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

[GAC, part 0]

I read this stuff so you don’t have to, but you can dive into the 82-page PDF too if you like. Or here’s the earlier version, it’s only 39 pages.

 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 

August 21, Saratoga Springs: Health care rally for Capital District

Date : 21 August 2008 From : 11:00am To : 12:00pm
Category : Health / Care Location : 12866

Event Description :

A new coalition of groups called Health Care for America Now! (HCAN) is holding a rally outside the Saratoga Springs Hospital.  Read more 

MoveOn.org should query its members on the issue of health care for all.

WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, respectfully petition the leaders of MoveOn.Org to abide by its core democratic principles and ask the opinion of its members whether they support reform of the private health insurance system or replacement of private health insurance by universal single payer health care, before MoveOn continues to organizationally and financially support a new coalition which supports the former and excludes the latter.

WHEREAS, MoveOn has had extraordinary success because it has presented itself as democratic organization in which, as its web site proclaims, every member has a voice in choosing the direction.  Read more 

SEIU Launches Nationwide Actions To Question Health Insurance Industry Tactics

Last month, SEIU and its allies in HCAN (Health Care for American Now) held a massive demonstration outside of the launch of the insurance industry’s sham health care “listening tour.” Along with the upcoming events beginning Tuesday, SEIU will have helped stage more than a dozen actions nationwide to highlight insurance industry tactics that prioritize profits over people.

DETAILS ON TUESDAY’S EVENTS FOLLOW:

Des Moines, Iowa

Nolan Plaza

12:00 p.m. CT

Manchester, New Hampshire

City Hall Plaza

10:00 a.m. ET

Salem, Oregon

State Capitol press conference room

10:30 a.m. PT  Read more 

Health Care Reform Panel Discussion at Netroots Nation  Read more 

d-day has an excellent run down of the health care discussion at Netroots Nation. It seems singly payer advocates were out in force.  Read more 

In an article subtitled Meet the interest groups that will decide the fate of medical insurance he mentions murder by spreadsheet astroturf and HCAN’t.

Nowhere does he mention John Conyers, the 90 cosponsors, the the US Conference of Mayors or any of the broad coalition that has endorsed HR 676.  Read more 

Via Crooks and Liars we find out about a Health Care for America Now event:
Time:
Tuesday, July 22 at 11:00 AM
Duration:
1 hour
Host:
Lorraine at Progress Ohio
Location:
The Hyatt on Capitol Square (Columbus, OH)
75 E State St.
Columbus, OH 43215

Update - Politico  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 

Single-Payer Health Coverage, HCAN And Health Care Reform:

What strikes me about the three quotations I start with above is how they really encapsulate the single-payer problem in the upcoming universal health care debate. Single-payer advocates are often dedicated and strong-willed grassroots activists for their cause - but they are as of now marginalized in the policy discussion, with a public that doesn’t really understand its options. Single-payer advocates have already lost the crucial framing of the current universal health care political debate because as noted the compromises for ’some sort of universal health care’ are what’s on the table - not adherence to single-payer, or we walk away. The time to win the debate was before, or at worst, during the Democratic primary. Part of why single-payer advocates have lost for now, I suspect, is because they lack the resources of “K-Street professionals” and are, as a group, not as experienced or skilled at “building mailing lists and fundraising and get[ting]-out-the vote for November.” Look at Massachusetts’ recent reform, or what happened much earlier in 2002 in Oregon, where single-payer forces lost massively…

Let’s look at the assumptions here.  Read more 

What was best about the Edward’s Plan, and Hillary’s plan—last I checked, Obama was going to be “figuring something out” but maybe he’s refined his position—was that they introduced competition between a national health care plan and the insurance companies, hoping that the national health care plan would serve as a Trojan horse for single payer. Or that was the rationale. DDay seems to agree this is a good idea:

Now, what HCAN[’t] actually* favor[s] is a public option being given the ability to compete with private insurance, making gradual the transition to a national health care plan [which I assume is single payer, but maybe not]

(See the note for what HCAN’t actually favors). DDay concludes:

I think that the goal ought to be single payer, but anything that helps 47 million people get health care is positive

So let me ask: If you think the goal should be single payer, then why not support it directly and explicitly, right now?  Read more 

A question for Krugman, Matthew Yglesias, d-day, Ezra Klein; what makes you a better judge of practical politics than John Conyers and the 90 cosponsors of HR 676?  Read more 

SEIU Now and Then: May Democracy Be With You

The internal struggle and accelerating debate within the SEIU over union democracy is a positive and encouraging development. While democracy, dissent and member empowerment are on the horizon in SEIU and even in vogue in West Coast locals, it wasn’t always so. A reform movement and the uprising of Public Employees for a democratic Union within the former L790 serves as a case study.

Rob Russell for Tennessee’s 1st District  Read more 

What HCAN is really about…  Read more 

For aficionados of real-world political activity (what an idea!), here’s a quick report on my single payer study group meeting.

The topic was Medicare privatization, basically the creeping destruction of true public Medicare by the big fat gift to the insurance companies that is Medicare Advantage, aka Medicare Part C. After a cogent and depressing summary by the study group leader we had a discussion that reflected a lot of confusion about how Medicare works, which distracted from the politics. A few valiant souls managed to steer us back to the main point, aptly summarized by one person as “the insurance companies are driving us crazy so they can steal all our money!”  Read more