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Physicians for a National Health Program doctors arrested, and why is PNHP resorting to criminal activity to push their agenda?

Kevin | Policy | May 9, 2009

A few zealous single-payer advocates, Physicians for a National Health Program included, were arrested this past week for disrupting Senate hearings.

Pictured here is psychiatrist Dr. Carol Paris, who was among the doctors arrested.

I’m not going to rehash the single-payer debate in this post, but I wonder whether resorting to criminal activity is really the best way to push your agenda.

From this corner, publicly flaunting your arrests only serves to cement PNHP’s status to the public as a radical, fringe group.

Rather than acting like criminals who only serve to disgrace the profession, it would be better if these physicians could use their efforts to more constructively contribute to the health reform debate.

See also, Is Physicians for a National Health Program the biggest threat to Obama’s health reform plan?

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Tagged as: Health reform, Obama

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  • M. Student

    Come on, KMD, don’t you think it’s a little pejorative to describe verbally interrupting a Senate committee hearing with the heavily loaded phrase “resorting to criminal activity”?

    Agree or disagree with their opinions this is civil disobedience at worst and a clever stunt likely to generate sympathetic publicity.

  • Brookes

    Civil disobedience = criminal activity? Come on. It’s a hearing. This is what people do when they’re excluded from the process. They’re not “criminals.”

  • Anonymous

    TAKE A PAY CUT

    The arrested enjoy citing other countries as so much better than the USA.

    Well .. in those countries, the MDs make MUCH LESS than in the U.S.

    Does that mean those arrested are offering to take an immediate 35% pay cut?Let’s not be hypocritical, please.

  • JCR

    I agree with KMD. Somebody has to shed light on the fact that these people are sabotaging the very same health care reform that they have sought for decades.

  • Supremacy Claus

    They want to show they are morally superior. As a patient, I feel totally threatened by the left.

  • Supremacy Claus

    This group silenced me when I tried to rebut a point on their web site.

  • Anonymous

    INCONVENIENT FACT

    “Civil disobedience = criminal activity? Come on. It’s a hearing. This is what people do when they’re excluded from the process. They’re not “criminals.”

    1. Civil actions do not require immediate police action.

    2. CRIMINAL behavior does.

    3. Excluded? A bunch of Harvard Medical School yahoos? Excluded from what — afternoon tea?

    Get real. Try working in Rural America. Or Indian Country.

  • Anonymous

    9/11 EFFECT

    Disrupting a Congressional hearing in the era of 9/11. Brilliant.

    Look how nervous everyone was, after SCARE Force One buzzed Ground Zero.

    Those ninnys from Harvard Medical and CODE PINK were lucky the Capitol Police didn’t draw their weapons.

    Brilliant thinking. Not.

  • Anonymous

    I think revised coursework for future MD’s needs to include more Political Science. Getting your voice to be heard sometimes involves spending a few hours in jail.

    Let’s see, we’d still be pledging alliance to England if a few hadn’t spoken out and engaged in a bit of civil disobedience. The list of things that we generally consider good that got rolling with this kind of activity is pretty long….

  • Anonymous

    ” .. Let’s see, we’d still be pledging alliance to England if a few hadn’t spoken out ..”

    Does that include taxpayers who want to protest government-employed HMS MDs, who are protesting the possible endangerment of their paychecks (and Volvo payments)?

    Just wondering ..

  • Dr. Mary Johnson

    Oh Good Lord. Kevin, seriously, are you listening to yourself?

    I’ve seen and been on the wrong end of a lot of criminal behavior in medicine – on the part of a lot of supposedly fine upstanding people – a few of them physicians. I’ve been in the blogosphere for four years trying to get someone to care. The politicians in Washington for damned sure don’t.

    What these doctors did is called civil disobedience. People usually “resort” to “fringe” activities when they feel they’ve been excluded from the process.

    Like those “fanatics” who spilled tea and started a country all those years ago.

    Open your eyes. Climb down the high horse.

    Grow up.

  • Anonymous

    If "criminal activity" means being pissed off as a doctor being excluded from discussion on the future of healthcare, being hijacked by lawyers & MBA's, then throw me the f— in jail!

