EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
A Real Win for Single-Payer Advocates
Canada did not establish its national health care program with a bold, immediate political move by the federal government.
The initial progress came at the provincial level, led by the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation's Tommy Douglas when he served from 1941 to 1960 premier of Saskatchewan. The universal, publicly-funded "single-payer" health care system that Douglas and his socialist allies developed in Saskatchewan proved to be so successful and so popular that it was eventually adopted by other provinces and, ultimately, by Canada's federal government.
For his efforts, Douglas would be hailed in a national survey as "The Greatest Canadian" of all time. But Douglas' regional initiative also offers a lesson for Americans.
Those of us who know that the only real cure for what ails the U.S. health care system is a universal public plan that provides health care for all Americans while controlling costs recognize the frustrating reality that there are many economic and political barriers to the federal action that would create a single-payer system. This makes clearing the way experimentation at the state level all the more important.
And, remarkably, the forces of real reform have won a congressional victory on that front, a victory that ought not be underestimated.
By a 25-19 vote, the House Committee on Education and Labor on Friday approved an amendment to the House's health-care reform bill allowing states to create single-payer health care systems if they so choose.
"There are many models of health care reform from which to choose around the world – the vast majority of which perform far better than ours. The one that has been the most tested here and abroad is single-payer," explained Congressman Dennis Kucinich, the Ohio Democrat who proposed the amendment. "Under a single-payer system everyone in the U.S. would get a card that would allow access to any doctor at virtually any hospital. Doctors and hospitals would continue to be privately run, but the insurance payments would be in the public hands. By getting rid of the for-profit insurance companies, we can save $400 billion per year and provide coverage for all medically necessary services for everyone in the U.S."
Votes for the amendment came from progressive Democrats who favor single-payer -- such as Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chairs Lynn Woolsey, of California, and Raul Grijalva, of Arizona -- as well as conservative Republicans who have no taste for single-payer but want states to be able to set their own agendas.
Opposition to the amendment came mainly from Democrats such as committee chair George Miller, of California, who have resisted moves to create more flexible, innovation-friendly legislation.
The Education and Labor Committee -- one of three in the House with jurisdiction over health care -- then apporved the amended America's Affordable Health Choices Act, H.R. 3200, by a vote of 26-22.
The campaign for to add the amendment was advanced by a number of groups, in particular Progressive Democratic of America, which mounted a last-minute campaign to sway Democratic members of the House committee. PDA Tim Carpenter is right when he says: "This is a victory for single-payer advocates. Our job in the ensuing weeks will be to ensure that this amendment does not get stripped from the final legislation."
And they will have powerful allies who will fight to preserve the amendment.
After the committee vote, Rose Ann DeMoro, the executive director of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, said, "This is a historic moment for patients, for American families, and for the tens of thousands of nurses and other single-payer activists from coast to coast who can now work in state capitols to pass single-payer bills, the strongest, most effective solution of all to our healthcare crisis."
De Moro gets it.
Allowing states to do what is necessary to provide high-quality yet affordable health care for all -- even as a federal plan falls short of that goal -- opens up vital new avenues for promoting, and actually implementing, single-payer systems.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
61 Comments so far
Show All"For his efforts, Douglas would be hailed in a national survey as "The Greatest Canadian" of all time."
Who will be our Greatest American?
Certainly not Obama, or the Dem/GOP cabal that control Washington on behalf of WallStreet and the Insurers.
ubrew12 wonders:
Who will be our Greatest American?
******************
My nominee for that honor (at least to this point in our history) is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Poet
"... the frustrating reality that there are many economic and political barriers to the federal action that would create a single-payer system."
The "many barriers" are, in reality, one and the same. Somehow, once the benefits were made clear by example, the Canadian public just overrode that barrier and cast its advocacy frontpersons on the scrap heap reserved for big time losers.
Surely Americans can be as insistent as those wimpy Canucks.
Canucks are only wimpy some of the time. We like to think of it as mellow. LOL
We'd be far from wimpy if our government ever tried to take away our Single-Payer Health Care. Having Single-Payer keeps us mellow. We don't have to spend energy worrying over how to pay medical bills.
Keep up the brave fight my friends. Single-Payer WILL BE yours. You will be happier as well as healthier.
