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A Seat at the Table for Single-Payer
This week, Senator Bernie Sanders has been firing on all cylinders as he continues his advocacy for real healthcare reform that controls costs while extending quality care to every American. Monday he held a town meeting in Burlington to discuss what we can learn from other countries that have developed cost effective universal health care systems. On Tuesday he met with President Obama along with other members of the Finance and Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committees responsible for drafting the Senate's healthcare legislation. Yesterday he arranged a meeting between single-payer advocates and Finance Chair Max Baucus--Baucus had previously not only denied them a seat at the table for his hearings but even had some arrested.
I had the opportunity to speak with Senator Sanders this evening as he took a brief break from ongoing discussions within the HELP Committee, and prior to his making the case for single-payer on The Ed Show (a case Schultz has featured on his five-night-a-week MSNBC program and in town halls across the country). This is what the Senator had to say:
Q: Tell me about the purpose of the meeting with Senator Baucus today?
Senator Sanders: The truth of the matter is--and I say this not ideologically but just from an objective analysis of the health care situation--the only way you're gonna provide comprehensive, universal, and cost-effective healthcare to every man, woman, and child in this country is through a single-payer system. That's just a simple reality. And the reason for that is that to pay for universal comprehensive healthcare you have to deal with the enormous amount of waste that is currently within the private health insurance industry. The estimate is about $400 billion a year in administrative costs, in billing, in profits, in CEO compensation, in advertising--all of those things which have nothing to do with the provision of healthcare...
In California, my understanding is that 1 out of every 3 dollars of premiums goes to administration. If we are gonna address the very rapid and dangerous increase in healthcare [costs], then the only way to do that is through a single-payer system which wrings out all of the waste that private health insurance creates.
So, you gotta put that issue out on the table and that's what we're trying to do.
The meeting with Senator Baucus is an effort to allow all of the people in this country--including 15,000 physicians, the largest nurses organizations--to at the very least begin to get a hearing [on] what is the most sensible proposal out there. I'm going to be talking to Senator Dodd--who for a while has taken over the leadership of the HELP Committee--about the possibility of a hearing within the HELP Committee. I don't know if that would happen but I'd like to see that.
I just think it's very important for the American people to understand why our system is the most expensive, the most wasteful, the most bureaucratic in the entire industrialized world. The only way you can do that is through the analysis that single-payer provides.
Q: What can you tell me about your meeting with President Obama?
Senator Sanders: The President wants a very aggressive timetable, I'm not sure that that can be met. His hope is that legislation is passed in the Senate before the August break. And that will require the Finance Committee to pass something, the HELP Committee to pass something, and then the two committees to work out their differences, and then to bring it to the floor and pass that. President Obama said he supports a public plan option and he [reiterated that] today in a letter to Senator Kennedy and Senator Baucus.
Q: What can progressives do to make sure there is truly a robust public plan option?
Senator Sanders: As a matter of fact, I've just come from--and will be going to in a few minutes--back to the HELP Committee where we are just discussing this issue. There are five different options--from strong to weak. This is not a mark-up, this is just an informal discussion among the members. But that is just what we are discussing right now. The American people have got to weigh in on this debate--get involved in this struggle --to say at the very least we want a strong public plan option. We can [also] make good progress on primary healthcare, expanding community health centers , training more healthcare professionals and implementing stronger quality control.
Q: Your bill that would allow five states to administer a single-payer system (S.898) --is that an incubator to move towards a national single-payer system?
Senator Sanders: That's right. And we're gonna push for that. We are absolutely gonna push for that. That came up at the meeting with Senator Baucus and it's something that I want in the bill.
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18 Comments so far
Show AllWell, as long as we're not making the rotten the enemy of the crappy.
Did I say that right?
· Yr Obd't Servant
That's right. Just because we're at a time where it would be reasonable to bring real reform, we don't want to do anything that would interfere in the ability of the corporations to milk the existing system. If rotten comes to crappy, we'll throw a hushpuppy to the Left. Sort of like McCain-Feingold was the pretense of moving toward perhaps maybe eventually getting the corrupting influence of money out of elections.
To me this Bernie Sanders seems to pass as a warm blooded human being. He talks sense and is aware of the world around him including the superior health systems that could serve as models for congresspeople to use in setting up single payer in the US.
How did he get elected?
He's from Vermont, the greenest state in the nation.
You can listen to him (and call in) every friday on Thom Hartmann's radio show. It can be streamed live.
if only looking at the menu were the same as eating...my pockets may be empty, but I can pull words out of them all day long...
