Baucus to Meet with Single Payer Advocates

Guess who’s coming to dinner?

After months of proclaiming that single payer is off the table, Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana) has invited five key single payer advocates to meet with him in Washington, D.C. this week.

On Wednesday June 3, Senator Baucus will meet with Dr. David Himmelstein, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), Dr. Marcia Angell, Senior Lecturer, Harvard Medical School and former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Oliver Fein, Associate Dean, Cornell Weill Medical School, and President of PNHP, Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association, and Geri Jenkins, president of California Nurses Association.

“Bowing to mounting pressure from single payer advocates around the nation, Senator Baucus has asked to meet with some representatives of the single payer movement,” Dr. Himmelstein said. “It’s the thirteen people who braved arrest at Senate Finance Committee hearing, the hundreds of single payer supporters who’ve shadowed Senator Baucus in his home state of Montana, and the thousands who have put pressure other members of Congress who have created this opening. We have no illusions that our discussions alone will persuade Senator Baucus to back a single payer bill. But the meeting is a clear indication that demonstrations and activism can move even our money-corrupted political culture.”

Read More at Single Payer Action