The obvious next course of action, should Congress eventually pass a reform bill that still has this amendment in it (and that is not a foregone conclusion), will be to act locally and get our state legislatures to enact the health care system the people need. At some point, one would think, a tipping point could be reached when so many state have single payer systems, that the federal government will realize that a national single payer system would create even more efficiencies and bargaining power.
I wouldn't count on the feds (or any government, for that matter) to realize any such thing except if and when their own political survival depends on it, and that should be the case now.
Exactly. State by State it can be done.
Employers will be able to put people back to work at a lower expense than they now pay. This is good for the economy. Michigan and Ohio must be very proud of John Conyers & Dennis Kucinich. Their states have been hardest hit with unemployment related to the auto industry. The cost of health care insurance was one of the biggest expenses for the auto industry.
Due to the rampant institutional corruption and severe deficit of our national democratic process, any meaningful progress will come from bottom-up (as usual).
This is not really to be celebrated, rather another example of the corruption and democratic deficit. Once we have a single-payer, fair and efficient system to rival the rest of the developed world (and many developing countries) we can then celebrate.
The ill-health and death profiteers will find it more difficult to bribe the legislatures of 50 states, rather than the US Congress.
How many more decades will it take?
Good to see some Republicans really favoring states' rights rather than just paying lip service to them like the Bush Regime did while screwing the states every chance it got.
This is a great moment in our stuggle!! Now we have to fight for it locally and statewide,and I know we can do it!!
"By a 25-19 vote, the House Committee on Education and Labor on Friday approved an amendment to the House's health-care reform bill allowing states to create single-payer health care systems if they so choose. "
I am confused. Was there some federal prohibition against states establishing their own single-payer plans? I'm all for single-payer, I'm just wondering if this actually changed the law or if it was just putting the ball in the states court.
Yes, the headline article cites the "Employee Retirement Income Security Act" for which the Kucinich amendment provides a waiver.
Seems Kucinich has scored a real coup through some brilliant maneuvering.
If he thought he had problems with getting a presidential endorsement from his current party's "leadership" before, one can't help wondering how many small aircraft trips he has planned for the near future.
I'd say its hands-down the most brilliant move of Kucinich's Congressional career.
People don't seem to have caught the most brilliant bit of it though: Kucinich's appeal to the 10th Amendment that won over many of the committee Repubs.
With this one move he just positioned himself to the "right" of Obama and the corporatist Dems on State's rights in the eyes of the millions who see the "right" as correct, and State's rights as Constitutionally preeminent.
Now if he'd just drop the Dems and form a Constitutional Progress Party!
I'll give Kucinich some bonus points for taking a few hours to read Geo. W. Bush's war crimes and violations of his oath of office into the Congressional Record last year. The history is in the Congressional Record, just in case those "memoirs" start sounding like fiction.
No offense to the incurably optimistic, but this consolation prize doesn't appear to be a magic bean that will lodge and sprout between the pillars of the present corporate/government alliance and eventually bring it down.
It portends a struggle for single-payer proceeding as the struggle for gay marriage seems to be proceeding-- by fits and starts, with states and courts thrashing out the details. The hope is that the population will reach a tipping point that finally erodes the politician-protected, rigged status quo. I'm not much of a sports fan, but this is a drive that depends on punts and laterals.
It's a tough proposition.
From what little of the actual provision(s) is disclosed here, it comes across as a merely passive withdrawal of bureaucratic obstacles to establishing state-based single-payer programs.
Contrast this to the Social Security Act of 1936; omnibus legislation back in the dinosaur days when laws weren't written by lobbyists.
It established robust federal-state partnerships to provide social services such as unemployment compensation; in short, the federal legislation empowered states but also put its money where its mouth is. (You know, like the Obama-championed largesse showered upon the banksters to rescue THEM from economic disaster. But that's a case of throwing money down a GOLDEN rathole, which is sound economic sense...)
And I'm also generally aware that these days, federal legislation makes funding contingent on compliance with federal standards; for example, the Clinton-era grants that required states to transfer to call-center technology, and reduced Ye Old Unemployment Office to a "Theory X" electronic sweatshop. Just an example, but I can envision state single-payer systems being trussed up and deformed by federal funding strings even before birth.
My native Pensylvania state legislature is occupied by self-serving petit-bourgeois apparatchiks accustomed to enjoying perks, lining their pockets, and fighting over who deserves more-- the decadent low-lives in the festering cities, or the troglodytes rooted in the Godly hinterland.
