Michael Pollak:
>But I think if he [Gore] made it a central issue in the general campaign that
>would be something else again. The thing about single payer is that
>you're either for it or against it. There is no such thing as single
>payer plus and everybody knows it.
Yeah, and I never thought 'conservative' could mean communist, or that 'universal health care' could mean the Clinton clusterfuck, or that 'prescription drug benefit' could mean giving public money to insurance companies, so I'm waiting for 'single-payer' to mean something like the government hires Lockheed Martin to administer Medicare. You watch.
>And if you're for it, you instantly
>amass enormous enemies.
Yeah, what's with Gore? A little late in the game to start channeling his inner human. I predict either he or this thought will soon sink from view. I hope I'm wrong, of course.
Measure 23 (single payer ballot initiative in Oregon) was voted down 79% to 21%. The insurance industry spent a mere $1.2 million to defeat it, which must amount to a slow day at the denial-of-claims desk. Bad news for those of us working on universal health care initiatives. Here's a note from Physicians for a National Health Program: -- The bad news: First, thanks to everyone who helped in Oregon on Measure 23, including Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports. Unfortunately, the single payer ballot measure was defeated by $1.2 million in insurance industry advertising - most of it in the final weeks of the campaign (after polls showed the measure doing well). In the end, measure 23 lost, 21% to 79%.
While insurance industry misrepresentation defeated the measure, it is critical to know that the industry's enormous power and influence over the process started before the campaign even began. The insurance industry was actually allowed to WRITE the question as it appeared on the ballot, stating falsely that it would increase income taxes 8% (see below). In ads, insurers repeated over and over that Measure 23 would increase income taxes 8% and payroll taxes 11.5%, never mentioning that the initiative actually would assess taxes on a sliding scale with low-income and self-employed individuals paying nothing, and that the taxes would REPLACE health insurance premiums and out-of-pocket payments, and lower the cost of health care for most Oregonians immediately (and all Oregonians over time). The grassroots campaign was not even allowed to write the title of their own initiative, even after appealing all the way to the Oregon Supreme Court.
The take home lesson - single payer wasn't defeated in Oregon; truth and democracy was - but only temporarily! More "lessons from Oregon" may be found on our web site at www.pnhp.org. -- Jenny Brown