d-day has an excellent run down of the health care discussion at Netroots Nation. It seems singly payer advocates were out in force.

The panel was entitled "Time for Action: How the Netroots Can Lead on Healthcare Reform," and was put together by Eve Gittleson, who blogs at Daily Kos under the moniker nyceve. There's a good liveblog of the panel here, but what you need to know is that Gittleson stacked the deck. She had some great health care activists who are doing great work in different areas of the space: Giuseppe Del Priore, MD, MPH a New York cancer surgeon; Hilda Sarkisyan, whose daughter, Nataline, died after being denied a liver transplant by Cigna; Rocky Delgadillo, Los Angeles City Attorney, who is pursuing civil and criminal investigation into insurance practices; Geri Jenkins, RN a member of the Council of Presidents of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee. And then Ezra Klein, associate editor for The American Prospect and a health care policy guru, appeared at the end of the panel. The aforementioned speakers were all powerful advocates. Sarkysian, whose family HAD health insurance and still couldn't get their daughter what she needed, said bluntly "This is not a good country anymore." Del Priore discussed the need for doctors and patients to handle questions of care and the need to arrest insurance executives for their crimes in denying coverage. Rocky Delgadillo outlined the schemes, like rescission (even based on spousal applications), that insurers are engaging in to maximize profit at the expense of patient care. He also mentioned how California regulators ignored a million-dollar fine to Blue Cross because they feared they would lose the case if it went to court, which is just unbelievable. And Jenkins argued that the insurance industry will play no role in reforming health care, and we need to move immediately to a not-for-profit system.

Good points all. And then Eve turned to Ezra:

Eve: Ezra, why does HCAN want to condemn Americans to this kind of system? I get confusing emails from Elizabeth Edwards and MoveOn talking about the atrocities of the insurance industry, then marginalizing the only viable solution. Can you explain this new Edwards HCAN initiative, the TV commercials, etc. . . What's it all about? What are they trying to do? It seems there are three initiatives on the table--676, Wyden and HCAN. What's wrong with Wyden and Edwards? And a follow-up...what can we realistically expect from President Obama?

I hope you don't mind that I'm sand-bagging you. I love you, really, Ezra. I just don't agree with you on this point.

This apparently startled Mr. Klein. But for him to not know the position of Eve and the CNA and an activist like Hilda Sarkysian speaks a lot to his cloistered state in Washington. Because I know all about this fight. I made one positive comment about HCAN upon their launch and took massive amounts of crap for it. I was called a defeatist and admonished for not being true to the cause. My only point was that having an organization with $40 million dollars to spend on calling out health insurers on their garbage is going to be tremendously helpful to whatever reform we get through the Congress, and furthermore I didn't see them having much of a place at the table in the policy debate. In other words they were finally an organization concerned with moving public opinion and playing the health care debate out on political grounds rather than policy grounds. And on the panel, Klein echoed the importance of politics over policy:

Really, for some wet-behind-the-ears punk like Ezra to condescendingly lecture these seasoned activists about the realities of legislative fights is outside of enough. Ezra is too young to remember the Free South Africa campaign, so he did not witness the spectacle of a Republican Senate and President Reagan slowly backed into sanctions legislation by a determined group of activists. He has never seen this sort of thing unfold, so he does recognize it when it is happening right now. But if he had a clue he might have noticed that whereas we lost the FISA fight even with all of lefty and techie blogosphere on our side, but won the Medicare fight with hardly a peep from blogosphere, a more clueful policy expert would have learned something from that.

d-day goes on to praise HCAN for organizing demonstrations against AHIP's astroturf group. But those of us who have been paying attention know that HCAN's efforts are but a pale imitation of the National Day of Action.

And who is Ezra to preach practical politics to a lion like John Conyers or his 90 cosponsors. These aren't bloggers we are talking about, these aren some of the most senior members of the House of Representatives, some of whom are members of the subcommittee with jurisdiction. An expert like Ezra would be expected to know that sort of thing.

So I offer a challenge to d-day, Ezra, and all the other netroots health care defeatists to find the Medicare birthday party nearest to them, go, and meet the activists who are going to bring us universal health care.