http://www.healthcare-now.org/lieberman-gets-another-visit-from-the-grassroots-for-single-payer/

Dr. Margaret Flowers of PNHP:

“As a movement, it’s important for us to continue to educate people that this is not enough, it’s not sufficient, it’s not addressing the problem that we have, it’s not going to be universal or financially sustainable,” said Dr. Margaret Flowers, who is with Physicians for a National Health Program. “And, at this point, it’s important to turn our attention to the Senate. We still have an opportunity at the very least to try and get the Sanders single-payer amendment that would allow states to pass single-payer legislation.”

We cannot seek a public option-based health care reform in the context of an incremental legislative process specifically pressuring for that, and expect to be successful. We must seek and work for, and move heaven and earth for, only Medicare for All, whether we believe we can pass it or not, and then, if we do fail to pass it, we must be prepared to use the desire of others for any reform bill, to compromise just once on a Jacob Hacker-type public option, without entering a multi-stage de-generative reflexive process that will kill the Public Option as an instrument for getting to Medicare for All.

So, I agree with ralphbon. I, too, don’t want to hear another word about deficit neutrality in health insurance reform. I want the problem of the private insurance industry and its predatory behavior solved. I want health care expenditures quickly cut to 11 or 12% of GDP from the current 17.5%, and I don’t care about any budget deficit, or the continued existence of the health insurance industry, or what Empress Snowe, or President Collins, or Benedict Arnold Lieberman, or Rahm, or BHO think, or any other BS the politicians think they can throw my way. All I have to say to them is: solve the health insurance problem and get rid of these outcomes, and these outlandish health care expenditures, or face my undying wrath and enmity.

Finally, make no mistake, I know that Harry Reid has the authority to write a health insurance reform bill that will substitute Bernie Sanders’ S 703 enhanced Medicare for All bill, for the very poor bills produced by the Senate HELP committee, and the Senate Finance Committee, and bring that bill to the floor. I also know that if that bill is filibustered, the Democrats can implement “the nuclear option,” pass S 703, and eliminate the filibuster in the bargain, if only they want to. So, if that doesn’t happen, the Senate Democrats and Harry Reid will bear the responsibility for failing to pass S 703. Again, they can pass an enhanced Medicare for All, single-payer bill if they choose. Let’s make them do it! Forget about the Public Option! Why should we settle for second best?

How many times do they have to prove it? These health insurance companies are just no good. You can’t negotiate with them. They have to get everything they want, or they’ll take their marbles and go home. After all, they’re the princes of the earth. They’re entitled!

Today, the health insurance companies, through AHIP, released a study by Price Waterhouse Coopers that they had commissioned. The study asserted that if the Baucus bill passed in its current form, insurance prices would rise by 40% between now and 2013, 73% between now and 2016, and 111% between now and 2019. In contrast, if no bill at all were passed, prices would increase by “only” 26%, 50% and 79% during these three periods. The report tries to place the blame for the variance in these estimates on the provisions of the bill that specify a mandate with weak penalties that young, healthy people will be more easily able to ignore than they would a stronger mandate.

What we need to do now is to get morally outraged at the whole legislative process up till now, and work to defeat everything “on the table” in Congress, and go back to square 1. And square 1 is enhanced Medicare for All. And the first thing we ought to do in the context of pushing that, is to seek a vote on S703, Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All bill, and, along the way, force a showdown on the filibuster and use the “nuclear option” to get the 60 vote nonsense off the table for good, so we can pass health care reform with a simple majority, and without the need for any deficit-neutral nonsense.

Again, I’m all for outrage, and even fury; but it needs to be directed toward the right things, and they are all the earlier outrages committed in this health care reform legislative process starting with taking Medicare for All, single-payer off the table.

”Everybody In, Nobody Out!

So, Congress and the President think that maybe if they can coax and finagle to get their sugar daddy medical industrial complex to waive the “pre-existing condition” obstruction for citizens we will all shut up about humane and affordable health care being a civil right for all rather than a privilege for the few who can afford it or who have taxpayer-sustained Cadillac insurance plans, like, say, Congress and the President? So, Congress and the President think that maybe we will applaud them for that certainly worthwhile concession but keep our blinders on as not-so-Cadillac plans inadequately service many (but God help us never ALL) of the rest of us?

HR 676, HR 1200 and S 703 are single payer bills currently wending through Congress. This is the my first assessment of the structure of the bills. More detail may follow if folks are interested.