Aren't states generally crying "poor mouth" louder than ever, due to the economic turmoil of recent years? I don't see that there's a state, much less group of states, leaping into action to fund and implement in-state universal health care. Even if the politicians are finally worried enough about the persistence of single-payer advocacy to throw a few bones and blow a few kisses to We the Cheated and Betrayed, the corporations are still a national force-- multi-national, actually.
I hope there's an angel in the details.
· Yr Obd't Servant
Nice post OS!
"...state legislature is occupied by self-serving petit-bourgeois apparatchiks accustomed to enjoying perks, lining their pockets, and fighting over who deserves more..."
that sounds so familiar,
Unless I'm misreading the optimistic viewpoints, the main hope seems to be based on a kind of domino theory that, if even one major state can be persuaded to adopt a single-payer system, others will be compelled to do likewise as a matter of self interest or face the possibility of everyone moving at once.
Even so, as you point out, getting that first domino to fall against the nation-wide strength of corporate opposition could be quite a tussle.
I bring you the angel in the details.
The amendment for use by the states, if they so choose, can be found in HR 676.
You can read the full text here:
http://thomas.loc.gov/home/gpoxmlc109/h676_ih.xml
We're long overdue for some sort of advance, but this Kucinich memo-like bill just describes the current state of the U.S. federalist system.
As the Good Witch of the East told Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz movie, "You've always been able to go home. Just click your heels...." States rights is only wonderous to the unknowing. Any state can pass a statewide program.
I've heard no details about how a state might negotiate drug prices. If I recall correctly, a federal law already exists that prevents buying drugs outside the United States - which was one tactic to lower costs.
So, big pharma and the insurance companies could still screw things up for states at the federal level by bribing Congress and passing their legislation. And that's what they do now anyway.
Also, this concession essentially admits defeat for single payer national healthcare right at the time when people are paying attention to this issue. It takes the wind out of the sails.
Instead, it looks like an atomized battle to come, state by state. California single payer should have been a shoe-in long ago, but as people have noted, the Governator has killed the people's choice twice by veto.
California is also an example of how state law can be fucked with by federal law. California voters long ago passed a law that allows medicinal marijuana use, but it's been thwarted by federal and state law enforcement.
-TIA
This is strictly sloppy seconds that will never survive a House-Senate conference committee, much less the House itself.
It's just another opportunity for left corporate liberals like Nichols and Kucinich to pat themselves on the back with another token, dead-end, symbolic gesture between election cycles, when they will dutifully herd the electorate back into the swamp of the Democratic Party. It's the old story--noble words, feeble deeds, and everybody in the pool of lesser evilism.
People should be concentrating on battling unceasingly and uncompromisingly for a national single-payer Medicare for all plan. The rest, including the public option and this doomed state-authorization amendement, are just diversionary charades for those who don't have the stomach to fight it out for the real thing.
Even if what you say is true, it can still be a guide to which wayward conference committee members have sold out and need to be actively oppossed by the voters in their states.
Poet
The task is much simpler: anyone who has not signed on as a cosponsor of HR676 in the House or S703 in the Senate should be opposed.
We don't need to lead people down diversionary garden paths to accomplish that simple inventory.
While I agree in principle with what you say here, you should know that many co-sponsers do so as a fashion statement and when it comes time to vote they vote the other way.
Poet
It's better to at least have people on record for single payer--it's a barometer of the pressure on Congress. The current cosponsors seem reasonably solid--the traitors like Waxman and Rangel, who used to support it, have now jumped ship now that they're in a position to actually DO something.
The point is that the state-by-state method is just another variant of diversionary incrementalism. The states are broke and must have balanced budgets. It's a dead end, especially in this economy.
There are only ten Canadian provinces, so it was much easier to do it that way there. Here you have to slog through fifty state legislatures--see you for a "victory" party in the next century!
Congressman Kucinich says regarding his amendment, "Under a single-payer system everyone in the U.S. would get a card that would allow access to any doctor at virtually any hospital. Doctors and hospitals would continue to be privately run, but the insurance payments would be in the public hands." How can we expect states, some of which are already going bankrupt, to fund a single payer system? Let alone have the foresight to set up such a system. In my state (Texas) that looks like the most far-fetched pipe dream ever.
Then vote with your feet and go elsewhere or roll up your sleeves and get to work agitating for single-payer (or to replace the elected representatives who oppose it. Divide and conquer can be just as effective a strategy for conquering the health insurance industry's undue influence as it is in dealing with other issues where the frederal representatives have been bought off by corporate money.
