Here is Dr. Fein's prepared statement:

Mr. President, Physicians for a National Health Program agrees with your statement during your presidential campaign: health care should be a basic human right.

Physicians recommend an improved and expanded Medicare-for-All—that is, a single-payer national health insurance program, providing care that is publicly financed but largely privately delivered. This fundamental health reform - which enjoys solid majority support among physicians and the public - has become even more urgently needed in view of our severe economic recession.

Millions of people are losing their employer-sponsored health insurance, joining the 46 million who already lack coverage. Millions more, including those with insurance, are finding it harder to pay their co-pays and deductibles and are scrimping on their medications and doctor visits. Many go without care, risking their health and often their very lives.

Physicians find that private, for-profit health insurance companies add cost but no value to the health care system. The administrative waste associated with the private-insurance-based industry - enormous paperwork, marketing costs, and other costs that have nothing to do with delivering care  - consumes 31 cents of every health care dollar.

As long as we rely on private health insurers, universal coverage will be unaffordable.

Mandates to buy private insurance are not the answer. Experience with mandate plans in Washington state (1993), Oregon (1992) and Massachusetts (1988 and today), shows they simply don't work, achieving neither universal health care nor cost containment.

Some of these plans offer a Medicare-like, public option that people could buy into, but experience with Medicare shows that the private plans refuse to compete on a level playing field. They cherry-pick healthier patients and insist on more than their share of payment.

In contrast, single payer guarantees everyone access to comprehensive, quality health care and choice of their own doctor and hospital.

Single-payer health reform, an improved Medicare for All, is the only reform model that offers $400 billion in annual savings in administrative costs. It is the only approach that contains effective cost-containment provisions such as bulk purchasing and global budgeting.

Such economies would allow for expanding health coverage to everyone - with no co-pays or deductibles - with no overall increase in health care spending. In other words, it's the only health reform proposal that pays for itself.

The single-payer model is the only fiscally prudent proposal available, an especially important consideration at a time of economic distress. And we know from our experience with Medicare and other single-payer systems that it will work.

With a single-payer national health insurance program we can assure lifelong, high quality, comprehensive and affordable coverage for everyone. Such a program will lift the heavy burden of crushing medical expenses off the shoulders of our population, expenses that often lead to personal bankruptcy. And we can save lives: the Institute of Medicine estimated in 2002 that more than 18,000 Americans die each year from lack of health insurance. That number is certainly higher today.

From the standpoint of what benefits our patients, single payer is the health policy model that best reflects their needs and values.

Support for single payer is extensive. In a peer-reviewed statistical study in the Annals of Internal Medicine, 59 percent of U.S. physicians said they would support government action to establish national health insurance. In a recent Associated Press poll, 65 percent of the respondents said, "The United State should adopt a universal health insurance program in which everyone is covered under a program like Medicare that is run by the government and financed by taxes."

Single-payer health reform is embodied in the U.S. National Health Care Act, H.R. 676, sponsored by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.). It had 93 co-sponsors in the 110th Congress, the most of any health reform legislation.

We are pleased to be here today and appreciate the implicit recognition of the majority support for single payer in our country. We hope this is the beginning of a serious dialogue on how to enact single-payer health reform and we look forward to working with you and the Congress toward this end.

At least single-payer got into the meeting, but the forces against it are strong. And they are doing their best to misinform.

Take a look at the report from the Health Care Community Discussions Obama's transition team invited Americans to host and participate in: http://www.healthreform.gov/reports/solutionsb.html.

From the report:

The real debate was over the balance of government versus the market in insuring Americans. Supporters of a single-payer system submitted numerous reports, in part due to the encouragement by advocacy groups to participate in Health Care Community Discussions. Under most versions of a single-payer system, the government would replace private insurers in organizing, financing, and paying for health care.

