This from Susie's blog stuck in my mind:

Mo on 15 Oct 2009 at 6:54 am

I blame the collapse of health care reform in the 90s with the Brittney/Christina/N’Sync/etc. wave of music a few years later. Day jobs that artists generally take stopped paying for health insurance, and parents stopped supporting their twenty-somethings trying for a creative career. Probably is also a big chunk of the reason for the collapse of the indie film scene in the US.

I know we take now that lack of support for anything non-MBA for granted, and the era of grunge soon turned into another bubble. But the early 90s were different.

Reposting from Ms. Madrak:

http://susiemadrak.com/2009/10/14/17/30/...

I just got off a conference call with Arlen Specter where I asked him why the Democrats don’t talk about the wave of entrepreneurship that would be unleashed if people knew they could leave their jobs, start a business and still get affordable health coverage for themselves and their families.

He was surprised, said it hadn’t occurred to him and wants me to give him names of people who would start their own businesses if they knew they could get affordable insurance.

Go to her post, and talk about your dreams there. I know at least one couple who'd ditch their day jobs and start a restaurant, if it weren't for keeping their family's benefits.

Why would any educated society rely on a health care system that has a stated fiduciary responsibility to extract as much money from its customers while giving them as little care as possible?

- Comment by Harry Mangalam on Paul Krugman's blog

Just one anecdote, and a mild one at that. I know: the plural of "anecdote" is not "data". So take it as you will.

My Mom is enrolled via Medicare part C in an HMO whose name will be changed to protect the people working for it who bent the rules a bit. I'll refer to it as MPCHMO. Mom is mostly pretty much happy with MPCHMO. Bear that in mind as you read.

Mom recently found herself suffering from a bewildering array of vague symptoms which were reducing her quality of life dramatically. Age-related? She decided to check it out.

This past Sunday, Representative Jim McDermott (D-WA) looked into our future and saw a single-payer health care system in it!

It's in our face," McDermott told a university healthcare group in a speech, according to the Monterey County Herald. "We can't avoid it. That's why something is going to happen."

[...]

"There will be a campaign to support this from the grass roots. You need to place pressure on your congressman," he said. "They will react to people asking them, why don't you do something? There's no question people can make a real impact."

[Welcome TalkLeft, Agonist, and Digby readers! --lambert]

Greetings! My name is Katie Robbins and I am the Assistant National Coordinator for Healthcare-NOW! and I will be "live blogging" right here on building the movement for single-payer national health care tonight, Sunday, November 23rd from 5pm -6pm! Please bring questions, ideas, and topics to discuss.

(Following up on this post and this one in the series)

The second of my chosen areas of emphasis is getting Single Payer Health Care more into the public awareness and mainstream thinking, and, of course, ultimately to get HR 676 or something very like it passed into law in this country.

DCBlogger and hipparchia have done an excellent job keeping us up-to-date on the issue, so I won't even attempt to duplicate their efforts here: just follow the relevant tags.

I will report on the Healthcare-Now! Rally for HR 676 which took place last Thursday in Times Square. and some of my thoughts coming out of that rally. And, of course, photos! (Not very many this time because my batteries ran out.)

Your intrepid reporter spent the morning in downtown Pittsburgh working the Labor Day parade on behalf of HR 676, along with other members of the Western PA Coalition for Single Payer Healthcare. The local letter carriers had kindly allowed us to march with them; as they were at the tail end of the parade, we had plenty of time to leaflet before hand, and we handed out the last of what we had as we marched. It was kind of fun playing carnival barker, calling out "Single payer, single payer, universal health care, everybody in, nobody out!" and shoving leaflets at people.