Now North Carolina house candidate Marcus Brandon has pledged to introduce a bill to create single-payer healthcare in that state. Brandon, whom I know and like and who worked for Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s 2008 presidential campaign, is a candidate in North Carolina House District 60. That’s near Greensboro, where I can just picture Marcus sitting at a lunch counter and refusing to be provoked.

Brandon has promised that if he is elected, the first piece of legislation he will introduce will be the “North Carolina Healthcare Act” which will provide universal single-payer healthcare to every citizen of the state.

Brandon says that he remains a supporter of national single-payer healthcare and will continue lobbying for passage of HR 676, Congressman John Conyers’ bill:

“The HR 676 fight is definitely not over, but we must now strategically shift the focus to the state level. When other states see that we can cut the cost of healthcare, streamline our medical industry, and still provide universal coverage to all North Carolinians, then all of the sudden, single-payer health care doesn’t look so bad.”

Brandon argues that a single-payer system could save over $1.5 billion per year in reduced bureaucracy in the state of North Carolina alone. And he speaks confidently about making this happen:

“North Carolina is poised to be the first state to adopt single-payer, once I am able to introduce it. North Carolinians are ready for real solutions to healthcare. North Carolina has the third highest healthcare cost of any state, while it sags at 37th in average income. This is a disparity that most North Carolinians feel when they have to think about healthcare. Every day, as I am knocking on doors to talk to voters, I hear stories of people who cannot afford insurance and become victims of this for-profit industry.”

Brandon says his bill is similar to other states’ initiatives such as the “Minnesota Health Act” or the “California Universal Healthcare Act.” Brandon points to these two bills as excellent examples of how a single payer healthcare system could be both fiscally sound and provide full coverage.

Brandon served in 2007 and 2008 as Dennis Kucinich’s National Finance Director and Deputy Campaign Manager. He says that Kucinich inspired him:

“Dennis urged me to run for office so we could build a state-by-state grassroots movement for single payer and other progressive issues. My campaign for the North Carolina House is an extension of the work I did with Dennis Kucinich.”

While Kucinich has struggled unsuccessfully thus far to pass federal legislation facilitating the state creation of single-payer healthcare systems, states are pressign ahead and will deal with lawsuits from “health” corporations when and if they arise.

Marcus Brandon’s website is at
http://www.marcusbrandon.com

He has a primary on May 4th. Those who want a real healthcare system in this country would be wise to pour money into his campaign and those of other state leaders across the country.

Alternatively we could keep putting all our eggs in the basket of fantasies about the United States Senate getting its act together.

David Swanson is co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org and author of the new book Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town by visiting davidswanson.org/book.

From TPR’s favorite blog, The Political Carnival, where this post was originally published:

My thoughts on health care reform are a work in progress, so this post may become obsolete by the time it’s completed.

I am Laffy. I have health care PMS.

“Hi Laffy!”

I’ve had health care reform mood swings that no dinky little Bayer Pharmaceutical Inc. Midol pill can remedy. One day I’m given information that has me walking on smoggy L.A. air, and the next, I’m falling to the ground with a thud. Not just any old thud, a resounding thud.

The Conservadems have confiscated my health care iPhone, which means my optimism apps are inaccessible. The Rushpublics have constructed a typically badly designed brick wall, so I keep slamming my liberal noggin on it and am running short of Bayer Pharmaceutical Inc. Bactine. Traitor Joe Lieberman has pulled away my Charlie Brown football so often that even my own cats are pointing and laughing at me.

My emotional state runs the gamut from “We can still do this, it’s just the beginning of a very long fight” to “WTF?! Screw Congress, where’d President Yes We Can go? I’m going all Howard Dean, and then I’m gonna go hide under my covers and pout and never vote again”… to, “Well, I do see a few improvements, it’s farther than we’ve gotten in years, so go for it”. And then I cry. And scream. And sigh. And start all over again.

Today Senator Bernie Sanders is introducing a single payer amendment. It will go nowhere. But it feeds into my instinct to keep fighting.

