The War on a Public Health Option

[L. Coyote]

The War on a Public Health Option
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
May 26, 2009 - http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/052609b.html


Editor’s Note: President Barack Obama and top Democrats in Congress have already surrendered on the possibility of a "single-payer" system for health insurance and now find the industry gunning to eliminate even a public option in a health reform bill.

In this guest essay, Bill Moyers and Michael Winship assess the money and power imbalance in this important fight:

In 2003, a young Illinois state senator named Barack Obama told a local AFL-CIO meeting, “I am a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program.”

Single payer. Universal. That’s health coverage, like Medicare, but for everyone who wants it.

Single payer eliminates insurance companies as pricey middlemen. The government pays care providers directly. It’s a system that polls consistently have shown the American people favoring by as much as two-to-one.

There was only one thing standing in the way, Obama said six years ago: “All of you know we might not get there immediately because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate and we have to take back the House.”

Fast forward six years. President Obama has everything he said was needed ...............

...

[librechik]

1. aw jeez, i'm gonna cry again

why does this country keep shooting itself in the foot?

[snowdays]

2. We got you into the WH Obama--now keep your promise.

[DCKit]

3. Last Friday's "Bill Moyers Journal" was worth the watch.

He laid it all out there on single payer.

[L. Coyote]

4. Donna Smith, Dr. David Himmelstein & Dr. Sidney Wolfe

May 22, 2009

Washington's abuzz about health care, but why isn't a single-payer plan an option on the table? Public Citizen's Dr. Sidney Wolfe and Physicians for a National Health Program's Dr. David Himmelstein on the political and logistical feasibility of health care reform.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05222009/watch2.html

Donna Smith,
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05222009/watch.html

Dr. David Himmelstein & Dr. Sidney Wolfe
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05222009/profile2.html