Nurses and doctors react to a "Bipartisan Meeting on Health Reform." Donna Smith & Mandy Cohen Interview (Part 1 - Part II) The Real News Network, February 26, 2010 Donna Smith is a community-based journalist, organizer and legislative advocate for National Nurses United and the California Nurses Association and for the single-payer, Medicare for all reform. Dr Mandy Cohen is Executive Director of Doctors for America and a primary care physician.

Democracy Now! February 26, 2010 After nearly seven hours of televised debate, President Obama’s so-called bipartisan healthcare summit ended Thursday without any substantive agreement between Republicans and Democrats. Republican lawmakers remained staunchly opposed to using the federal government to regulate health insurance. We speak to Columbia Journalism Review contributing editor Trudy Lieberman and pediatrician Dr. Margaret Flowers of Physicians for a National Health Program. ... Healthcare

Bill Carpenter, San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center, February 26, 2010 Healthcare activists met in San Francisco to tell President Obama that "the policy that meets his goals of bringing down premiums, bringing down the deficit, covering the uninsured, strengthening Medicare, and stopping insurance company abuses, is improved Medicare for All." ... SF

Don McCanne, MD, Physicians for a National Health Program, February 26, 2010 The private insurers claim that health care costs are the major cause of high health insurance premiums. That is true. So where do we place the blame for failure to slow cost escalation? The private insurers can be blamed for their despicable policies that prevent patients from receiving the care that they should have, but they can't really be blamed for the fact that health care prices in the United States are much higher than in any other nation. So should they share some of the blame for failing to use their clout to slow down health care spending? ... Provider

Steffie Woolhandler, MD, Reuters, February 25, 2010 President Obama, at today’s summit and in his proposal earlier this week, has embraced a deeply-flawed bill – the Senate bill – as his model for reform. That bill would leave about 24 million people uninsured in the year 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Leaving 24 million people without health insurance is neither “universal care” nor even serious reform. As my research team has recently shown, that 24 million uninsured people would translate into about 24,000 unnecessary deaths annually. As a doctor, I find that prospect completely unacceptable. ... A

John Nichols, The Nation, February 25, 2010 President Obama and congressional Republicans arrived at the White House health care summit with talking points - not just for the summit itself but for the after-summit jockeying to claim the upper hand coming out of a session that always had more to do with messaging than making progress to insure more Americans at less cost. Obama got off a good enough line about "not campaigning anymore." Congressman Eric Cantor, the Virginia Republican who has become a "party of no" pointman, showed up with Ross Perot-style props and plenty of gripes. ... The

Susan Milligan, Boston Globe, February 25, 2010 Washington - It was a protest cry that could only be shouted in Washington, DC. “Stop reconciliation now!” yelled a man outside of Blair House today, railing against a legislative process and concept generally not discussed - let alone protested - outside the wonky walls of the US Capitol. The man, carrying a sign that said, “Jesus Loves All Babies,” was referring to the possibility that a health care package will be added to a budget reconciliation bill. Budget bills require just a majority vote to be approved, and cannot be filibustered, as Republicans are threatening to do ... Health

Gabe Bullard, WFPL, February 25, 2010 The group Kentuckians for Single Payer Healthcare held another rally in downtown Louisville Wednesday. It was one of many demonstrations across the country in response to President Obama’s healthcare summit with lawmakers in Washington. The demonstrators are opposed to most of the legislation on the table. They favor an expanded Medicare system that would provide single-payer healthcare to all citizens. Kay Tillow helped organize the event. She says even if healthcare overhaul legislation is passed, her group will still call for more changes. ... Demonstrators

Ali Weinberg, MSNBC, February 25, 2010 At the beginning of President Obama's heath care summit with a bipartisan group of congressmen, two opposing camps of activists gathered their signs, lab coats and megaphones to rally across the street from Blair House, the site of the half-day meeting. The two groups railed against each other on 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, trying to drown each other out with shouts of "Medicare for all!" and "Kill the bill!" But both sides had one large point of agreement: neither support the bill in its current form. ... Summit

William Hughes, The People’s Voice, February 25, 2010 On Thursday morning, February 25, 2010, a sidewalk summit advocating “Medicare for All,” was staged in Washington, DC, at Lafayette Park, North, not far from the White House. Here are some sights and scenes from that spirited event. ... Medicare

ABC News, February 25, 2010

Across the street from the White House, there is bipartisan agreement. Unfortunately for President Obama, the bipartisan agreement is outside Blair House where today's health care summit is taking place, and the agreement is among liberal and conservative protestors arguing for different reason that the Democrats' current health care reform proposal isn't the correct prescription. Conservatives argue that it’s too much government intrusion and socialism. Liberals argue that the various leading Democratic proposals don't go far enough. ... Bipartisan

Sam Stein, Huffington Post, February 25, 2010 Seven hours of sometimes combative, often wonky health care conversation left President Obama and other Democratic leaders with no more Republican support for health reform than they started with. But it did produce one thing: A consensus that there really isn't any point in talking anymore. Obama held court with congressional leaders all day Thursday, addressing topics including tort reform, cost controls, the need for an individual mandate, and the dangers of incremental reform. But with Republican leaders continuing to express unanimous disapproval of the Democratic proposal, even before the summit was over talk shifted ... For

Christopher Hayes, The Nation, February 25, 2010 I'll admit that like almost everyone in this town, I thought the public option was dead. In late October when Joe Lieberman announced he'd filibuster any bill that included it, I figured it was time to conduct an autopsy (cause of death: blows administered in quick succession by an obstinate insurance industry and "centrist" senators), commence the mourning process and move on. But now, improbably, the cadaver is twitching and kicking, threatening to push its way out of the casket. As of this writing, twenty-four Democratic senators have signed a letter calling on majority leader Harry Reid to include a public option in the package ... CPR

William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t, February 25, 2010 President Obama met on Thursday with the glitterati of Capitol Hill in a much-ballyhooed confab on health care reform, and more specifically, the health of his current health care reform proposal. I was supposed to use this space to describe the details of that conference, to get into the nitty-gritty details of who said what, who made the most sense and What It All Means in the end. My intention was to do another running diary on the actual proceedings, but I couldn't do that, and for one reason: I didn't tune in to C-SPAN. ... Skewing

Institute for Public Accuracy, February 24, 2010 Washington - Young, national coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program, an organization of 17,000 doctors who support a single-payer, Medicare-for-All approach to reform, said today: "Regrettably, the president's proposal is built on some of the worst aspects of the Senate bill. For example, the president's proposal would ship hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to the private health insurance industry in the form of subsidies. And to help finance this, it would impose a new tax on health benefits of workers, especially those in high-cost states. ... Single-Payer