>I can't say I'd bet against that. But FWIW, part of what led me to this statement was the original speech I posted by Damon Silvers. I'm told he's one of the AFL-CIO's top guys on economics and strategy, and a key plank in his WITBD section was that unions needed both a health care system and a pension system that was independent of employers. And that seems like a bright line defining single payer, and dividing the AFL from from Change to Win.
McCain also had a plan to decouple insurance from employment. : )
OK, I took another look at that Damon Silvers' piece because I remember being underwhelmed by his statement on health care, which is (with a little context):
"The real policy challenge is to develop a strategy for dealing with the long-term crisis brought on by a generation of downward pressure on incomes. At the heart of this strategy must be returning to a legal and public policy regime that fosters a high wage economy. That means national health care—not allowing employers who do not provide health care to be subsidized by the rest of us. And it means a national pension policy to restore adequate retirement savings. And it means restoring the connection between productivity and wages by making workers’ right to organize and collectively bargain, and strike, real again."
http://www.iir.berkeley.edu/events/spring08/feller/
It's an odd thing to pick, if you're only going to make a one-sentence case, that the problem is that employers who don't offer coverage are being subsidized by the public. Sounds like a set-up for pay-or-play to me. Or, at best, it leaves room for a range of plans. Did I miss something here?
> Which is not to deny [the AFL-CIO] will support whatever they can get if it's better than what we have.
Thinking strategically, the AFL-CIO should go for single payer *to the exclusion* of these more expensive, more complicated, more 'practical' plans (i.e. the failed tactic of trying to be palatable to insurance companies). I say this not because in bargaining you go for more and split the difference, but because the strength of public support will be related to what segments of the population stand to benefit. Complicated, segmented plans are hard to understand and unite around and will benefit lots fewer people. In other words, our movement will undermine the very support it needs by supporting lesser plans. And whatever Obama-Kennedy mess emerges will also be attacked for its large public cost, further weakening the argument for it (a problem single-payer avoids). So on those two counts at least, it's strategically bad to support whatever, on the strength that it's better than what we have.
The Women's Liberation Movement actually opposed abortion law reform--famously busted up a legislative reform hearing--in favor of repeal. I think that's how we should be thinking about this, under the slogan a coworker came up with, "If it's not single-payer, it's bullshit."
Jenny Brown