Baucus meeting with single-payer advocates

As I write this, a group of prominent single-payer advocates are meeting with Sen. Max Baucus to try to convince him to put single-payer on the table.

However, Clark Newhall, a Salt Lake City attorney, doctor and single-payer crusader, beat them to the punch this morning. Newhall was one of the first people in the country to publicly question Baucus on his affirmed stance that single-payer is off the table (here's the video). This morning Newhall attended Baucus' public breakfast in Washington, D.C. and challenged the Senate Finance Committee chairman on his position. Newhall sent me this e-mail immediately following the meeting (the embedded linke is mine):

Washington DC -- June 3 -- 8:30 a.m.

I just spoke with Max Baucus at length about single payer. More accurately, I listened to his views and tried to challenge them. Based on that conversation, I predict the following will happen today at the meeting that Marcia Angell, David Himmelstein, Oliver Fein, Geri Jenkins and RoseAnn DeMoro are having with him.

1 -- he will say what a candid and honest guy he is.

2 -- he will say that N-O-B-O-D-Y will vote for single payer in the Senate.

3 -- he will say that N-O-B-O-D-Y has a single payer bill in the Senate; he will not acknowledge SB 703.

4 -- he will say that the "60% of physicians want single payer"
statistic is false.

5 -- he will say that the American people do not want single payer.

6 -- he will say he knows the American people don't want single payer because politicians have a nose for what their constituencies want, mainly because most politicians want to get re-elected.

7 -- he will get nervous if anyone mentions the overwhelming support for single payer that the recent 'listening tour' in Montana revealed.

8 -- he will say that Americans are used to having employer-paid health insurance, and do not want to change.

9 -- he will deny that Medicare is 'uniquely American' and will shy away from using that phrase.

10 -- he will admit that the power of insurance companies has something to do with how the legislation is being shaped in the Senate but, when pressed on that, will reverse position.

11 -- he will rely heavily for his position on the proposition that Obama does not want single payer, and he may point to the recent flat statement of Obama to Sherrod Brown that single payer is off the table.

12 -- he will be obdurately and obstinately close-minded to facts, arguments and moral suasion.

13 -- he will act very involved and interested when the talk turns to 'paying for this' but will deny that single payer pays for itself.

14 -- he will give the impression that removing employer tax breaks for health insurance in some fashion is likely.

Those are my predictions. Let's see how close to the mark they are.

Newhall said he personally spent nearly $60,000 producing and running a series of television and internet ads –which are currently running on CNN, MSNBC, Comedy Central, The Game Show Network and other cable networks—promoting single payer. You can see the ads here. Newhall said those ads have generated more than 67,000 faxes to members of Congress.

“I’ve also collected something like 4,000 voice mails, transcribed them all, sent them off to Baucus and Obama. I just hand delivered about 2,000 of them this morning to Baucus,” Newhall said this morning.

I asked him if he thought any of it was getting through.

“F*** no,” Newhall said.

I’ll be following up on today’s meeting between Baucus and single-payer advocates later today. I’ll let you know if Newhall’s predictions came true.

On a related note:

Eight-one percent of respondents to an unscientific poll currently up on the Missoulian's Web site say single-payer should be included among the options for health care reform. In a similar unscientific poll in the Tribune two weeks ago (no link to the poll results, but here's the forum), 57 percent of respondents said single-payer should be considered.

Stimulus Watch, Part II

Are you or someone you know a contractor looking to contribute to one of the hundreds of “shovel-ready” projects around the state? Do you see an uptick in work thanks to the hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure investment in the state? Or have federal and state agencies passed you by in favor of contracting out-of-state firms to do work your company is qualified to do?

We’re trying to keep eye on how Montana's $1.1 billion share of federal stimulus money is being spent in the state and we need your help. Please contact me and tell me your stimulus-bill related story. I want to know how Montana businesses and communities are being affected by the tax-payer funded American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

This is our money, folks. Help us track how it’s being spent in the state.

Baucus to meet with single-payer advocates

According to the group Single Payer Action, Sen. Max Baucus is planning to meet with five prominent single-payer advocates in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday. Dr. Marcia Angell—the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine and one of the nation’s most outspoken proponents of single-payer—confirmed the meeting with me this morning in via e-mail.

According to Single Payer Action:

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.”

