What strikes me about the three quotations I start with above is how they really encapsulate the single-payer problem in the upcoming universal health care debate. Single-payer advocates are often dedicated and strong-willed grassroots activists for their cause - but they are as of now marginalized in the policy discussion, with a public that doesn’t really understand its options. Single-payer advocates have already lost the crucial framing of the current universal health care political debate because as noted the compromises for ’some sort of universal health care’ are what’s on the table - not adherence to single-payer, or we walk away. The time to win the debate was before, or at worst, during the Democratic primary. Part of why single-payer advocates have lost for now, I suspect, is because they lack the resources of “K-Street professionals” and are, as a group, not as experienced or skilled at “building mailing lists and fundraising and get[ting]-out-the vote for November.” Look at Massachusetts’ recent reform, or what happened much earlier in 2002 in Oregon, where single-payer forces lost massively...

Let's look at the assumptions here.