-If the unions that are now wasting time on this chimerical -"fair share" scheme would look beyond their own timidity and -self-interest, they could be the core of a single-payer movement. -Conyer's bill, HR 676, to universalize Medicare has 68 co-sponsors -<http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:HR00676:@@@P>. That's -not inconsiderable. A quick look makes it seem like they're pretty -much the same as the membership of the House Progressive Caucus -<http://www.congressionalprogressivecaucus.org/index.php?--option=com_content&task=view&id=16&Itemid=27>, -a group you've touted in the past.
And am holding multiple meetings with as part of my job. And guess what, almost all of them are supporting fair share strategies as well. Most of them see fair share as a step to attaining single payer over the long term.
-So there's a hint of a strategy: -support the supporters, and support candidates who support the bill. -And since single-payer -also polls surprisingly well, why is the path so murky and daunting -to you? It seems quite realistic to me.
Of course I support Congressional candidates supporting single payer, but the fact that it has less co-sponsors today than back in 1994, when there were one hundred co-sponsors on single payer health care in Congress, shows how little progress has been made since voters rejected it by overwhelming percentages in 1994 in California -- where it polled well in the abstract as well before the negative attacks started.
Here's the problem with single payer. A reasonably large percentage of people are happy with their health care, not thrilled with the cost but reasonably happy with the choices of doctors and so on. Any big change means they might lose that. You can promise them they won't, but no one will believe you after the negative ads, so they will overhwhelmingly vote for the status quo.
It's partly that hard fought lesson that has led most health care reformers to concentrate on measures to expand coverage for those without coverage -- which does have overwhelming support -- and which doesn't make people with existing coverage fear losing it. You can argue that the present system is inefficient and so on, and I won't disagree, but I want children to stop dying because they didn't have basic preventive care and help families get coverage. And most advocates see step-by-step expansion as a far more likely success than a massive conversion to single payer all at once.
One thing I like about fair share is that it does have a built in glide path to single payer. Impose a heavy health care mandate on employers OR they can pay a tax to the state and their employees get covered that way. If you design the system with the right incentives and a more efficient publicly-run system for the uninsured is created, employers will find it cheaper to pay the tax than provide private insurance for their employees. Over time, you end up de facto with a single payer system without the big bang change that frightens voters.
Nathan Newman