I don’t know that I have seen a movement in Montana as genuinely grass-roots as the single-payer advocacy I’ve seen in recent weeks. All you had to do was attend one of the 20 listening sessions Baucus’ staff held around the state last week (see photo above: The majority of participants at a health care listening session in Anaconda raised their hands when asked by a member of the audience if they think all Americans — including members of Congress and the president — should have the same level of health insurance coverage). These weren’t highly organized volunteers of some political action group. In fact, Phil Campbell, one of the primary organizers of Montanans for Single Payer, wasn’t even in the state at the time the hearings took place. He and his wife were hiking in Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah.

Apparently, the single-payer advocates’ efforts have at least cracked open the door.

At the same time a corporate-funded organization called Patients United Now—a group fighting to halt health care reform—had a hard time drawing more than 30 people to a rally in downtown Helena on Friday. And they enticed people with the promise of free food.

Stimlus Watch, Part I

As billions of dollars in economic stimulus monies pour out of federal coffers and into Montana, expect to see a steady stream of announcements from our two congressional representatives who voted for the recovery act, Sen. Jon Tester and Sen. Max Baucus.

Like this one, from Sen. Jon Tester, entitled “Tester pushes Forest Service chief to ‘get folks working in the woods.’”

"Tester pushed [U.S. Forest Service Chief Abigail]Kimbell to make sure that the jobs-stimulus money will be used to create local jobs while managing wildfire risk.
“I want the guy with the chainsaw in northwestern Montana to go back to work doing what’s responsible to manage our forests,” said Tester, who helped write and voted for the jobs-stimulus bill earlier this year.
Kimbell assured Tester that the Forest Service’s priority for that money is to create “jobs, jobs, jobs.”

With jobless numbers on the rise and mills closing by the month, it’s no wonder that Tester wants to do everything in his power to help his constituents keep working and turn the state’s timber industry around.

According to the press release, Tester wants to reduce fire risk around the state by putting loggers to work. Nearly $50 million of the $1.1 billion in federal stimulus dollars heading Montana’s way will go national forests. Much of that money will be spent on fire.

“We need an offense and a defense when it comes to fire,” Tester said. “If we put folks to work limiting fire danger now, we won’t burn up the entire budget fighting fires later.”

What’s absent from Tester’s press release is a proposal for what to do with all the logs once they’ve been cut. Everything I’ve read about mill closures around the state indicates that the reason the state’s timber industry is struggling is because there is little demand for wood products nationally.

Take this Pablo mill closure last month for example.

"The waning demand for our wood products is directly linked to the troubled housing market," said Rick Holley, Plum Creek president and chief executive officer. "Housing starts dropped again last month and we expect economic conditions to continue to put pressure on new construction. Unfortunately, we must, once again, take steps to attempt to match supply with the eroding demand.”

Or this closure at Stoltze Lumber in Columbia Falls:

In a prepared statement, Stoltze said the "shutdown is fueled by continuing poor lumber markets across the broader United States. Lumber producers like Stoltze are finding it increasingly harder to sell their product and to realize above break-even margins in this climate."

So if there’s no demand for the wood, what are we going to do with all the logs Tester proposes we cut?

I asked his staff that question in an e-mail this week. This is the written response I received from Tester spokesman Patrick Devlin:

· The timber industry faces enormous challenges, and Senator Jon Tester is working on policies to help meet these challenges

· In these tough economic times, the short-term challenge for the timber industry is cash flow.

· Jon has worked with the Governor and the Legislature to set up a revolving loan fund to help the industry survive until the housing market recovers and the overall economy picks back up.

· The over-riding public policy challenge is responsible forest management.

· For example, beetle-killed trees have commercial value for up to three years so it makes sense for the mills to process some of them to reduce fire hazard and protect atersheds.

· In the long-term, Jon is working to encourage innovative industry practices to promote sustainable forest health.

Statement of Senator Jon Tester:

“Smart forest management will create jobs in Montana, reduce the danger of catastrophic fire and help sustain the industry long-term. It’s going to take working together to meet the challenges we face in the woods and turn them into opportunities.”

Trying to keep people working while reducing the risk of fire is an admirable goal, but Devlin doesn’t answer the long-term question of what to do with the logs once they’re cut. Will they be shipped to mills? Will they be piled as slash? With they be processed and used for biomass generation? Will they stack them in log yards until the day when the housing market turns around and demand for wood products returns?

Is Tester’s proposal a step in the direction of a long-term solution to solving the timber industry’s woes, or an unsustainable tax-payer funded band-aid? Sooner or later the stimulus dollars will run out. What will the loggers do then if the demand for wood hasn’t returned by then?

I’ll be looking for these answers in the coming weeks and months ahead.