But those who are against single-payer healthcare have these kinds of opinions:

Conversely, a small number of participants expressed concern that a public plan without private insurers would reduce the quality provided by private plans. Participants who met at a Baptist church in St. Louis, Missouri, felt, "[A] major concern with [a] public v. private plan was the quality of care received with a public plan. Private [plan holders] all felt [they] received excellent care. With Private plans there is more to take advantage of for the costs you are paying." A group of health care professionals in Waco, Georgia, explained, "On the whole it was felt that market based forces, rather than government involvement, was the key to the best overall outcome. The idea of a menu driven selection offered through a coordinated commercial effort of several different entities, perhaps under the auspices of the federal government, allowing people to pick and choose the coverage they needed and could afford, taking advantage of the economies of scale to be provided by such a cafeteria style mechanism, might be a viable alternative."

The Dark Side of the Force is strong, and we must gird our loins (and other parts, if we so deem) for a nasty fight.

But I think we can win it.

Always being in the avant garde, I went through my losses a few years before the rest of the country, starting in 2001. But an insane amount of the problem was due directly not only to my illness but also to the cost of taking care of myself, all in the hope that when I got "better," I could salvage everything I'd worked for.

No matter what savings I had to deplete or what possessions I had to sell, the first thing I made sure I paid for—out of the fear of things getting even worse—was my health insurance. And then, of course, all of the expenses for doctors' visits, medication, and all the rest came next.

I am absolutely certain that without those costs off the top of what I had and what little I could earn, I would not have lost everything ultimately. And I am also certain that the stress and depression and worry around not just my illness but the need to make sure that I could continue to pay for my care exacerbated the situation and slowed my recovery.

Of all the things that we need to do to get us out of this dreadful economic mess we're in now, I firmly believe that establishing single-payer healthcare based on HR 676 is the first and best thing to do. So much will fall into place when Americans do not need to be fearful about how they can stay healthy or get the right care and treatment for their illnesses.

If you haven't taken a look at it, give the CA Nurses' Assn.-sponsored analysis of the economic benefits of single-payer healthcare at www.calnurses.org/research/pdfs/ihsp_sp_economic_study_2009.pdf .

But something that makes me weep and scream is this question:

Where were you, New York Times and the British press, when this injustices came to light? Why did you not rail then? Why did you kowtow to the Bush Administration and not call them to account for their actions?

I have trouble feeling these papers' pain, since they are not leading the vanguard but instead are running as fast as they can to catch the train that's already crisscrossed this country without their help.

It's good that they're finally calling for something the rest of us have been calling for for years, but to me it feels more like they're following the winds instead of bucking them.

I'm such a Pollyanna sometimes.

How on earth could this happen? They usually paid out the bonuses in late January or early February, yet they did this payout when they knew they were going to report losses and they were being taken over by BofA. And nobody stopped them?

What about the regulations that governed these practices?

Oh. Yeah. I remember now. They turned everyone at the SEC into eunuchs, just for this kind of eventuality.

Of course, we can make it happen by pushing our representatives to support it. That's really all it takes, but the contact and pressure have to be frequent and consistent.

While we're at it, let's make sure once again to push our reps to cosponsor HR 676, which Conyers is reintroducing (maybe today).

Remember the scene in Moscow on the Hudson, when Robin Williams' character was so overwhelmed at the selection of coffee in the grocery store that he almost passed out? He'd gone from a life of lines for food and a scarcity of goods to a land of plenty and choices.

The way I see it, we've just come out of eight years of secrecy, selfish agendas, lies, and inhumanity to the first day of an administration that's already demonstrating openness, actions for the greater good, truth, and humane actions. It's a lot to take in. Consider it as a slow recovery from the PTSD of the Bush Administration (though, as with PTSD, I'm not sure some of us will ever get over it).

I'm glad to read what Deanie and others have to say, and if I don't want to read something, I don't have to. And neither do you.

I know, you made the little wry face at the end, but you're clearly impatient with what, at least in my case, is a (temporary) happy disbelief is being able to believe.