Single-Payer Advocates Must Seize This Opening

It is unsettling to listen as President Obama and House Speaker Pelosi
talk up a health-care reform "plan" that has yet to take shape in any
realistic form.

The vagueness on the part of the president and the speaker is, of course, intentional.

Obama and Pelosi are still pushing the notion that they can get some
version of their public-private stew cooked up before the year is done
-- although not, it is now clear, before the president and the Congress
take the extended summer vacations that will kill whatever sense of
official urgency might have existed.

Neither Obama nor Pelosi is dealing in details because that's where the devil resides.

Here is the truth they tend to avoid mentioning: A robust public
plan, with the quality and flexibility that is required to make it
appealing to all Americans, would wipe out its insurance-industry
competitors in short order. Why would anyone opt for more of the
profiteering, restrictions and actual denials of needed treatment --
especially for people with pre-existing conditions -- that the
insurance industry uses to make money rather than provide Americans
with the medical care they require? And why would any employer choose
to subsidize the stock value of health-care conglomerates when it is
possible to opt for the better care and controlled costs of a public
plan?

Unfortunately, the creation of a robust public plan, one that can
compete on the basis of quality and affordability, will require a
significant federal expenditure in the form of start-up money as well
as regulatory protection for the program. That's where the devil comes
in.

The powerful insurance and private health-care lobbies, which fear
honest competition as the vampire does the stake, are going to do
everything in their power to accomplish three things:

1. Scare Americans with hypocritical talk about the hefty price-tag for getting a robust public plan off the ground.

2. Undermine the structural supports for a public plan so that it
cannot compete -- effectively turning it into a sub-standard
"alternative" that will appeal only to those who have no other options.

3. Fiddle with the overall "reform" so that most of the taxpayer
money that is expended streams into the accounts of private firms.

In the state of confusion created the industry's lobbying and
advertising campaigns, chances are that the scaremongers and the
profiteers will come out ahead.

They usually do.

And their task is being made easier by in-the-pocket "Democrats"
like Montana Senator Max Baucus, the Senate Finance Committee chair who is collecting huge contributions from hospitals, insurers and medical interest groups in return for doing their dirty work. If it was just Baucus, that would be a problem.

But it's not just Baucus. The monied Montanan has all too many
Democratic allies -- especially among the Democratic Leadership
Council-allied "New Democrats." The "New Dems" are far greedier and
more troubling players than the small cadre of southern and rural Blue
Dog Democrats. Of particular concern is the determination of so many of
the "New Dems" to follow Baucus' lead and grab up what Jerry Flanagan, a health-care analyst with the group Consumer Watchdog
describes as the "huge down payment" of campaign contributions from
corporations by that want any health care "reform" warped to favor
their interests.

The corporate special interests and their willing accomplices within
the ranks of the Democratic party are capitalizing on the confusion
about the scope and character of proposed reforms. In so doing, they
are creating a circumstance where the push for real reform can and will
be thwarted unless there is a major pushback from real reformers.

That pushback can and should take the form of a renewed effort to promote the right repair: a single-payer program.

There has already been some progress in this regard. The recent
25-19 vote by the House Committee on Education and Labor for an
amendment allowing states to create single-payer health care systems if they so choose was an example of this.

A bigger test could come this week, as the House Energy and Commerce Committee considers Congressman Anthony Weiner's proposal
to replace the convoluted public-private scheme that is outlined in the
Obama/House leadership bill with the easily-understood and efficient
single-payer plan contained in HR 676 that has been endorsed by 86
members of Congress.

Were the committee to endorse the Weiner amendment, single-payer would be on the table -- as it should be.

Even if the committee fails to do the right thing, a strong vote for
single-payer would send an essential signal about the need for a robust
public option.

The stalwart single-payer backers at Progressive Democrats for America are organizing on behalf of the Weiner amendment, urging targeted calls to members of the committee.

The website www.democrats.com is maintaining a whip count,
which includes phone numbers of members who are being targeted. Heading
the list of those expected to cast "yes" votes for single-payer is
Congresswomen Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisconsin, and Jan Schakowsky,
D-Illinois, who has long been in the forefront of the real reformers in
the House.

Baldwin and Schakowsky are staying steady.

And rightly so.

This is not the time to waver is our commitment to real reform.

Indeed, it is the time to press those who know the right reform to stop wavering.

Physicians for a National Health Care Plan
has launched a smart -- and necessary -- new campaign to get President
Obama to abandon experiments that are likely to fail in favor of the
reform he supported before he became president: a single-payer plan.

"Like most of our colleagues and the majority of the general public,
we believe that single-payer reform is the standard against which other
health reforms should be measured. Sound single-payer proposals have
been introduced in both the House of Representatives (H.R. 676, The U.S
National Health Care Act) and the Senate (S. 703, The American Health
Security Act of 2009)," the physicians write. "Single payer reform, as
embodied in these bills, would eliminate the bewildering patchwork of
private insurance plans with their exorbitant overhead and profits, as
well as the costly paperwork burdens they impose on providers. These
savings on bureaucracy - nearly $400 billion annually - are sufficient
to cover all of the uninsured and to provide first dollar coverage for
all Americans. No other approach can provide comparable coverage at a
cost our nation can afford."

That's the proper prescription. Obama and Pelosi should listen to
the doctors and follow it. But that will only happen if those who favor
real reform seize on this uncertain but not unforgiving moment to make
the case for single-payer.