Poet
Read the legislation.
http://thomas.loc.gov/home/gpoxmlc109/h676_ih.xml
Oh sorry.
I see you are from Texas.
I don't get it. Isn't this just enforcing states' rights? I mean I would love to see states create their own single payer health care and make other states jealous and plsy catch up when they find out the benefits but we still have to hold on to going national, no? And what if a state passes it but the Federal government forces the state to defund it or finds some way to preemptively block it?
Check out the headline article for answers to your questions.
The "way to preemptively block it" was already in place and is what this clause will remove.
Why would we need to "hold on to going national"? People would either move to States with the superior single-payer style systems of enact one in their home State. The nebulous benefits of a national plan are mostly in price-capping. Even the wildest projections for how much better the U.S. (280mil) would be placed to negotiate prices versus say California (45mil) show there ain't much "there" there. There certainly isn't enough to overcome the inheirent structural problems ANY centralized system as large as the U.S. "Federal" Government has, is now, and will in the future suffer under.
Don't get me wrong. I do support the right of states to enact single payer and I support national single payer. I just don't think giving up one or the other is a wise idea. Another problem is since each state will differ in creating and implementing single payer, how will this work between states? Let's say that VA passes single payer and I get injured while visiting Arkansas, unlike a national single payer, what's the guarentee that a statewide one would work state to state? I'm still somewhat confused as I've been stressed out for the past 2 weeks that I haven't been able to keep up with the latest on this issue. Sorry.
This SP state option is bad-odds dicey for the uninsured, at best.
More likely, it's just what the corporate doctor ordered.
In any case, it's certainly no cause for any USA progressive celebration -- the comparisons of Canada's gradual approach to a national SP system especially notwithstanding.
Canada's political culture is not usefully analogous to the USA's. It never has been. And for the foreseeable future, US progressives can only hope it never will be.
As I posted on a related CD article, only a few US state legislatures have the potential political will AND the adequate population/funding base to make a state SP system work as needed: namely, yielding universal affordable coverage for EVERYBODY, NOW: not in some Who Knows When or How fuzzy future.
Besides, as someone already pointed out: even where one or two US states have recently tried to enact such a SP system, e.g., California, corrupt governors veto it.
During his election campaign, Obama and his Party also wagged loudly that prompt/effective resolution of the health care affordability issue was crucial not just because of the pressing personal needs of 45 million uninsured citizens, but also because the US economy's short and long term viability required it.
Obama's campaign also wagged that this issue's sensible resolution was, additionally, a political crucible out of which Americans' belief that their government works for THEM, instead of for corporate lobbyists, needed to be and at least somewhat could be, thereby restored.
But it was all manipulative BS during the campaign; and it's even more cynically-manipulative BS now.
The shit of this issue has once again momentarily hit the fan, and it's clearly now being re-blown back, as usual, into the face of the reform-clamoring citizenry -- not to the offending corporations and their federal government lackeys .
It's no mystery why conservative power brokers and their duopoly myrmidons in congress allowed this state SP option proviso to pass congress.
Like Obama's election itself, the state SP system option is just another cynically crafted safety valve designed to delay and deflect any clearly defined showdown between the masses of America's abused and disaffected governed and their corporate hijacked government; a showdown that lying Obama, however, specificallypromised to lead in the name of the people.
The real mystery of late, is why so many USA progressives are suddenly willing to be fooled by this merely-latest Oligarchy-driven maneuver.
Because, once again, the issue of a USA national SP health care system is now and for the duration of America's distinctly non-Canadian future, effectively dead in the water.
The problem as I see it with a State by State approach is that States will be prone to the "free rider syndrome" wherein they sort of wink and nudge THEIR uninsured towards STates with a single payer plan.
It would not be overly difficuly to start an industry in faked health cards wherein States that CLAIM a market apporach superior due to ideology offload their probelms on the progressive states.
You will find something similar in Canada where certain provinces were much more genorous with hteir welfare and or programs for the Disabled.
They found they were attracting peoples from the other provinces.
You then get into all manner of moral and ethical questions such as "Do I turn this person away perhaps with the result that s/he dies JUST because he not from California??"
Canada has a problem with Americans and others using faked cards to get medical services . Just imagine how much greater this problem would be State to State.
