Reply #89: But you fail to acknowledge that they were being shut out until

[slipslidingaway]

people started calling the WH and organizing a protest, they were only allowed in at the last minute and Dr. Fein was not even allowed to speak.

President Obama said during the campaign that everyone would be allowed to participate, but that is not what he did with the healthcare summit.


How come the insurance companies do not have to fight to be invited???


http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05222009/transcript2.html


"DR. SIDNEY WOLFE: The seats at the table, or the witnesses at the hearing are, in a sense, controlled by the health insurance industry. They don't want someone essentially saying, "We don't need a health insurance industry. We can do what most other countries in the world have done. Have the government collect the money and pay the bills and get rid of all these people who are wasting $400 billion a year on excessive administrative costs...


...It's- 1968, I was one of a group of physicians that disrupted the American Medical Association's convention, because they were saying then, and in, for all practical purposes it's still true, "Health care is not a right. It's a privilege." And we said, quietly, as we took over the microphone, "That's wrong." We're now 41 years later, and it's still a privilege. And too many people in this country don't have that privilege. It's resulting in huge numbers of people being ill, sick, and almost 20 thousand people dying a year because they don't have health insurance.

DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: And there's big money being made. I mean, that's the basic problem here. There are billions being made from the private health insurance industry, from the drug industry, and that gets spread around Washington. The biggest recipients of insurance money, of drug money, are the powerful people who chair the committees, who decide what witnesses testify. President Obama himself received huge amounts of insurance money...


DR. SIDNEY WOLFE: Here's an example of what David's talking about. Over the last 30 plus years there have been maybe two and a half, three times more doctors and nurses. Pretty much in proportion with the growth in population. There are 30 times, 3-0 times more health administrators. These people are not doctors. They're not nurses. They're not pharmacists. They're not providing care. Many of them are being paid to deny care. So, they are fighting with the doctors, with the hospitals to see how few bills can be paid. That's how the insurance industry thrives by denying care, paying as little out as it can, getting the healthiest patients, and yet getting reimbursed as though these patients were sicker than they really are.

So, it's a system that is guaranteed to waste a lot of money. And what we've said is that the amount of money that's just being wasted in one year is enough to pay for more than enough of the premiums for those that are uninsured and the people that are underinsured. So, it's not a matter of bringing more money..."