Bob McCarty Writes

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)