Chris Frates of Politico writes another let's you and him fight article, but at least single payer advocates get to speak for themselves.

“These guys have unions as part of their coalition, but apparently they don’t understand collective bargaining. If you don’t ask for something, you’ll never get it,” said Chuck Idelson, spokesman for the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, the nation’s largest nurses union.

The nurses union believes that by not pushing for a single-payer system, HCAN and its allies are setting Americans up for failure.

Check out this quote by Richard Kirsch, national campaign manager for Health Care for America Now: Read more…

Letter to the Baltimore Sun

The Massachusetts health care plan, which was supposed to create universal coverage, has left hundreds of thousands of people uninsured because the premiums and out-of-pocket expenses are too costly for many to afford.

Have you written a letter to the editor?

The transfer of vital organs from the have-nots to the have-mores doesn't just play out in cinematic goings-on in seedy London hotels, but also in the humdrum precincts of the American health (couldn't) care (less) system. In a recent press release, the Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) reveal that "People who lack health insurance are about 20 times more likely to donate their liver or a kidney for a lifesaving transplant than to receive one". Read more…

One of the arguments heard here in the US from incrementalists in the health care reform debate is that we don't have to go with single-payer -- lots of other countries have multiple, private insurance companies [see item 3 below]. We could just tweak our private insurers to be just as affordable and reliable as theirs!

Not so fast, subsidy-breath. The following is basically a c&p from an article I found at the PNHP site, but I've done a little editing and emphasizing of my own.

International Health Systems for Single Payer Advocates

By Dr. Ida Hellander
PNHP Executive Director Read more…

Doctors Criticize Obama’s Health Plan

A group of over 15,000 U.S. physicians has called on President-elect Barack Obama and the new Congress to “do the right thing” and enact a single-payer national health insurance plan, a system of public health care financing frequently characterized as “an improved Medicare for all.”

“Our country is hailing the remarkable and historic victory of Barack Obama and the mandate for change the electorate has awarded him,” said Dr. Quentin Young, national coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program.

Want to Shut Conservatives Out of Power for Good? Implement Universal Health Care

John Geyman has an excellent post examining all the front groups opposing Medicare for All. Highly recommended.

Who knew (I certainly didn't) that there was a reception at the convention on Tuesday for co-sponsors of HR676, the House bill for single payer health care?

Dr. Claudia Fegan spoke at the reception. It is a very eloquent piece of advocacy and well worth reading. Here is the last bit:

It is time to demand what we deserve. It is time to demand universal health care. We won’t get there by urging the insurance industry to play nice with others. We will get there by demanding a singlepayer national health insurance; Medicare for all. Read more…

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

On waking from an opium-induced sleep, so the story goes, Coleridge hurried to capture on paper the fantastical world he had dreamed [or hallucinated, depending on who you ask]. He was rudely interrupted while at this task, and when he returned to it, all was gone but the fragment we have today. Read more…

Consider the case for a national health program

The words "socialized medicine" are like stink bombs. Drop them into a discussion of health care reform, and everyone runs for the door.

So let's try another phrase. How about "Medicare for all"?

Leon Zoghlin and Peter Mott have been members of Physicians for a National Health Program for decades. And when they talk about reform, they mean Medicare for all. It's been working well for senior citizens since the 1960s. Why not share the good? Read more…

Don McCanne responds to TNR’s Jonathan Cohn

Systems using private plans are more expensive, largely because of greater administrative complexity. Equity is more difficult to achieve in a multi-payer system. A system of universal risk pooling would have to be superimposed on the private plans, making us wonder why we would even want to keep them since they would no longer be providing their insurance function of transferring risk. Read more…