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Bill Clinton: "Rationally, single payer is the best system"

lambert's picture
Sat, 06/20/2009 - 2:39pm — lambert

From nyceve's report on Bill Clinton's meeting with bloggers:

Then he talked about single-payer. "Here's the deal on single payer. Rationally, single payer is the best system", he continued, "our system is the worst, most expensive and least effective."

So, that would make the alternatives not rational?

Good to know, since we've been saying it for some time.

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bill clinton on single payer

By hipparchia on Sat, 06/20/2009 - 3:27pm

in 1991 --

According to Tom Hamburger, Ted Marmor, and Jon Meacham, Ron Pollack debated singlepayer advocate Ted Marmor at a two-hour meeting in front of Bill Clinton in Little Rock in 1991. Pollack promoted a system in which employers would be required to make payments to insurance companies. Marmor promoted a single-payer system. When the debate was over, Clinton pointed at Marmor and said, “Ted, you win the argument.” Then Clinton pointed at Pollack and said, “But we’re going to do what he says”

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Damon's picture

Ouch

By Damon on Sun, 06/21/2009 - 12:07am

It's so incredibly stange to see powerful personalities with the usual confidence to move a mountain turn into mice when it comes to single payer. There seem to be few other issues where mightly social advocates shrink so quickly and so much in the face of the most rational choice.

When it comes to something like foreign policy, everyone becomes a he-man warrorir. We threaten to obliterate entire nations, and subjugate entire peoples. Go to the moon? Hell, we'll harness any and everything (money and nature, itself) to make it work, even if it doesn't seem like the most rational priority. Implement single payer health care? Well, it makes the most sense, obviously, but we're powerless against the obviously irrational forces, even with an obvious majority of the country in favor of it. Does this even begin to make sense?

We've done incredible and necessary things before, in this nation, with far less popular support, no? We don't even have to throw caution to the wind, on this one, because it's not even controversial, anymore (that is, it's not controversial except those in the Village which, facts be damned, will convince us that black is white).

But, we've always been at war with Eastasia...

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healthforall's picture

We can do it!

By healthforall on Sun, 06/21/2009 - 12:27am

Here are some things you can do that will help:

1. Please sign Sen. Bernie Sanders' Petition to Congress supporting single-payer healthcare. http://sanders.senate.gov/petitions/inde...

2. Send an email to President Obama and ask him to support and work for Single-Payer Healthcare Reform:
http://healthreform.gov/communityreports...

3. Take more action for Single-Payer reform https://app.e2ma.net/app/view:CampaignPublic/id:28803.2122217397/rid:31dc2a66052589ee092f9d691388aee9

4. Thursday, June 25th---Rally for Healthcare Reform, Washington, DC
Join thousands in Washington that day to demand real health reform. Come
Great American Sickout. http://www.1payer.net/action-alerts/wash... If you can't be there, take some time to call your Senators and Representatives that day.

5. SAVE THE DATE: We are standing up for single-payer health care on July 30th! Join us in Washington, DC on July 30th for Medicare's 44th Birthday Rally and Lobby Day for Single-Payer Healthcare. http://www.healthcare-now.org/campaigns/...

6. INSIST that HR 676 be sent to the Congressional Budget Office for Scoring: http://www.1payer.net/campaigns/efax-sen...

Only a single-payer approach to healthcare reform will end the inhumanity of our failed healthcare insurance system, where profits are more important than patients’ health, and where people die because of it.

The outcome of this fight will affect Americans for years to come!

»

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