there is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come. 2010 might be the year of single payer.

~~By then, he said, "presumably California and the other states will be out of the immediate financial crisis that they're facing." He said it's a "judgment call as to whether five years is enough," but said there are other ways to help states by allowing more flexibility on rules.~~

Uh, "immediate financial crisis"? That sounds like Larry Summers and Geitner pixie dust to me.

current plans and Obama's handling of the heatlth care (well, for him it's health insurance reform: How to feed the parasites while tricking the public into thinking he's providing access to health care) issue. Both agree Obama has deliberately remained vague, perhaps to avoid having any of his fingerprints of a plan/bill that might fail. Lieberman noted he has been vague from the beginning of his run for the presidency; he's AWOL on details. This means the public tends to remain unengaged, bcz there's nothing to grasp.

Dr. Angell thinks we will not get health care out of this go round. She suggested that perhaps one approach would be to expand Medicare by decades (of age): first down to 55, then 45 on, then 35, etc. This would give the parasites time to find other insurance profit centers.

Trudy Lieberman, who covers health care for the Columbia Journalism Review, and Dr. Marcia Angell are on point and to the point. And depressing.

People here have posted about and commented on what is said in this interview, so there's not much completely new. But the two have good ways of presenting the arguments. They note the plan Obama is supporting is a delivery system of new customers mandated to buy insurance from the parasites--at whatever price they want to charge. Dr. Angell, iirc, mentioned that one of the Blues is offering insurance with $20,000 deductible! Some with $40,000 deductibles!!

As always, video and transcripts at the Bill Moyers' Journal site (transcript will be up in a couple days).

That little old idea of expanding Medicare down. Progressives really need to ask themselves why no part of the plan expands Medicare, even to the 55-65's. Bill Clinton for saw this economic jumble and asked Congress to let 55-65's buy into Medicare. Just think how different our health care debate would be today if that had happened(though, clearly BC should have started there). Just think where our debate would be today if they had only done that when they passed the stimulus. Hell, many in that set, given the economic depression, will never work again, and yet, here we are building on what doesn't work.

He gets at least as many complaints from people who want a so-called "single-payer" plan entirely run by the government, he said.

Man, even when they are simply reporting that single-payer advocates exists, they can't but help to slide the knife in. "So-called" single-payer advocates? So belittling, so dismissive, so condescending. If "so-called" should be attached to any any option it should be the rightfully described so-called "public option".

I think we are starting to crack the ice, though. A little late in the game, but I noticed this article by the NPR ombudsman:

http://www.npr.org/ombudsman/2009/07/is_...

Then, yesterday, Tom Ashbrook had a debate on On Point between one guy supporting Obama-Care, and a woman from PNHP supporting single payer. It was fantastic. She wiped the floor with the little weasel, though Tom almost always seemed to ask him to talk first, which was irritating.

Then, today, from my local NPR affiliate:

http://www.wbur.org/2009/07/24/single-pa...

So, maybe they are starting to hear us, because seriously it was as though NPR had never even heard the words "single payer" just a few short weeks ago.