> Or it can go the way of expanded Medicaid in the new "voucher" states:
> http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/148020/
>
> "State officials celebrated the federal approval Tuesday of a new
> Arkansas Medicaid program that will offer low-cost health insurance
> to small businesses...Arkansas is the 13th state to use federal
> Medicaid money to pay for health insurance for private
> businesses...The plan annually would pay for six doctor visits,
> seven inpatient hospital days, two outpatient hospital procedures
> or emergency room visits and two drug prescriptions. It would not
> provide catastrophic coverage."
>
> This is the publicly-funded universal coverage employers want.
> Voluntary and barebones and designed only for healthy people.
That the Right is pushing for publicly-funded universal coverage, meager and voluntary as it is, says something: an increasing number of employers want to socialize heath care costs (as well as pensions and other benefits) . . . on their terms. The Right's program may become the way of the future if leftists do not advance their own superior program of health care for all. It's a dangerous moment now, but it's also a moment when people who argue for single-payer health care can get a much better hearing than before.
Jim wrote:
> > Nathan wrote:
> > > How do the single payer folks on this list expect to win? That's
> > > what I'm
> > > not hearing. Zero strategy, zero power analysis.
>
> Nathan, to say this kind of thing is an indication that you'ver
> never read Yoshie's contributions to lbo-talk.
Nathan has a certain understanding of what it means to have a "strategy." When he talks about "strategy," what he means is how to write a bill that a good number of existing legislators will sponsor and how to mobilize money and other resources to get the other legislators to vote for it. Now, that's useful knowhow for some leftists to have, by no means to be underestimated, necessary when you want to pass bills like Wal-Mart fair share bills, civil union bills, etc. But mastering that knowhow doesn't equal to having a strategy to fight for single-payer health care. Moreover, such knowhow can be limiting rather than enabling, if it leads leftists who use it at work to begin to think _that_ is the only way to make social change.
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>