    Ridiculous, to label these guys criminals. The difference between them and most doctors these days, is that they have BALLS to speak up a little (and peacefully, mind you!).

  • Supremacy Claus

    It is fair to call Dr. J a former disgruntled employee.

    The problem with the left is that they use coercion to impose rejected ideology, and that they are hypocrites, suppressing dissent from their views.

  • Sharon

    Some of you need to go back to high school and take a civics class. Google “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and take 10 minutes to read it. Notably, the first sentence reads:

    “While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities ‘unwise and untimely.’”

    He goes on to state:
    “You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes.”

    The lack of equality in the provision of health care in this country is a life or death matter for millions of Americans. Disparities such as those seen in our country are not replicated in countries with single payer systems. Our fight for equal access to high quality health care is different from Dr. King’s, but is in line with his dream: “Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.”

  • Anonymous

    ” .. Google “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr ..”

    Oh, yeah .. voting rights are the same as a bunch of Fabian Socialists from HMS, demanding their right to lifetime payments on a Volvo .. silly, ridiculous, and absurd. To the max.

    Mass. is trying “universal health care. IMMEDIATE BANKRUPTCY and service over-load. Brilliant, Bwarney Fwrank.

    A large percentage of medical care is due to people like my neighbor — grossly overweight, chain-smoking, beer-swilling “SSI” victim. I’m supposed to pay for his stupidity?

    You stop them first — be sure to get some life insurance, they can get violent. Then ask me to raise taxes. NOT BEFORE.

    Great job, Kevin.

  • Anonymous

    MLK was fighting for his right to vote and to go where he pleased same as anyone else. These looters are fighting for the “right” to loot MY property and do what they please with it and to force me into government dependency and control.

    The woman just continues the tradition of overly intellectual crackpot psychiatrists that has plagued the field for generations. From those who started the Nazi Euthanasia programs in the name of “public hygiene” and cost savings to Slobadan Karadizc who practiced genocide in the Balkans in the name of social good, she in her fanatical collectivism is part of a long tradition.

    BTW, I wonder if she provides the gull gamet of services to her government payor patients now? I wonder if she provides one hour therapy sessions to her Medicaid patients at the same frequency as she does to her private pay patients?

  • Anonymous

    anon 6:29:

    “who are protesting the possible endangerment of their paychecks (and Volvo payments)?

    Just wondering ..”

    I drive a 10 year old chevy but thanks for the prejudgment and your “support”. I do wish you could see all the unpaid work I do behind the scenes for you. I guess I am expecting a level of introspection you and most americans just don’t have.

  • Dr. Mary Johnson

    "If 'criminal activity" means being pissed off as a doctor being excluded from discussion on the future of healthcare, being hijacked by lawyers & MBA's, then throw me the f— in jail!"

    Bingo Anon 8:40.

    Supremacy Claus, if getting fired from a job with your hometown hospital (to which you were recruited with state & federal money) because you ignored THREATS and saved a child's life . . . AND THEN getting sued for telling the truth to the government your served . . . AND THEN swinddled by the white-collars in the Court you turned to for justice . . . is called being a "disgurntled employee", then DAMNED STRAIGHT I'M DISGRUNTLED!

    Maybe, just maybe, some of the white collars & politicians should be the ones thrown in jail.

    NOTHING is going to change until more doctors get disgruntled.

    Like I said, grow up.

  • Anonymous

    “Like I said, grow up.”

    No, madam. You grow up. Please.

    When a bunch of Harvard Medical School alums complain “they are not being heard” — please. No one is that stupid. More like five-year-olds, complaining about the amount of chocolate in the chocolate milk.

    Upset over your working conditions? Gee — government regulation is really a ‘b,’ ain’t it? Who’s fault is that? Teddy “Swimmer” Kennedy?

    In the most recent chapter of the PBS series on the HMS ’91 class, one thing about one member has been consistent — endless complaining about pay. In Cuba, FAT Mike Moore’s ideal country, that would earn you a third-eye, via a .45 iron projectile.

    MDs are among the most privileged persons in the USA, with pay and prestige. If that isn’t good enough for you — please get out. Do something different. You and your permanent sense of entitlement are not needed. There’s enough deadwood in the system now, thank you.

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