Confessions of a Democratic Whore: An Open Letter to Dr. Paul Song [View all]

[MrWendel]

http://www.thepeoplesview.net/main/2016/4/14/confessions-of-a-democratic-whore-an-open-letter-to-paul-y-song

Spandan Chakrabarti



Dear Dr. Song:

I am a little perplexed.

Yesterday at a Bernie Sanders campaign rally in New York City, you riled up a giant crowd by describing unspecified Democratic members of Congress and Hillary Clinton as "Democratic whores" beholden to the pharmaceutical industry that is the chief roadblocks in the path of achieving a single payer health care system.

After an inconvenient social media reaction, you first claimed that you did not mean to include Hillary Clinton among such "whores" though any reasonable construction of your own words would indicate that you did - after all, her husband did rescue your sister-in-law from a North Korean prison at the asking of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton - but that you had certainly meant it about Democratic members of Congress, whom you had been referring to in that way for years. Then you even walked that back and said you were sorry for using the term 'whore' against Democratic members of Congress.

Here's where my perplexity comes in. Dr. Song, as you well know, a single payer system merely makes the government the only payer in the system, but it doesn't necessarily address the payees, like pharma, directly. That is the difference between a single payer health care system and a socialized one. I am not saying that you should know this because you have "spent [your] adult life fighting for health care for all", but because you are yourself a rather major beneficiary of the pharmaceutical industry. You have been in the upper echelons of that industry for some time, and you're even a minority shareholder of a privately held pharmaceutical company in New York.

I'm sure your well-deserved windfalls from your pharmaceutical career helped pay for your lavish wedding which was featured in InStyle magazine, and this magnificent home in Santa Monica, California. So you could understand if some people thought that for you to be calling other people whores to the industry that made you rich is, well, a little rich.

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