Here is how I see the health care debate.

Barriers to progress:

Health Care Parasites
They have a pile of money, a huge lobbying team who is experienced and skilled with plenty of personal connections. These parasites include both AHIP and Pharma.

Clueless trade associations who put ideology and class warfare above the interests of their members. Medicare for All would be a de facto grant of trillions of dollars to American business, but the ogres who run America’s trade associations are blind to that.

Versailles Villagers
The Village is filled with right wing stink tanks and agitproppolicy research groups who infest our editorial pages and TV news, to say nothing of out right payola.

GE/NBC/MSNBC
General Electric makes medical equipment (MRI machines, etc) which they can charge MUCH MORE for under our current health care neglect system. Under a single payer, where the buyer can say my way or the highway, the price of this equipment would be dramatically reduced.

Health Care defeatist
These are progressives who have convinced themselves that it cannot be done. I think that they are the greatest barrier.

Political leadersheep
Max Baucus, and possibly Ted Kennedy, who appears to have embraced Romney care. Then there are people like Schumer and Rockefeller who pretend to care about fiscal responsibility, but who in fact don’t want to do anything big.

Advantages for Single Payer
We have a plan that is ready to go and easy to explain.

Single payer costs less, the Canadian experience proves this.

HR 676 is backed by a broad coalition and a nationwide network of grassroots organizations.

We have an experienced and brilliant leader who has assembled a lot of serious political muscle behind this.

Our adversaries have an imploding business model and they know it.

Our biggest advantage is simply this: there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. In 1993 we weren’t ready. Things are different now, we are past ready for single payer.

Lincoln did not run on a platform of Emancipation, he was driven there by the Civil War. FDR did not run on a platform of collective bargaining, we won that by the 1932 Fisher Body Sit Down Strike, and similar actions all over the country. JFK did not run on a platform of civil rights, it was the civil rights movement that made it impossible for the country to turn away. Nixon did not run on a platform of environmental protection and worker safety, it was the liberal coalition that gave us the EPA and OSHA. Ronald Reagan did not run for reelection on a platform of economic sanctions against apartheid SA, his hand was forced by the Free South Africa movement.

Single Payer health care is an idea whose time has come and we have an opportunity to tell our descendants that we were part of the coalition that made it possible.