What I was trying to get at in my rambling initial post (besides the obvious to look at the latest polling research) was that there is popular support for drastic changes in US health care (as there has been for some time). The popular support surprisingly includes a near majority actively for single-payer or socialized delivery.
I also think there is a lot of room for discussion about what "universal health care" should look like. You cannot get this if it there aren't serious proposals being offered. You will not get this if you think doctors should lead the charge (Physicians for a National Health Plan do a lot of good work but they make compromises based on their trying to organize a specific group--the level of autonomy they are willing to give doctor's reproduces much of what is wrong with current practices).
There have been attempts to extend our current system, to universal but have largely failed because of costs (Hawaii, Mass, and Maine is headed that way from the start). [Most activist strategies focused on "health care as a right" or other simplistic "kid in a candy store" politics are pretty impractical--health care costs money and more importantly has seemingly unlimited potential to grow]. Single-payer has strengths in its equity of benefits, cost regulations, and private administration but there is a weakness in too much autonomy given to providers (who, despite their relative altruism, create a lot of expensive low benefit and unnecessary care). There are also potential to control costs and the growth of medicine through direct provision.
There are also hundreds of other ideas. I know this is something we all bracket into "we can cross that bridge we come to it" but there are important things to map out now. You cannot just assume that "HMOs" are the enemy ("big pharma" is pretty universally regarded as the enemy). Where I live, Massachusetts, big health care provider networks (hospitals mostly) are far more powerful than HMOs. We even have a community-centered HMO (Neighborhood Health Plan) that does try to serve the needs of the poorest people as best they can. I think the differences in private payers for health care is not that great (HMO v. PPO v. IPA v. POS v. old skool). They all "manage" care.
It all comes down to the fact the current system is not terribly equitable or efficient. It is expensive and that can cost jobs in import-sensitive industries; drain public budgets from providing stuff that make people healthy; cause tremendous economic hardship for people; and ripple out in a million ways.
There are lots of small things that may help but why not rethink the whole thing--that is the popular thing to do.
Peace,
Jim
"If they can turn 'slapping together a Big Mac' into 'manufacturing' can they turn 'taking a mulitvitamin' into 'having heath insurance.'
--David Rees
Quoting Jon Johanning <jjohanning at igc.org>:
> On Sep 17, 2004, at 12:17 AM, R wrote:
>
> > i agree something must be done. know anyone, or group, mobilizing the
> > grass roots approach you're alluding to, in the coming years or
> > whenever?
>
> I haven't done any research yet on the groups presently active, though
> I know there are a number of them. Health care professionals in
> particular seem to be getting more involved, which makes sense, because
> no one knows how bad the situation is better than them.
>
> What I'm hoping and expecting is that this issue will heat up
> considerably in the next few years. It might even come to play the role
> that key issues like the war and civil rights did in the '60s. The
> trouble is that it's a rather complex subject, compared with those; big
> popular movements generally arise when you have a simple, morally
> compelling message, like "war is not healthy for children and other
> living things," or "treating people badly because of their skin color
> is wrong." What the health care issue needs is some way of connecting
> the myriad flaws in the existing system, which people experience day to
> day, with the idea of the society running the system in a democratic
> way for the people's benefit, not that of the insurance companies and
> pharmaceutical giants.
>