This morning on the Stephanie Miller Show, Hal Sparks said of Dems who are feeling impatient, “It’s like shaking a baby who is learning to walk and keeps falling, and yelling at him, ‘Just do it already! Get up and walk! What’s your problem?!’”

And all these conflicting emotions stem from having high expectations and seeing them crash around me. Where did those expectations come from?

This is where I may differ with a lot of you. Most of them didn’t come from Obama. I’ve always seen him as a centrist who is willing to play with the boys and girls I don’t like. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been disappointed by him, but not entirely surprised. He wanted a health care bill passed, but not necessarily a good bill, not the one you and I want. He said as much. He just said it in such a way that convinced us he was for the same bill we were.

But he revealed many a clue that suggested his idea of a good bill and mine differed.

I am more disgusted with Congress. I had faith in the Progressives, and was buoyed by their happy talk. Obama made deals early on that signaled his willingness to compromise away the best parts of real reform. Just as, during the election, he campaigned on escalation in Afghanistan, lowering my hopes for peace, he also worded his health care campaign promises in a way that told me he’d do pretty much what he’s doing. But I still wanted to believe my health care wishes would come true, and that the Progressives in Congress could make that happen.

I can’t say I’m shocked. And yes, I’m angry, but again, not surprised. Obama promised change, but my early research told me that his words didn’t always match his policies. I enthusiastically supported him because I did, and still do, like him and much of what he has done, and come on, the McCain/Palin alternative would have been disastrous. Plus, look what he inherited.

So how do I shake off my health care PMS? Today’s mood swing dictates that I fight, that we all should fight, and not give up. We should campaign hard for 2010 candidates who share our goals, we should donate when we can, we should make calls to current Congress members until our dialing fingers fall off, we should do whatever it is we can to make our voices heard.

Because, realistically, taking our toys and stomping home won’t accomplish a thing. Crawling under the covers doesn’t eliminate cramps and headaches. I’m going to self-medicate with effort, forward thinking, and action. Defeat is not an option. My health care reform PMS can be treated. As I tell my most despondent students, life is fluid. Things never stay the same, they continue to change.

But it’s up to us to do everything possible to make that change happen.

I may feel differently in an hour. Damn mood swings.

The demonstration “Patients before Profits” is supported by Mobilization for Health Care for All, which coordinated sit-ins in nine cities where 54 people were arrested.

Produced by Lyn Goldfarb in association with Ramblin’ Man Films.

They started out by immediately blackballing any discussion of real health reform in the form of an expansion of Medicare to cover everyone of every age, which of course would have ended the problem of the uninsured, while cutting the nation’s overall health bill by at least a third, but in the process shutting down the private health insurance business.

Then they chipped away and are at this point on the verge of eliminating any so-called “public option” or government-run health insurance plan to even compete with the private insurance sector.

Finally, in a move as breathtakingly accommodating of the insurance industry as was the multi-trillion-dollar bailout financial bailout of Wall Street’s biggest banks, they proposed to require (on pain of a $3800 fine by the IRS) to require everyone in America to buy a health insurance plan from the private sector—a gift to the industry of some 40-50 million new unwilling customers.

But a combination of public outrage at this compulsory program of insurance and recognition that the inevitable government subsidy of low-income insurance buyers would be humongous has led Congress to backtrack, and start backing away from the mandatory aspect of this plan.

And now the private insurance industry, not satisfied that it has managed to practically dictate the terms of the health reform legislation so fare, and angry that it might not get those 40-50 million new forced customers, is reportedly threatening to turn around and knife the president and the Democratic Congress in the back.

They’re threatening to (gasp!) start running attack ads on the “reform” legislation.

Remember the old “Harry and Louise” ads the industry ran attacking Hillary and Bill Clinton’s health reform proposal back in the early 1990s?  Well, this time, it’ll be Harry and Louise attacking Obamacare.

