Report on Jeff Merkley Town Hall: 95% Single Payer

By Derrick Duehren and Mike Crabbe

The Merkley Town Hall went very well with an audience of about 100 people.  The audience was highly charged with Single Payer and health care reform advocates setting up Merkley to address all but about a half dozen questions on health care.  JwJ (Jobs with Justice), Single Payer in Action, UA290 members and other S.P. organizations were visible, including David Dunning who provided Merkley with a copy of the Luntz health care bashing strategy paper.

Derrick and I each had an opportunity to ask questions in addition to talking to Deputy Communications Director, Marc Seigel, Jon Isaacs- Chief of Staff, and Mari Beath Healy from Merkley's Portland office. 

Derrick urged Merkley to lead the effort to ask the Single Pay question through national polls to clearly replace our current for profit health care system with tax funded universal health care system. 

Mike asked if Merkley would vote for Single Payer in spite of the lobby money being poured into Congress daily from the health company lobbyist... specifically his conscience or for the "people"!  In a show of hands, when Mike asked the audience "how many people favored single payer health care?" an overwhelming 95% of the room clearly demonstrated their choice to Merkley and his staff!  Jeff says he will vote for single payer if it comes up, but will not champion it.

It’s good to have an honest, intelligent, and conscientious senator we can believe in.  Let’s just hope he stays that way.

In addition, Derrick and I talked with Phil Kauffman of Single Payer for Action, Jo Beall of Kitzhaber’s Archimedes Movement who has a Forum scheduled in the fall on October 16 & 17th, Evil Fanning from Union UA290 Plumbers & Fitters, and Betsy Zucker from JwJ.