One thing I forgot to mention

In my recent post about health care reform, I forgot to include one very important point. Not only is single payer the most efficient and equitable means of financing health care, it's also quite popular. Numerous polls have demonstrated that the majority of Americans support government-financed, universal health insurance. In general, polls conducted over the past two years show that approximately two thirds of Americans would prefer single payer over the current system. Surprisingly, this level of support holds true even if switching to single payer would require a tax increase. (In a May 2007 poll conducted by CNN, 64% of the survey population responded "yes" to the question: "Do you think the government should provide a national health insurance program for all Americans, even if this would require higher taxes?".) The majority of health care providers also support single payer. The largest union of Registered Nurses, the California Nurses Assocation-National Nurses Organizing Committee, strongly supports national health insurance. 59% of physicians, up from just 49% in 2002, support it as well.

Given that large majorities of both consumers and providers of health care support single payer national health insurance, a majority, or at least a large portion, of our representatives in Congress ought to support single payer as well. That is, of course, if you believe congressional representatives ought to represent the views of their constituents. Likewise, single payer health insurance should have been vigorously debated as a serious option for the United States at the recent Obama administration-sponsored health care summit, if in fact "all options are on the table," as the President claims. Furthermore, single payer ought to be widely discussed in the media and advocates of single payer should be given extensive time and space on television and newspaper op-ed pages to make the case for national health care. Unfortunately, this is not the case in any of these instances.

The bill to create a single payer health insurance system, HR 676, currently has 93 co-sponsors in the House. In other words, about 1/5 of the "people's house" supports a bill that about 2/3 of Americans support. There is no single payer legislation currently in the Senate at all, though Russ Feingold (at least at one point) and Bernie Sanders are supporters. Apparently it's difficult to stand with the people, rather than with the corporations, when you have to finance increasingly expensive state-wide elections every six years. At first, not a single advocate of single payer was invited to Obama's health care summit, but in response to intense grassroots presure, Obama relented and allowed John Conyers (D-MI), the congressional sponsor of HR 676, and Dr. Oliver Fein, the director of Physicians for a National Health Plan (PNHP), to attend. Nonetheless, according to The Nation's John Nichols, neither Conyers nor Fein were allowed to give speeches at the event, while representatives from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, and the Business Roundtable were. None of these organizations support single payer and none of the speakers at the event did either. Apparently the "we" in "Change We Can Believe In" excludes the American people.

Media coverage of single payer has been similarly representative. In a report released yesterday, the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) argues that there has been a "media blackout on single payer". According to FAIR, there have been hundreds of stories in major national newspapers and on television over the past week on health care and health care reform, "yet all but 18 of these stories made no mention of "single-payer"(or synonyms commonly used by its proponents, such as "Medicare for all," or the proposed single-payer bill, H.R. 676)". In the rare event that single payer or its synonyms were even mentioned, it was often done so disapprovingly. Only 5 stories of the 18 stories which mention single payer included the views of single payer advocates, all of which appeared in print. Of the 10 op-ed pieces that appeared last week which mentioned single payer, 5 were a column written by Charles Krauthammer, originally published in the Washington Post and reprinted 4 times, which lampoons the concept of national health insurance. On the other hand, "socialized medicine," the misleading term preferred by opponents of single payer, appeared 7 times on television. (If medicine were truly socialized, both the financing and delivery of health care would be in the hands of the government, as in the case in the National Health Service (NHS) in Britain. In contrast, single payer, as envisioned in HR 676, would mean government financing but private delivery of health care, as is the case in Canada or in Medicare for elderly Americans. Basically no organization in the U.S., to my knowledge, advocates making doctors employees of the government). In fact, according to the FAIR study, "socialized medicine" is CNN chief medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen's term of choice when describing basically any additional government involvement in health care, whether the example is Bill Clinton's attempted health care reform from 1994, the Canadian national health care system, or the British NHS. Thank you Dr Cohen (Ms. Cohen?) and the rest of the media for doing such a great job keeping us informed.

The disparity between widespread public approval of single payer and even more widespread disdain for single payer among our nation's political and opinion elite is a glaring case of what David Sirota aptly calls the rootsgap; sadly, on most important issues, public opinion and elite opinion are diametrically opposed. This gap will make overhauling our disastrous health care system particularly difficult. Nonetheless, grassroots activism has already achieved some victories. For instance, if it were not for pressure from PNHP, pro-single payer labor unions, and other activists, voices for single payer would not have been been included in President Obama's health care summit. We have to keep at it, and I'm confident that those same folks will continue doing everything they can to advance the cause of a just and efficient health care system. Hopefully the FAIR study will shame some of the media into changing their ways as well. In particular, I'd like Bill Moyers, Tavis Smiley, Rachel Maddow, and/or Keith Olberman to step up on this issue. Come one guys, let's see a panel discussion on health care on your shows which include single payer advocates! Let's see one of you bring the facts into this debate, like the CBO study on cost savings from shifting to single payer or any of the myriad public opinion polls. Jon Stewart of Steven Colbert could do a lot to ensure that all voices are heard in this debate as well. Please, invite David Himmelstein, Rose Ann Demoro, or John Conyers on your programs! Or why not my man Dennis Kucinich or America's favorte documentarist, Michael Moore! There's no shortage of smart, dedicated people on the right side of this issue. They just need to be given a chance to speak out. So please, just give single payer a chance!