How did Bernie Sanders get elected? Bernie is from Vermont, one of the sanest states in the union.
He openly calls himself aocialist, and he gets elected not in spite of it but because of it.
Its too bad that more Bernie Sanders don't get elected in the US.
There was another like him. Paul Wellstone from MN. Both were elected to the Senate in 1990. Wellstone died in a small plane crash. He was a vocal opponent of GWB's Iraq policy.
Too little too late Ms. Katrina. SP is being killed by Congress and all I hear is this worthless drivel. All this time Katrina can do nothing but talk about abortion most of the time on the news media and her dressing way too well is suspicious. Obama and Congress are working hard on losing and they just might get it.
And BTW, some editor hacked the headline to bits! Here's the original version:
Musical Chairs: Seat at Table for Single-Payer Turns Out to Be Toilet Seat
· Yr Obd't Servant
I think what needs to happen is for single payer supporters to target one member of Congress who is most responsible for keeping single payer off the table. Target that member to lose the next election and do it so that it leaves no doubt as to why he's being thrown out.
The obvious choice would be Max Baucus.
Oregoncharles
Just like the politicians, our hands are tied and we lack courage. How many progressives will refuse to make payments to the corporate mandated health care premiums? Not many, I'll wager.
I'm a progressive who pays his health care premiums. I may be dumb, but I'm not stupid.
"In California, my understanding is that 1 out of every 3 dollars of premiums goes to administration."
That's no surprise. In regions such as California, the problem plaguing US healthcare is over-arching and spans all sectors. Single payer healthcare won't fix all sectors. So the problem remains, and will likely plague a single payer system too.
What is this over-arching problem? It's well known that California's state government is chronically challenged to balance its budget. California leads the nation in energy gluttony, particularly with the automobile. When public works are provisioned in California the price tags are always astronomical. California leads the nation in real estate speculation/inflation. California produces far more than its fair share of war machines. California is home to the nation's greatest concentration of doctors/lawyers, obviously pursuing social status, not public service. California is where the media psych-ops strategies to manipulate the public are hatched and implemented. California is where the HMOs were pioneered, where HMO-like ideas proliferate, and are readily accepted by populations that are quite distracted with making personal fortunes with little time to smell the smoke coming from the kitchen.
The over-arching problem in the USA is Golden State Greed. Empire State Imperialism too. Single payer healthcare doesn't fix these over-arching problems. The solution is to embed in the K-12 curriculum the civic lessons to train the people to do their civic duty to ostracize the greed-stricken from the society. It's a tried and true method. Subsistence societies fully understand the need for ostracization for the sake of survival. What's newly understood is that it's also necessary for the survival of industrial societies.
"The solution is to embed in the K-12 curriculum the civic lessons to train the people to do their civic duty to ostracize the greed-stricken from the society. It's a tried and true method. Subsistence societies fully understand the need for ostracization for the sake of survival. What's newly understood is that it's also necessary for the survival of industrial societies."
I appreciate this attitude regarding education, although I question the survivability of industrialized society...
The one devil of a detail IMHO: If we do get a public option what provissions can be made to prevent private insurers from cherry picking customers and leaving the public plan to carry the most costly clients? That disadvantage will put the public plan in the position of high price or needing to be susidized and getting sniped at from the right. In ten years it will be declared a failure and used as a bludgeon against all progressive policy.
Give public plan a level playing field and private insurance companies will be closing their doors in droves. The private companies know this to be fact and will fight at every turn to hobble any public plan that may get passed.
I know Bernie. I like Bernie now. I used to like him even more before he voted to fund the war. Bernie was elected because the democratic party supports him. Dem/repub machine politics have total control in Vermont.
Vermont is not 'green' and it is not progressive. Those are myths. Sorry to burst the bubbles and expose the myths about Vermont.
The community health clinics that Bernie has been instrumental in starting are good, but they are only a drop in the bucket compared to what is needed. In the southwestern part of Vermont, there is a clinic. It is open only 3 hours per week. It does nothing to help with vision or dental care. It does nothing to help reduce health related bankruptcies. If Bernie succeeds in really getting SP in Vermont, his political career will be insured for life.
We need single payer health care to look like our public schools. The success of our health industry can duplicate that of our schools if everyone would open their eyes and realize the cost of doing nothing.
The high quality service I get from our public institutions (post office and DMV) can be duplicated by hospitals! Single payer NOW!