Nathan Newman wrote:
>My maximalist demand is that everyone in the country get decent health care
>coverage. Single payer is just one method and I don't fetishize means.
>At
>the moment, it looks like a piss-poor unlikely means to get to the real
>maximalist goals, so why support it.
-If the conservative movement had embraced this sort of strategy in -the wake of Goldwater's massive loss in 1964, where might they be -today?
Why isn't decent health coverage for everyone a maximalist goal?
As has been pointed out, single payer actually doesn't get you that much radical, since it leaves in place privately controlled hospitals and other care providers milking the system for profit. If the means have to be maximalist, why aren't you trashing single payer as falling short of true socialized medicine?
-And...there's nothing stopping one from supporting incremental -reforms that promote a maximalist agenda. SEIU could say: "Our goal -over the long-term is a universal publicly funded system. In the -short term, we support any policies that promise to expand coverage, -like the Maryland initiative. But we'll never lose sight of the -ultimate goal." Of course they can't say that because they don't -believe it.
I think your maximalist demand sucks. It doesn't say anything about tax fairness in funding-- a single payer system funded by a sales tax would fulfill your criteria. Why the fetish for "public funding" over SEIU's core criteria http://www.americansforhealthcare.org/action/hcv.cfm which spells out full coverage and fair financing, while leaving the details open?
As I've said, in practice a move towards single payer health care is less likely to look like Sweden and more likely to look like Social Security-- a system with minimal benefits and which excludes large chunks of the population.
Tactically, a combination of employer mandates and expanded coverage to fill-in the gaps is more likely to achieve the goals of universal coverage than single payer. So why push the latter fetishistically? If a particular state wants to make a run at it, I'm all for the attempt as long as they don't sell out immigrant workers at the last moment.
-- Nathan Newman