America, as they say.