I can see it now. America’s Health Insurance Plans, the lobby for the insurance industry vultures, will set up some nice-sounding front group with a name like People for a Healthier America, and they’ll fund a new ad campaign like this:

Harry will be sitting at the breakfast table, reading the local paper. He’ll look up from his coffee as Louise is puttering around by the sink.

“This ObamaCare looks like it’s gonna drive up our insurance premiums, hon.”

“What do you mean Harry?”

“Well it says here that they’re not going to force the poor folks to buy insurance, so most of ‘em will probably wait until they get sick and then buy it.”

“Well what’s wrong with that, dear?”

“Nothin’ ‘cept that the law would also prohibit the insurance companies from charging those sick folks higher premiums when they do finally come in to buy insurance.”

“Well, wouldn’t it be unfair to charge them more, when they need it?”

“It might seem that way Louise, but if the insurance company has to take a loss on them, they’re going to make it up by charging us good folks who have insurance more.”

“Oh my god, Harry! We’re already paying $6,000 a year for our insurance. What will our premiums go up to?

“Says here they could go up by another $1000 a year!”

Announcer: Don’t let Congress make you pay for the uninsured. Call your Senators and Representatives and the White House, and tell them to demand that every American be required to buy insurance immediately! This announcement is brought to you by People for a Healthier America.

It’s funny really, to see Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the biggest recipient in Congress of insurance industry money, who has spent the last few months working hand-in-glove with the insurance industry lobbyists to craft a bill to their liking, suddenly accusing his erstwhile financiers of doing a “hatchet job” on his bill. Actually, his bill has been a hatchet job itself on the whole concept of health care reform.

All of this, of course, was entirely predictable. Like HillaryCare before it, ObamaCare has been doomed from the start by its unwillingness to address the basic issue behind America’s twin crisis of health care: lack of access for those with lower incomes, and absurdly high cost for everyone.

What makes it all so pathetic is that America already has an excellent model for delivering quality health care: a single-payer system called Medicare. Everyone in America gets this program, just like in Canada, Germany, France, Taiwan, Japan and elsewhere. The only difference is that in those other countries, people get it from the day they’re born. In America, you have to wait until you are permanently disabled, or until you reach the age of 65.

Far from having to “start from scratch,” as Obama claimed in his last address to Congress in explaining why he was not proposing a single-payer solution despite its obvious success in other countries, solving America’s health crisis by adopting a single-payer system would be a simply matter of taking a system that works, and expanding it to cover everybody.

But of course that would have made the insurance industry furious. They’d have to go back to just selling life insurance and homeowners insurance and car insurance.

And so we can expect a new round of “Harry and Louise,” and ObamaCare will go down in flames.

You have to laugh at these Democrats. Even when they brazenly try to sell out, they get screwed.

Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist. He is author of Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal (Common Courage Press, 2003) and The Case for Impeachment (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is available at thiscantbehappening.net

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, circulated a letter Thursday to show depth of support for public option among Senate Democrats.

Thirty U.S. Senators signed a letter today urging the inclusion of a public option in any health reform legislation that will be considered on the Senate floor. An additional 14 Senators at least have expressed support for the public option through a resolution, letter, or by voting for a strong public option during committee markups.

The letter, which was circulated by U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), was signed by Brown; John D. Rockefeller (D-WV); Russell D. Feingold (D-WI); Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT); Daniel K. Akaka (D-HI); Tom Udall (D-NM); Kristen E. Gillibrand (D-NY); Roland W. Burris (D-IL); Ron Wyden (D-OR); Debbie Stabenow (D-MI); Barbara Boxer (D-CA); Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI); Michael F. Bennet (D-CO); Dianne Feinstein (D-CA); Jack Reed (D-RI); Jeff Merkley (D-OR); Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ); Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD); Al Franken (D-MN); Robert P. Casey, Jr. (D-PA); Barbara A. Mikulski (D-MD); Daniel K. Inouye (D-HI); Edward E. Kaufman (D-DE); Arlen Specter (D-PA); Maria Cantwell (D-WA); Robert Menendez (D-NJ); Bernard Sanders (I-VT); John F. Kerry (D-MA); Herb Kohl (D-WI); and Paul Kirk (D-MA).

