Bob McCarty Writes

EDITOR’S NOTE 9/22/10:  Because portions of ObamaCare take effect tomorrow, I felt it important to reveal what I learned ten months ago when I crashed the national strategy conference of single-payer healthcare advocates held in St. Louis.  Please read and share the post below, watch and share the videos below and read my other posts about the conference.

If you thought the health care bill recently passed by the House was bad, you’ll shudder at what I captured on video this weekend at the 2009 Healthcare-Now.org National Strategy Conference at the Sheraton Westport Lakeside Chalet in St. Louis.

Though uninvited, I introduced myself as a journalist and gained access to the meeting’s opening session late Saturday afternoon.  There, I fully expected to find a room full of people in favor of the latest iteration of government-run health care.  Instead, I found more than 100 people voicing widespread opposition to the bill.

Unlike those who oppose government-run health care on strong Constitutional grounds, the conference attendees with whom I spoke said they oppose the bill because, first, it lacks a strong-enough public option component and, second, it does not include coverage to pay for abortions.

A look at the roster of conference attendees helps explain their radical ideology. It included representatives from most of 42 states where the group has a presence — including one from Hip Hop Congress — and a half-dozen liberal, progressive and socialist Democrat heavyweights who looked down on their audience from seats at the head table.  The names of those heavyweights appear below:

• Dr. Quentin Young, the Chicago physician and Hyde Park resident who founded now leads Healthcare-Now.org;

• Jerry Tucker, steering committee member of Labor for Single Payer and former UAW International Union Executive Board member;

• Terry O’Neill, national president, National Organization for Women;

• Ethel Long Scott, executive director, Women’s Economic Agenda Project;

• Tim Carpenter, executive director, Progressive Democrats of America; and

• Michael Lighty, director of public policy, California Nurses Association, and former national director of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Below, I share their entire messages, unedited and ranging from 4 to 10 minutes each, in the videos below which I shot as the only journalist at the conference.

Warning: NSFA (Not Safe for America)