Michael Moore Stands Up for Single Payer, Tells Blue Dogs 'We Will Remove You From Office.'

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by Meg White

So Michael Moore produces a movie on the financial meltdown, and on the very week it is to premiere nationwide to what is projected to be record-breaking audiences, he holds a press conference on... healthcare?

"All of this is interconnected," Moore said at a press conference at the Washington, D.C. offices of Public Citizen, a national, nonprofit consumer advocacy organization founded in 1971. Moore insisted that none of the problems facing this nation will be resolved until the enormous wealth disparity in this country is fixed, which he said was at the root of the financial crisis as well as the healthcare debate. "I'm tired of making movies about single issues."

Moore shared the stage with Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen; Fred Redmond, vice president of United Steelworkers; Terry O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women; Dorothy Moore Ahmad, a Chicago nurse representing the national union California Nurses Association and John Simpson of Consumer Watchdog, a California-based nonprofit consumer advocacy organization. Each speaker embraced the idea of a Medicare-for-all, single-payer healthcare system as the best option for reform, with varying degrees of passion and flexibility.

Moore was beyond passionate, and clearly the least amenable to compromise of anyone on the hastily-assembled panel. Moore had a warning or two to hand out, and neither Democrats nor Republicans were spared his wrath. He tore into both parties for not listening to the will of the American people.

"When two-thirds to three-quarters of the American people want [Medicare for all], you'd think you'd try to make some political hay," Moore said. He said that "there are millions, tens of millions" of Americans ready to stand up for a single-payer system, and predicted that the White House and Congress will finally begin to feel that pressure.

"It'll make what was happening with the tea parties in August look like a Disney film," he said. "We represent the majority here. You're not looking at the fringe here."

The main targets of his message today were the president and the conservative Blue Dog Democrats in Congress. Beginning with Obama, Moore said that his message is that "there is not enthusiastic support for your plan... You seem to be all alone. The reason for that, with all due respect, is that you started with a compromise."

"You don't need to be alone," Moore continued. "We have got your back. We stand between you and the pitchforks that are being held by the insurance companies." He urged the president to start over without the premise of a compromise:

"You need to hit the reset button."

To the Democrats in Congress, Moore had "not an idle threat," but the promise of electoral backlash. He said that he and a coalition of reform-minded groups will come together and challenge -- in both primaries and general elections if need be -- the politicians who reject meaningful healthcare reform, even if that means supporting Republicans who "are smart enough to recognize" the need for healthcare reform.

"To the Democrats in Congress: Find your spine. Read the polls. See us coming... We will come after you. We will remove you from office," Moore said. "If you think you are afraid of a few people at a town hall meeting, you haven't seen anything yet."

After months of heated debate and with several healthcare reform bills already in the mark-up process in Congress, Moore's call for a single-payer system may seem belated. But he brushed off the insinuation.

"It's never too late... All the great movements work this way," Moore said, comparing the call for access to affordable healthcare with women's suffrage and the civil rights movement. "You ask for everything you want, and politics is the art of compromise."

While he hinted that a compromise on the single-payer system may be necessary (and indeed, several others on the panel, from NOW's O'Neill to United Steelworkers' Redmond, said they were hoping for a public option at the very least), Moore put his foot down, dismissing the Senate Finance Committee's bill as is.

"We reject any bill that doesn't have at the minimum a public option available to all," Moore said. "We will not compromise that position."

While the majority of his fiery rhetoric was aimed squarely at politicians, CEOs and the "cruel system" of healthcare in this country, Moore did direct a call to action to all citizens in favor of universal healthcare. He said nothing will change until politicians "feel the heat" of popular public opinion.

"Come out of your houses!" Moore urged. "Turn off Dancing With the Stars! This is the moment. We cannot lose this moment."

Moore's numerous references to town hall and tea party participants hinted at a desire to galvanize the left along those same lines. Though he sees their position of preserving the status quo as abhorrent, he clearly saw the utility of the tactics of the conservative opposition to reform.

"This is why some of us admire the other side, because they're relentless." 

Still, Moore didn't miss an opportunity to point out the hypocrisy of the right-wing opposition to Obama's policies, saying, "I love hearing the other side say, 'fascism,' because who would no more about that then them?"

Moore's call to public action extends to his film, Capitalism: A Love Story, which opens this Friday. At the end of the movie, Moore threatens that he will not make any more political films if people don't seize the opportunity they have to make change and stand up for reform, a sentiment he reiterated Tuesday.

"I have a romantic comedy I want to make," Moore joked.

Now that's a threat.

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