I am NOT suggesting this a bad idea. I am just pointing out where problems will occur.
GwNorth, that's the problem I too envision. The best thing that could come out of this though is if some state enact it and when other states that originally refuse it finally give up and follow suit. At least in Canada, there's a national version of single payer to even out things. Too bad we're not about to get remotely close here in the USA. :(
Nice take and I cosign.
The reason I am all over this health care issue is because the reality behind all the blather and doomed to fail proposals is quite stark. The entire economy is doomed unless and until single payer is enacted. And unless you are for full scale single payer you are a fool and definitely not a progressive. But of course these days America and even supposedly progressive sites such as Huffington Post is still chock loaded with fools on the health care issue which, to me in a kind of juvenile way, is actually kind of amusing.
In a fight against a well heeled, highly motivated, vicious opponent, small victories are usually the only victories.
To lever small gains towards long-term advantage becomes key.
Here the state amendment will cause problems with fraud, as discussed in some posts. It should also draw business and revenue to these states, since it will drop their labor costs. Faster economy and increased property values will help state coffers as well.
I will speculate that states that pass single payer will also enjoy reduced expenses due to crime as well. Violent crime in particular corresponds closely with the lack of a social net. The correspondence to violent crime is more direct than other factors one might consider obviously related, like gun ownership. In most cases, advanced social services accompany strict gun laws, but Canada is an exception. It has far less violent crime than the US despite widespread gun ownership.
Once some states are freed to provide an example within the US, fairly apparent benefits should provide increased incentive to others to follow suit. States that have single payer will also soon come to resent other states for their lack of responsibility as people cross borders to defraud the system. That should eventually strengthen the movement for single payer.
Moreover, every state that institutes an single payer system will deliver a powerful blow against the insurance companies, reducing the largesse from which they bribe politicians.
I haven't checked this yet, but this Nichols' post suggests that we likely have a history of object lessons in the history of the movement in Canada that may help us see how to lever health care within states to become health care across the nation.
Send letters to your Congressperson, as i have to mine, and also keep forwarding emails as I'm doing from CD, Democracy Now, etc. We are the students and the teachers!
HERE IN CALIFORNIA
Both houses of the legislature have already passed a single payer bill, only to have it vetoed by Arnold the Governator. Next year I expect that single payer will be the big issue the Democratic primary election for governor.
Sooner or later a state will do it, and then, as in Canada, everyone else will vote for medical sanity.
For almost seven years, the: illegal and immoral attacks of Afghanistan and Iraq, the illegal and immoral invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the illegal and immoral occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq have occupied the political span of 4 congresses, yet no end is in sight and over 6 TRILLION DOLLARS has been corrupted away by those same congresses (Joseph Stiglitz, "The Three Trillion Dollar War", Donald Rumsfeld admitting in 2002, "The Department of Defense can not account or TWO TRILLION DOLLARS of expenditures." 2003 GAO Report that the Department of Defense could not account for another ONE TRILLION Dollars of expenditures.)
So, why would President Obama want to demand that there be Healthcare reform by August 31st? He wants to make sure that "Single Payer" is not an option and forgotten by the 2010 elections!
I suggest that "House Cleaning" be made an issue first: Turn over the occupation and policing of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan to the U.N.....Investigate the financing of the destruction of World Trade Center #7 on 9/11: (Yes, it was brought down with explosives and Al Qaeda could not have been responsible. Sorry Mr President!)........Bring to trial all those involved in "Insider Trading " on Wall Street. (If you are selling a bundle of 100,000 mortgages and know that 60,000 of those mortgages are bad, that is "Insider Trading".) GOD helps us, and the list is unending from Assassinations to Spying.
Let's not make Healthcare a NON-Issue in 2010.......You either voted for the "Single Payer Bill" or not.......But, to have a President say, "This is the best we could do!" when, he is still in Iraq and Afghanistan spending TRILLIONS and responsible for the deaths of over 1.5 million people so that a few oil companies can have obscene profits.....Enough with the lies and "Protecting The American Way of Life."
Herb
I agree with you 100% I bet you voted for Obama as well ! Now we can see we have been snookered by his smooth talking. He is a front-man for the money-interest in this country Wall-street and the Fed Reserve Bank. They have kept us dependent on foreign oil, and his energy bill will put Wall Street in charge of Carbon Credits ! Geithner and Rubin are in the process of destroying our US car industry, they have depleted our 401 accounts, all our homes have dropped in value by at least 30 to 40% all because these men created illegitimate schemes which snookered many first-time home buyers into buying mortgages which were going to blow-up in 3 to 5 years time!
