Funny how all these career "progressives" are coming out of the woodwork and saying they always supported single payer

Building The Mandate -- Digby -- July 26, 2009

I would certainly prefer single payer -- just expand Medicare and the VA to everyone and call it a day --- but I'm not married to the idea. (I'm married to universal health care and if there are other ways to attain that, then I'm open to it.) I just don't understand why anyone thinks there was any kind of mandate for such a plan --- or that there has been any kind of grassroots, bottom-up effort to build one over the past 16 years when the Clinton plan crashed on many of the same shoals the current one is heading toward. There was certainly no demand for this during the last presidential campaign, despite the fact that the crisis was well known and plans were discussed constantly.

I just don't understand why anyone thinks there was any kind of mandate for such a plan --- or that there has been any kind of grassroots, bottom-up effort to build one over the past 16 years when the Clinton plan crashed on many of the same shoals the current one is heading toward.

There are many examples of a national, bottom up movement for single payer, I give you the June 19, 2008 National Day of Action, which has links to posts which documents demonstrations in dozens of cities.

However, if we are to build a winning coalition we need to look the other way when people claim to have always supported single payer.

I dread the SCOTUS decision, whatever it might be. sigh

i'd like to have real socialized medicine, like they have in england, or spain, or sweden, or...

but frankly Digby has irritated the shit out of me with her rewriting. I took a lot of heat two/three years ago for arguing that other left-leaners are not the enemy, and specifically, that yeah, Digby was a patronizing ignoramus on health care, but that's not her field, so why bother? Now lately she's been writing about what a single-payer advocate she was. Human beings being what they are, she probably believes it. But this is not Medicare for All advocacy:

I recognize that there are people of good faith out there who believe that the public plan is a sham and that progressives are selling out their beliefs by backing it instead of insisting on single payer or nothing. I would just say that if there were any other path to getting reform in the next eight years, I'd agree. But I don't see that there is.

Not once to the best of my knowledge did she ever acknowledge that HR 767 with over 100 sponsors in the House of Representatives proposed to extend Medicare to All. She always wrote as though only a few fringe losers were advocating for it.

I guess the winds are shifting a bit?

http://www.jillstein.org/presidential_he...

In all the sound and fury over the Supreme Court's health care ruling, the simple truth is being lost: We know how to provide affordable health care for every American. There is a proven solution -- improved "Medicare for All" (or single-payer health insurance). It's working in nation after nation around the world. It is the only fiscally responsible way out of the health care mess. And it's not unconstitutional.

When President Obama slammed the door in the face of single-payer health care advocates, and abandoned the "public option", it seemed that we were doomed to debating slight variations on the failing status quo. But in the wake of the Obamacare/Romneycare crackup, we have an incredible opportunity to reframe the health care debate by injecting a long-time advocate for Medicare-for-All (single-payer) into the presidential dialogue.

Jill Stein, a physician from Massachusetts, has just won 29 state primaries to secure the presidential nomination of the Green Party. She is a powerful voice for universal, affordable health care, and we need to make sure she is heard. Putting her on the ballot will also give millions of Americans the opportunity to go into the voting booth on November 6 and vote for a change in direction instead of more of the same.

But Dr. Stein needs our help. Thanks to an outpouring of support from across the nation, she is within striking distance of qualifying for federal matching funds. She only needs to raise $24,000 more by midnight on June 30. That's not much money in the big scheme of things. But it will make all the difference in making sure Jill Stein is on the ballot across the nation and can impact the health care debate this fall.

That's not much money to ask considering all the money we've spent trying to get Washington to listen to us. We can do it.

So I'm urging you do two things. First, go to Jill Stein's website, http://www.jillstein.org/donate, and make a generous donation to her campaign. Second, please forward this email to your friends and networks who care about solving our health care crisis. Spreading this message is critically important.

Dr. Stein will file for matching funds on July 1. Please forward this email and help put her over the top!

Thank you for helping us open up a new dialogue on health care.

Sincerely,

Dr. Andy Coates, national president-elect, Physicians for a National Health Program
Katie Robbins, Healthcare-NOW! Board of Directors
Dr. Margaret Flowers, Physicians for a National Health Program
Mark Dunlea, Single Payer New York
Gloria Mattera, Physicians for a National Health Program

Thanks for the words and efforts. She really is the best option for now.

I remember I commented at Naked Capitalism some months back that Jane Hamsher had been a big supporter of the public option and that she had attacked single payer advocates even though single payer was popular among the fdl community. Jane then showed up basically saying I was full of BS and leaving a link where she expressed support for single payer. The thing was that one of the commenters at Naked Capitalism looked at the link and also its thread and pointed out that Jane had in fact attacked single payer supporters.

The ironic aspect of this revisionism among faux progressives is that we all cut our teeth using the internet to show how during the Bush years public figures would claim they had stood for one thing when the historical record showed they had advocated the opposite in the past. Yet now these same bloggers are making the same calculation that no one will remember what they said in the past even though it is all contained on the web.

Thanks, Valley Girl, for the link. That's one I need to put in my files for future reference.