“Support for the public option runs deep in the Senate,” Brown said. “Health insurance reform is all about lowering costs, improving care, and increasing choice for consumers. In too many parts of the country, one or two insurance companies control the majority of the market. This isn’t good for consumers, businesses, or taxpayers. As we finalize health reform legislation, we shouldn’t forget that a majority of Americans, doctors, and Members of Congress support a public option.”

The Senators’ letter expresses concern that “absent a competitive and continuous public insurance option – health reform legislation will not produce nationwide access and ongoing cost containment.”

It continues on to state that “the number one goal of health reform must be to look out for the best interests of the American people – patients and taxpayers alike – not the profit margins of insurance companies.”

Brown is a leading advocate of the public option. Along with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), he helped write the public option language in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee-passed health reform bill. In April, Brown circulated a letter signed by 21 senators calling for a strong public health insurance option to be included in health reform efforts. In May, he introduced a resolution sponsored by 28 senators calling for a public option.

Here’s a copy of the letter senators sent to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

October 8, 2009

The Honorable Harry Reid

Majority Leader

United States Senate

The Capitol, S-221

Washington, DC 20510

Dear Majority Leader Reid:

We have spent the better part of this year fighting for health reform that would provide insurance access and continuity to every American in a fiscally responsible manner. We are concerned that – absent a competitive and continuous public insurance option – health reform legislation will not produce nationwide access and ongoing cost containment. For that reason, we are asking for your leadership on ensuring that the merged health reform bill contains a public insurance option.

As it stands, the health insurance market is dominated by a handful of for-profit health insurers that are exempt from the anti-trust laws that ensure robust competition in other markets across the United States. Without a not-for-profit public insurance alternative that competes with these insurers based on premium rates and quality, insurers will have free rein to increase insurance premiums and drive up the cost of federal subsidies tied to those premiums. This is simply not fiscally sustainable.

We recognize that the two Committees with jurisdiction over health reform – the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee – have taken two very different approaches with respect to this issue. However, a strong public option has resounding support among Senate Democrats – every Democrat on HELP, three quarters of those on Finance, and what we believe is a majority of the caucus.

The Senate Finance Committee included a cooperative approach to insurance market competition. While promoting more co-ops may be a worthy goal, it is not realistic to expect local co-ops to spring up in every corner of this country. There are many areas of the country where the population is simply too small to sustain a local co-op plan. We are also concerned that the administrative costs associated with financing the start-up of multiple co-op plans would far outstrip the seed money required to establish a public health insurance program.

Opponents of health reform argue that a public option presents unfair competition to the private insurance companies. However, it is possible to create a public health insurance option that is modeled after private insurance – rates are negotiated and providers are not required to participate in the plan. As you know, this is the Senate HELP Committee’s approach. The major differences between the public option and for-profit plans are that the public plan would report to taxpayers, not to shareholders, and the public plan would be available continuously in all parts of the country. The number one goal of health reform must be to look out for the best interests of the American people – patients and taxpayers alike – not the profit margins of insurance companies.

Health reform is about improving access to health care, containing costs, and giving Americans a real choice in the insurance plan best suited to their needs. We urge you to fight for a sustainable health care system that ensures Americans the option of a public plan in the merged Senate bill.

Sincerely,

Sherrod Brown (D-OH) John D. Rockefeller (D-WV)

Russell D. Feingold (D-WI) Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT)

Daniel K. Akaka (D-HI) Tom Udall (D-NM)

Kristen E. Gillibrand (D-NY) Roland W. Burris (D-IL)

Ron Wyden (D-OR) Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)

Barbara Boxer (D-CA) Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

Michael F. Bennet (D-CO) Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)

Jack Reed (D-RI) Jeff Merkley (D-OR)

Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD)

Al Franken (D-MN) Robert P. Casey, Jr. (D-PA)

Barbara A. Mikulski (D-MD) Daniel K. Inouye (D-HI)

Edward E. Kaufman (D-DE) Arlen Specter (D-PA)

Maria Cantwell (D-WA) Robert Menendez (D-NJ)

Bernard Sanders (I-VT) John F. Kerry (D-MA)

Herb Kohl (D-WI) Paul Kirk (D-MA)

Well, some of Mr. Boehner’s constituents decided to take him up on his offer and rally outside his district office in West Chester, Ohio, delivering over 1,800 signatures of people in his district who support a public option.