Rather than firing these guys and putting them into jail Obama makes them in charge of all our finances !
Obama is going to keep us fighting and killing innocent people in Afghanistan for the next 10 years and watch we will still have a 100,000 standing army in Iraq for the next decade as well! As you say this whole war is corrupt. You mention the
911-destruction of the twin towers and building 7. Clearly this was an inside job!
Look at ae911.com . Scientifically there is no way these building came down the way they did without high explosives planted within the buildings! Yet Obama who says he will have an open and fully disclosed administration is telling the world that
it was Muslim fanatics that brought those buildings down!
Now Obama wants to give us a Health-care System that still keeps Insurance Companies in the mix.
Sioux Rose
SCARY-TIMES: Indeed (both to your name and your post). It's amazing that a lot of Democrats STILL think (in spite of the evidence you mention) that Obama is better than Bush, and that progress is being made. This is what happens when a nation's psyche is so intensely programmed by sports, that team affiliation trumps the capacity to see the truth as expressed in state policy (and less so through the interests served, the ulterior motives engaged). Obama is classier, and his presence may lend self-esteem to minority groups, but the policies are just a continuation of the hell-fire and missiles that Bush ushered in. One must also recognize Clinton's complicity by chumming the waters with NAFTA, the deregulation of the FCC, ending "welfare as we know it," and the cherry on the cake, taking down that wall: Glass-Steagall, I mean. Our government has been complicit in grave crimes that run the gamut, with one prez protecting his predecessor. There's probably nothing on the books as remedy for this level of corruption, when the highest office in the land is passed from one criminally complicit gem to another. The rot has taken over from within, and perhaps it's necessary in that a full-out process of astrologically marked breakdown (leading to eventual rebirth) comes to maturity in the next 3 years.
Sioux Rose
HERBERT: Excellent analysis!
The thing is media, akin to U.S. education, is very good at "separating disciplines." As a result, many see "defense spending" as its own entity and don't connect the dots insofar as a a hole is found in the budget where health care money should have been secured. A lot of people DO see the flamboyant bonuses allotted to bankers who failed to protect citizens' financial security, but instead won it all for "the house." They realize the priorities stink to high heaven in that arena.
It's been stated on the thread more than once, but the Matt Taibi article in Rolling Stone IS a must-read. It gives a whole new meaning to the term "insider trading." Now it applies to the entirety of the U.S. budget & expense account, and the financial class who get to play Monopoly with it.
And privatized healthcare is free? Single payer will save major bucks just by reducing administrative costs from 20% to 5% or so. No more CEO's getting rich by denying sick people treatment.
PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE IS A TAX.
You pay it every month, year after year.
If you pay your health tax to the government instead of to the insurance companies:
1. The government takes out 5% (or less) in administration as opposed to to 20 to 30% in administration, profit and advertising to the companies.
2. The government can bargain down the price of drugs and tests.
3. You can see any doctor anywhere instead of the few in your pool.
4. They don't blackball you for "prior conditions."
5. They don't tell you the coverage you need is not in your plan.
6. The government has the incentive to pay for prevention, which is cheaper in the long run.
7. The tax can be progressive so that the rich pay more.
8. By cutting out the profitmaking enough money is saved so that everyone can be covered while everyone still pays less - as is demonstrated all over the world.
9. Money saved by eliminating profit can pay for more doctors and nurses.
10. The US will begin to be able to call itself civilized.
* Arguments against? In France, "socialized medicine" takes away so much freedom that the doctors make house calls.
California will have single payer when we get a new governor, but I hope some other states beat us to it.
Regards,
Laurence of Berkeley
The only "real victory" for single payer is the whole country getting single payer.
This smacks of the habitual awful Democratic apologist line that getting nothing - or an actual step backward - is in fact getting something. It's what I expect from The Nation.
Note that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars received full actual federal funding, as did TARP. Single payer is cheaper than those; in fact it's cheaper than what we do now.
Why would the US have to do things the way Canada did? MOST countries with single payer did it in one fell swoop.
Sorry for replying to my own comment, but as I write this my state's (PA) workers are working for 70% pay because of a state budget impasse/shortfall. But PA being "able" (in all but the fiscal i.e. ACTUAL sense) to cover me is a "victory"?
