For More Information Contact:
Philip Kauffman at 503.250.0327
Paul Hochfeld at 541.740.4065
Tour Overview Video: www.madashelldoctorsvideo.com

Back From Whirlwind U.S. Tour to DC, Oregon’s Mad As Hell Doctors Hold Town Hall on Health Care in Portland. Address Problems with Current House Bill and Advocate for a Single Payer Health Care Solution.

Oregon’s Mad As Hell Doctors will hold a Health Care Town Hall on Sunday November 15 from 7 PM - 9 PM at the First Unitarian Church in downtown Portland (1034 SW 13th).

The Mad As Hell Doctors recently returned to Oregon from a cross-country tour on their way to Washington DC, educating the public about the need for a Single Payer, Medicare-for-all, health care system. Leaving Portland, OR on September 9, 2009, the doctors stopped in 26 cities and visited over 40 venues, culminating in a large rally at Lafayette Park in front of the White House on September 30.

At the Town Hall, the doctors plan to address the problems with the current health care legislation and to address questions from the public about health care and Single Payer. The Mad As Hell Doctors are members of Physicians for a National Health Program (www.pnhp.org), a group of over 17,000 doctors who advocate the single payer approach.

The recent passage of H.R.3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, in the House of Representatives and its failure to address critical problems with the health care system has motivated the Mad As Hell Doctors to increase their efforts to have single payer in the health care debate. Congressman Denis Kucinich says the current bill puts the “government in the role of accelerating the privatization of health care.”

Dr. Paul Hochfeld, Mad As Hell Doctors founder and Writer/Director of the documentary Health, Money, and Fear, calls H.R. 3962 a flawed bill. “It accomplishes a few necessary changes, but doesn't do enough to control costs or create a real system with which we can turn our focus from profits to health,” he says.

"The Private Insurance Industry will prosper and profit with tens of millions of new customers, some of whom will only be able to ‘join’ by invoking taxpayer subsidies. In the meantime we will have pretended to fix our health care system. As agonizing as this is, on balance, I agree with Representative Dennis Kucinich and Dr. Marcia Angell. False reform is dangerous. Better this goes down and we return to the drawing board to get the change we really need,” Hochfeld says.