I do not know the entire scope of the movement (though I wish I did), and this is a hasty email, not a formal report -- but here are some examples:
In Kentucky, Kay Tillow of the union Nurses' Professional Organization has been leading an effort to reach out to union bodies at the local, state and international level (as well as and Central Labor Councils and other labor-affiliated groups) to sign up support for HR 676. Recent endorsers include the Washington State Council of the International Association of Machinists (representing 50,000 workers), the Cleveland, Ohio AFL-CIO Retiree Council, the Troy, NY Central Labor Council (representing 10,000). I've lost track of how many hundreds of organizations have signed on. She has been working also with recently retired physician Garrett Adams of PNHP who is finding real grassroots traction in a variety of venues -- and who is busy as hell with new requests to come and speak.
The California Nurses Association, led by Rose Ann DeMoro, merged with the AFL-CIO with the specific aim of leading a union campaign for a single-payer system. In San Francisco, Don Bechler of Health Care for All San Francisco continues to do backbreaking grassroots work, with, by now, thousands of meetings and speaker trainings and tens of thousands of names on petitions and email lists, including careful outreach to the unions. The keynote speaker at the upcoming SPAN Ohio conference is Leo Girard, the Steelworkers' Union International President.
Single-payer legislation has made progress in other states besides California. One of the houses of Vermont's legislature passed a single-payer bill last year and the grassroots efforts there continue. There are other statewide efforts as well, including one here in NY.
Then there is Marilyn Clement's Healthcare-NOW! <http://www.healthcare-now.org/> which evolved from a nucleus of hundreds of labor, religious and healthcare activists that met in NYC in 2004 during the Republican National Convention. A big series of Citizen/Congressional Hearings have been organized -- frequently swamped meetings -- to indict the present non-system and call for single-payer reform. (Please see the website.)
The question of "who's doing it" should not be allowed to stand as an assertion that there is no movement for single-payer national health insurance in the US. It is nothing BUT a grassroots movement -- naturally so, since this idea finds such tiny purchase among the corporate power elite. What we're talking about are thousands of small meetings of people -- from a dozen to hundreds happening across the country -- that have not only touched millions of people but continue to grow.
Andy Coates