Oh, and Oleeb? You need to fix the typo in your title, in the word "Response".

MEDICARE FOR ALL. YES YES YES YES

Self fulfiling prophecy don't ya think?

If you never try, you are certain never to succeed.

Better to at least make an effort instead of rolling over and playing dead in advance I say. And that is exactly the strategy the President took this year.

Look where that strategy has brought us. We have a very expensive insurance mandate and subsidy bill that doesn't cover everyone and might, if we're lucky, maybe have a halfway acceptable alleged public option that won't take effect for at least two years and will only be available to those who either work for an employer who doesn't provide for any private insurance or if you cannot get insurance any other way. Is that really reform worth having or should we at least attempt to do the right thing and provide healthcare "as a matter of right and not of privelege" in a way we know will work, we know will cover everyone, and that we know will be most cost effective?

Oleeb - I respect the intensity of your passion on issues, but you shouldn't let it cause you to do here what you've done elsewhere (e.g., on Afghanistan) - misrepresent the views of others.

No, the President does not want a single payer system, and has made that clear. To claim otherwise is to imply he's lying. He said at one point that if we were to start from scratch, single payer might be a good idea, but we can't start from scratch.

I don't believe he's lying, any more than I believe most other members of Congress are lying when they argue that single payer is not a viable option at this point. This includes many who are promoting the public option.

Single payer might ultimately be a good idea for the U.S., or it might not. We don't know, because there is no example of its successful implementation in any other nation as large as heterogeneous as we are. Of the successful healthcare systems elsewhere, a minority are single payer, most involve various combinations of public and private insurance, and some are based purely on private insurance. They all perform about equally.

"Ultimately" is not now, however. To constrain the excessive costs of healthcare, it will be necessary to concentrate on the healthcare system itself, because insurance reform can correct only a very minor element of cost excess. What will be needed, starting now, is to begin to trim the duplicate or unnecessary facilities, tests, procedures, and specialty referrals that constitute the bulk of the cost excess. That, unfortunately, will require a downsizing within healthcare that will cost jobs within the sytem. It can be done to some extent by attrition, but will also require some painful job losses along the way. Given this requirement, I doubt that you can find many economists today, including those sympathetic to single payer, who will argue for beginning to establish it now in light of the fact that it would add to the foregoing job reductions the dismantling of an entire industry - private health insurance.

For these reasons, and not merely political expediency, single payer as an option in today's economic climate is just not in the cards. To convince oneself otherwise would be, I believe, a triumph of ideology over reality.

Those who favor single payer should treat it as a policy, not a religion. It may turn out to be a good policy (I'm not sure), but not anytime in the next few years, at least at the national level. Trials within individual states are something that might be considered in the interim, but I suspect that most states would be reluctant as well in today's climate.

Great attitude! This is what we need.

You should turn off the bold though. It makes things hard to read.

By the way, California could well pass Medicare for All on its own in 2010. It has been passed twice already in the legislature and mostly what is needed now is a Democratic Governor (like say Jerry Brown) to sign it. This may be our most likely route to a national system.

I'll also note this somewhat addled comment by Fred.

Of the successful healthcare systems elsewhere, a minority are single payer, most involve various combinations of public and private insurance

It's true that a minority are single payer, however, this is hardly convincing of very much because many of the rest are completely socialized! Of those which are neither, the system may function effectively as a single payer system (Japan) and in most other cases (Germany, Switzerland) basic insurance is still non-profit.

He "sold his soul". This is a "fact"....

This kind of comment show very clearly that there really isn't much difference between those on the far Left and those on the far Right. Of course, I don't disagree that there are powerful interests who have too large of an influence on decision-makers in this country. But you are far too quick to ascribe the motives of anyone who disagrees with you to corruption, stupidity or contractual obligations to the Devil., and it makes it tough to digest your often very intelligent points.

Fred,

We don't all share the same principles. Some of us believe the value is care not cost. It totally changes how you view almost everything about the subject.

I just spent 3 weeks battling a healthcare crisis with my 88 year old mother and I tell you there is nothing more crystal clear than the difference between the care givers, i.e., the blessed nurses and the rest of the system of care DENIERS.

Praise the Lord for nurses who help families defeat the bean counting cost cutting heartless care deniers.

Well, you tell me what you call it then. Do you think Obama suddenly came to a point where he thought single payer was no longer good for or desirable for America? It wasn't an epiphany that brought about the change and it wasn't "pragmatism". It was a flip flop in exchange for support.

Obama for years supported single payer. Then, suddenly he changes his position when he becomes a candidate for President trolling for contributions from the insurers. The insurers responded with great vigor to Obama's flip flop and became one of the largest constributors to his campaign.

