Oregon Doctors Are Mad As Hell!

Sometimes living in a relatively progressive state is a reason for pride, and this is one of those times.

In a way, Dr. Eugene Uphoff, a 67-year-old Portland family physician, has come full circle.

He rode a Freedom Riders bus in 1961 into the South during the civil rights movement and spent six weeks behind bars in Mississippi for civil disobedience. On Tuesday, he climbed into a motor home with five other doctors rallying a noon crowd at Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square and set out on a cross-country campaign for what he considers a civil rights issue: health care.

Borrowing a familiar line from the 1976 movie "Network," the doctors have made their rallying cry: "I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore."

They’re taking that message to 27 cities from Seattle, where they stopped Tuesday, to Washington, D.C. They aim to pick up a caravan of support as they cruise east, and hope to roll up to the White House on Sept. 30 with thousands of backers. The doctors, who collectively have 220 years of practical experience, are angry, but for different reasons than those who flocked to political town hall meetings in recent weeks to denounce President Obama and congressional leaders for going too far with health care reform.

"I’m angry about it because it doesn’t go far enough," says Dr. Paul Hochfeld, 58, an emergency physician in Corvallis.

He and Uphoff are joined by Dr. Samuel Metz, 59, a Portland anesthesiologist; Dr. Michael Huntington, 66, a Corvallis radiation oncologist; Dr. Joseph Eusterman, 79, a primary physician retired in Wilsonville; and Dr. Bob Seward, 69, an internist retired in Forest Grove.

The doctors know they are moving late on a campaign that faces steep odds.

They hope to tap what they say is pent-up support for a single-payer health care reform strategy. A single-payer plan would create one organization, a nonprofit or, more likely, the federal government, to run one health insurance program for the nation, something like Medicare for everyone.

"We want to get single-payer people to come out of the closet," said Adam Klugman, a West Linn creative director who helped organize the tour.

About 200 people gathered Tuesday at Pioneer Courthouse Square downtown to send off a group of Oregon physicians who call themselves the "mad-as-hell doctors" because they favor a single-payer health system that is opposed by many in Congress; President Obama likes the idea but argues it is too radical…

…President Obama says he likes the single-payer idea but argues that it is too radical. So do congressional leaders. They are dismissing it, the doctors argue, because they are beholden to drug and insurance companies for campaign contributions.

"Our decisions are dictated to us not by government bureaucrats, but by insurance company bureaucrats," Uphoff said.

Though some polls show a slight majority of Americans supporting a single-payer model, they also show most want to keep the insurance they have. Most political leaders say a single-payer plan is politically impossible in part because it would shut down the nation’s health insurance industry.

Still, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., agrees the single-payer option should have received far more discussion in Congress, said Josh Kardon, his chief of staff.

Uphoff said he’s angry because insurance companies take advantage of his patients by scaring them, denying them coverage and paying their executives big salaries. He’s angry at elected officials for closing the door on a single-payer plan, which he thinks offers the only affordable path to reform.

Twenty percent of the money spent on health care "is being wasted servicing the insurance industry," Hochfeld said. "They don’t do anything for health. They suck money out of the system."… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <The Oregonian>

Now I don’t entertain any allusions that we will get single-payer anytime soon.  But I’m damn proud of these Oregon doctors with the courage and commitment to tell the truth to power, when power does not want to hear it.  As doctors, I’m sure they would make a little less under single-payer, but unlike the right-wing doctors who parrot insurance company lies, these doctors want what’s best for their patients and care enough to take action.  For their web site, Click Here.