[lbo-talk] Ingenious! Single payer redefined

[Jenny Brown]

Last night I spent a half-hour I'll never get back listening to a 
national call with Howard Dean on the MoveOn and Democracy for America 
strategy for health care reform.  The main point of the call is that 
these groups--having ceded the field to the insurance companies--are now 
trying to keep the Senate Finance Committee from jettisoning the one 
slightly positive thing in the whole Obama health reform proposal, the 
public insurance option.

However, in the call I learned that the phrase "single-payer," as in 
"Why the fuck isn't MoveOn supporting single-payer?" now has a new 
definition.

"Single payer" is not off the table, Dean told us in answer to a 
question, it's in the plan, by which he means the public option.  He got 
there by saying, well, people over 65 are in a single-payer plan, it's 
called Medicare.  So if we let anyone who wants to buy into a 
Medicare-like public plan, then they're in a single-payer system, too. 
You see, it's all about consumer choice.  If you like your private 
insurance you can keep it, if you want 'single payer' you can get that.  
So 'single payer' is now an individual insurance option you purchase.  
*Gag*.

Fortunately, several groups including PHNP and Healthcare Now! didn't 
get the news and disrupted the hearing, asking why the committee wasn't 
hearing from even one advocate of a true national health insurance 
plan.  Max Baucus: "We need more police." At the end of the disruption, 
he conflated 'public option' and 'single payer' so he must've gotten the 
memo, too.

http://www.healthcare-now.org/2009/05/doctors-challenge-exclusion-of-single-payer-from-health-care-debate

Jenny Brown