I can understand your frustration, and agree that calling this a "real victory" is getting a little too slap happy. My wife still has a pre-existing condition that we can never get covered, that is crushing us financially even as she goes without all the treatment that she really needs. So I am not ready to celebrate anything. You are right that nothing has been won yet. But this move does at least give single-payer proponents a much stronger strategic position. Battles are won and lost based primarily upon the position from which they are fought.
Washington is an occupied city. The only legislation that will ever be passed there is legislation approved by the corporate elites. In this corporatist landscape Obama was the very best we could have realistically hoped for and he has quickly proved himself utterly useless. The business of Washington is to help the economic elite steal as much as possible from the citizens of this nation. Obama has proved that he understands this and has been doing his part to make it so.
Kucinich has at least given us some leverage for attacking this on the state level--the level where real people can still hope to have some meaningful impact on the decision making progress. Single-payer activists have been working to pass resolutions for single-payer on the state level for a decade or more, and traditionally get stone-walled by the fact that state governments can't afford to do it alone. This Kucinich amendment provides a mechanism for funding. If it stays in place (a big IF) some states WILL institute single-payers, and more will quickly follow. I would not even expect the states leading this move to be "progressive" states.
The US has a lot more in common with Canada than it does with the other countries that instituted single-payer in a one fell swoop. And the countries who did institute it that way, mostly did it in the aftermath of WWII, when they had been virtually reduced to rubble and were in a position of having to build back up. Like any intelligent, informed citizen of this country, I would prefer to see the congress simply pass single-payer. But it is not going to happen. This move, at least, gives us a better position to keep fighting from. But true enough, it is no damned victory.
briggsseekins.wordpress.com
There are dozens and dozens of countries with single payer and they're all different. In what way is the US "more like" Canada than the others? We're actually very different from each other.
No, this is a very weak position for single payer. This is NOT a statement that healthcare is a right, but an option, which undercuts the central message. This turns one battlefield into 50 battlefields, 50 that the insurance industry is already entrenched in. And we now have to battle the funding abortion issue state by state.
The federal government CAN afford this and many states CAN'T. We now LOSE that argument state by state.
It would have been much easier to win this battle with the White House in the single payer corner. Instead we're sold downriver.
This "isn't going to happen" because people like you are willing to settle for less, on behalf of people who NEED more.
There are dozens and dozens of countries with single payer and they're all different. In what way is the US "more like" Canada than the others? We're actually very different from each other.
No, this is a very weak position for single payer. This is NOT a statement that healthcare is a right, but an option, which undercuts the central message. This turns one battlefield into 50 battlefields, 50 that the insurance industry is already entrenched in. And we now have to battle the funding abortion issue state by state.
The federal government CAN afford this and many states CAN'T. We now LOSE that argument state by state.
It would have been much easier to win this battle with the White House in the single payer corner. Instead we're sold downriver.
This "isn't going to happen" because people like you are willing to settle for less, on behalf of people who NEED more.
Dennis Kucinich again is out front with great legislation for our country. No one in either the house or the Senate has presented as many common sense proposals for our country as has Kucinich.
I voted for Obama for his rhetoric and promised removal from war. However since he has entered the white house I see very little difference in his stance from that of George Bush. Obama has shifted the war from Iraq to Afghanistan, This is outrageous
The whole reason for our fight over there is for acquistion of oil for oil companies. Killing many many people for Oil. How shameful.
Obama is pushing for Health Care that includes Insurance Companies - just horrible. He has put Geithner and Rubin in charge of our car manufacturing and it is killing our manufacturing as well as our economy. He has put Geithner and Rubin in charge of our economy and they have managed to make Billions for Wall Street but very little for the people who are loosing their jobs and their homes.
In the energy-bill in front of Congress now again Obama is putting Wall Street in charge of Carbon-credits. This is
outrageous ! Wall Street will make billions and very little
will be done to reduce our obscene dependence on Foreign Oil !
It is sad but by all this I can only say Obama is a front-man for the Money-Interest ( i.e. Wall Street and the Fed REServe Bank owners ). I have lost all faith in what Obama says. I always liked Kucinich but got
swayed by Obama's charm and smooth presentation. Kucinich has always presented the common man's logical arguments when
often times the rest of Congress would have no part of his
argument. Again hooray for Kucinich !