[lbo-talk] state by state single payer

Joseph Catron jncatron at gmail.com
Fri Oct 23 11:55:38 PDT 2009


On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 9:21 AM, Marv Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca>wrote:

Where is it most likely an attractive plan would emerge - New York?
> California? Illinois? Any reason the outcome would be different than in
> Massachusetts?
>

I nominate New York. We have absolutely no interest in bipartisanship (as long Democrats retain control of the state Senate, a demographic near-certainty) and, more importantly, actual radicals in key positions of power. Richard Gottfried, for example, is the chair of our Assembly's health committee. He's also a known red who once told a DSA gathering I attended that he makes it a point to quote Karl Marx - on how "the bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe [and] has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourer" - whenever he speaks to doctors. His counterpart in the Senate, Tom Duane, is an old ACT UP man. Both are die-hard single-payer supporters, and each comes from a Manhattan district where alienating some of your wealthiest and most powerful constituents (landlords, etc.) is a prerequisite of the job.

-- "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað."



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