How is that not selling one's political soul? I'd say that is the definition of that phenomenon. Obama received more campaign cash than any candidate in the history of the world and most of it came from people like you and me. He didn't need the insurance money or the Wall Street money because he had ours. Nonetheless, look whose needs are being attended to in Washington by the administration. Are the little people who collectively contributed far more than
Wall Street or the insurers combined having their needs met first? Hardly. Wall Street and the insurance industry which is closely allied with Wall Street are at the head of the line and you and I and the hundreds of millions of other common people trail far behind in the rear.

You may not like that I point out the truth that the President sold his soul in exchange for campaign cash, but given the facts it is a pretty difficult proposition to refute. And, BTW, it's just a metaphor. If you're more comfortable with a different set of words okay. For example, he flip flopped once he became a candidate for President in exchange for the financial support of the insurance interests. This isn't simply an assertion of opinion, but a demonstrable assertion of fact. Obama or his followers can always claim that's not the case, but when you look at the chain of events it is quite clear what led Obama to flip flop on single payer. And look what his loyalty to his benefactos got him? They are ready to jump ship and sink the whole thing because the are unable to restrain their penchant for greed. Oy!

And who is most likely to lose seats? Blue dogs that's who. What difference does a majority make if you have to rely on the votes of Democrats in Name Only? Not much as we are learning not just on healthcare but lots of other issues before the Congress. It is extremely shortsighted to accept "any" bill that can pass if the bill you pass stinks.

Tried and got refused. In 2003 when I applied, BU$h signed an executive order that went into effect 4 weeks earlier and knocked me out simply because I didn't have a Purple Heart. That's the real problem...whatever you've earned today can be taken away at a later day simply because of the politics of that day - doesn't matter what you were promised before.

This bill isn't going to win an election for the Democrats. There's too much wrong with it. Liberals aren't happy. Conservatives aren't happy. Most of the rest don't trust it.

The economy is more likely to defeat Democrats because they've forgotten how to identify with the needs of real people.

Costs...costs....costs... blah...blah...blah... Who can get excited about this party save for a convention of accountants?

You may be right about those baby steps, but don't forget that while we're thinking about maybe starting to get ready to find a way to work on making incremental improvements to the crippled public option we might get passed, the health insurance companies will be working 24x7x365 to undermine it and work around it and gain back any profits they might have temporarily lost, with interest.

It is their nature. It is what we expect for-profit companies to do.

But this would only work in a lab, not in the real world. The insurance industry and their allies would not allow the incremental approach to work and would do everything they could to wreck it.

The opponents use the same weaopns with the same zeal against a watered down public option as they would against a full blown single payer plan. Thus, the battle one fights is virtually the same in terms of difficulty. It's just when you set your sights lower, even if you win you haven't really won. That's the problem you see with all these "incremental" plans. Additionally, without the incredibly burdensome bribe to the insurance industry aka mandates funded in large part with government subsidies the insurance parasites will fight to stop it anyway. Why not just openly fight for what we want? Fighting as hard as you can to have a bad bill passed is no better than losing a fight for the kind of bill that is needed and perhaps worse if it puts off, as it most likely will, reaching the ultimate goal of healthcare as a right and not a privelege.

They did try. It was called HR 676 and it was designed to ensure it would never pass. Perhaps the Medicare-for-All standard bearers needed a bit wider of a focus to be truly effective.

"Medicare for All" has exactly the right marketing ring to it.

And it has the extra, added benefit, that it works, providing high-quality health care to recipients, fighting every day to improve that quality and working to control costs at the same time.

All that with very, very low overhead.

Medicare for All is change I can believe in.

Fred - You make some execellent points. I also think that you always need to carefully parse what Obama says as well as any other politician.

For Obama, he supports single payer as a theory. He supports it IF we were starting from a clean sheet of paper. But we're not. So single payer is off the table, at least in the short term.

You have been incapable of moving your party to be more liberal is what you are saying. Don't point to a failure to accomplish your goals as some huge conspiracy.

If liberals such as yourself weren't such condescending pricks all the time, you might make more converts and actually accomplish something worthwhile in this century.

Once again, you only show your own ignorance of history by ignoring those parts that don't suit your needs.

You keep mistaking your opinions for "truth" which is why your crew has been so singularly ineffective at selling or implementing anything resembling progressive policies for more than 40 years now.

I would like to hear how calling people ignoramuses isn't condescending. The fact that you think you aren't says way more about you than it does about me.

With "friends" like you, the democratic party hardly needs republicans as the enemy.