Awesome:

The White House, blue dog democrats and the blue cross democrats too all wanted this thing settled by now. Their aim was to pass a toothless and dishonest bill that would take the issue of health care reform off the table without providing health care to the uninsured. For the last two weeks BAR has provided some of the damning and well-known features of HR 3200 which are rarely mentioned in corporate media such as the facts that

• few or none of the uninsured would be covered till 2013
• you could be forced to purchase junk insurance
• the right to bargain drug prices down has been given away
• the administration won't reimport Canadian drugs
• the public option will only cover about 10 million people instead of the promised 120-130 million
• the public option won't be able to keep insurance companies honest or drive prices downward
• the public option was emphatically NOT Medicare, and expressly designed not to lead to any version of single payer or Medicare for All.
• nobody knows what the "health care co-ops" which the administration has agreed might be substituted for the public option are, whether they are "co-ops" of health care providers or health care consumers or health insurance brokers or providers, and no explanations have been offered

As Barack Obama's family doctor explained in several interviews, the versions of the bill in several committees were hopelessly compromised and worse than no bill at all. And congress will not meet again till the first week of September. ...

The fact is that Democrats, including the president and his allies are deeply conflicted. To varying degrees, they are owned by the very interests health care reform would threaten. The act would be transparently obvious to everyone, but for a deceitful corporate media which allow not the slightest hint that any sane or responsible person has a point of view to the left of the administration.

The most salient fact of the health care battle not covered in the corporate media is that two thirds or more of Americans do favor a single payer or Medicare For All health care system that covers everyone. This view is of course completely shut out of TV, radio and print coverage, leading Americans to believe that their own beliefs are somehow extreme and isolated and not shared. But it's not. Congress knows, the White House knows, Big Insurance, Big Health Care and Big Pharma all know that single payer is ordinary, majoritarian American wisdom.

As such, it cannot be resisted forever. If it were not for hundreds of thousands of pro-single payer faxes, emails, and phone calls constantly bombarding the White House, members of the Senate and Congress and the corporate media, along with the unceasing background drumbeat of sinbgle payer activism in towns and cities and rural areas and on the internet, there probably would never have been a public option proposed, and whatever Obama and corporate Democrats have given away in the last few weeks of negotiation would have been surrendered before the start of any talks at all. ...

We need to come up with new ways of formulating our real demand, which is Medicare For All. We need to press that demand in two directions --- upward toward our elected officials and media, and inward to other ordinary people like ourselves.

Visiting the offices of elected officials is critically important, but not more important than communicating simple, effective single payer arguments to the people we live, and work and worship among. If you know the difference between the shrunken and eviscerated public option and Medicare for All, you need to tell your mother, your auntie, your co-workers. You need to pass on simple effective and persuasive arguments and demands, like why not lower the Medicare eligibility age three years every January till everybody is covered. Why not?

What Bruce said.