Tell TV Networks to Stop Censoring Health Care Debate – FAIR

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Help FAIR, Healthcare Now!, Physicians for a National Health Program and the Raging Grannies deliver a message to the news media: “Include Single-Payer in Healthcare Debate” Petition delivery, Tuesday, July 28, noon – 1 p.m., ABC News, 77 West 66th St., between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue, NYC.

Many Americans and health care workers see single-payer national health insurance as the most sensible tool for fixing America’s broken health care system, yet single-payer is being kept off the table by the corporate media.

Thousands of people have signed onto FAIR’s call for the TV networks to cover single-payer–including filmmaker Michael Moore, Obama’s longtime physician Dr. David Scheiner, former MSNBC host Phil Donahue, actor Mike Farrell, Donna Smith of the California Nurses Association, and Doctors Quentin Young, Stephanie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein of Physicians for a National Health Program.

Join FAIR, Healthcare Now!, Physicians for a National Health Program and the Raging Grannies on July 28 to deliver this message at ABC News’ NYC studio. ABC’s recent primetime forum on health care reform, “Prescription for America,” did not include a single question from a single-payer advocate, after Obama’s own longtime doctor was censored by ABC. Join us in presenting ABC with a prescription for a real debate on health care reform–one that includes single-payer.

Please help us get to 10,000 signatures by adding your name here. Many experts see single-payer national health insurance as the most sensible solution to expand coverage to the uninsured and to reduce costs. This proposal polls well with the public, who preferred it two-to-one over a privatized system in a recent survey (New York Times/CBS, 1/11-15/09). It is also preferred by 59 percent of physicians, according to a recent study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine (4/1/08).

Yet a recent study by FAIR found that of hundreds of stories about health care in major outlets earlier this year, only five stories included the views of advocates of single-payer–none of which appeared on the television networks.

The insurance lobbies and many politicians may not want to talk about single-payer. But that makes it all the more important that the media do. Please cover single-payer health care proposals, and stop silencing their advocates.

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