This video report was produced by New Left Media’s Chase Whiteside, who conducted the interviews, and camera operator Erick Stoll.

Screengrab of the Facebook poll asking whether President Obama should be killed. Image credit: The Political Carnival. Click on graphic for enhanced view.

A Facebook poll that asked users to vote on whether they believed President Obama should be killed was removed Monday from the popular social networking website and is now the subject of an investigation by the Secret Service.

Blogger GottaLaff at The Political Carnival broke the story Sunday about the existence of the Facebook poll.

The poll, which was removed from Facebook Monday after GottaLaff and others contacted the Secret Service Sunday evening, is just the latest example of right-wing extremism aimed at Obama.

The poll asked: “Should Obama Be Killed?”

The four multiple choice answers were: “yes,” “maybe,” “if he cuts my healthcare,” “no.” More than 730 people took the poll before it was removed Monday.

According to Raw Story, as of noon Monday, 90 percent of the poll’s respondents voted “no.” However, a little more than five percent voted yes, 2.6 percent voted maybe, and 1.9 percent voted “if he cuts my health care.”

“The application that enabled a user to create the offensive poll was brought to our attention this morning and was disabled,” Barry Schnitt, director of policy communications for Facebook, told Raw Story. “We’re following up [with] the developer to ensure the offending content has been removed and that they have better procedures in place going forward to monitor their user-generated content.”

In an e-mail sent Monday to blogger GottaLaff, the developer of the application used to create the Facebook poll took issue with the fact that the blogger reached out to the Secret Service, saying “this could have been resolved in a much less public and destructive way…”

Some facts:
1. Polls is a third-party application and are not affiliated with Facebook
2. Polls are created by other users on Facebook, not me or Facebook
3. There is a mechanism for reporting polls and we take action after a
poll has been reported a sufficient number of times
4. If a poll is egregious enough (and this one certainly was), you should have just contacted me directly. Facebook provides links to contact the developer (that’s me!). I would have deleted the application in a second. I’ve deleted polls in the past that have to do with killing gays, etc. As it stands now, Facebook has disabled the entire application (not just that one poll), which is frustrating for me and will be taking up most of my time for the next few days. I’m sure I’ll also get a call from the Secret Service which will be awesome. I understand you’re enjoying your 15 minutes of blogging fame and are feeling pretty righteous right now, but keep in mind this could have been resolved in a much less public and destructive way if you had taken the time to reach out to me first.

Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan told ThePlumLine’s Amanda Erickson that the agency is “aware” of the poll and “taking the appropriate investigative steps.”

A month ago, CNN reported that death threats against Obama increased by 400 percent. The revelation was made following a month of intense townhall meetings centered on healthcare reform. One attendee carried an assault rifle to a townhall meeting in Phoenix, Arizona where Obama was speaking.

“A CNN source with very close to the U.S. Secret Service confirmed to me today that threats on the life of the president of the United States have now risen by as much as 400 percent since his inauguration, 400 percent death threats against Barack Obama — quote — ‘in this environment” go far beyond anything the Secret Service has seen with any other president,’” CNN’s Rick Sanchez reported last month.

According to the Health and Human Service’s department’s National Health Expenditures report, private insurers will pay out $854 billion in medical claims for health insurance policyholders this year. That represents about one-third of the nation’s estimated $2.5-trillion medical care bill for this year. But that’s not the whole story.

The premiums paid for those claims payments will total $1.2 trillion, which includes $179 billion in “administrative” costs (21 percent or over $1 out of every $5 dollars spent on health care) and another 150 billion in profits (a tidy 15 percent return). That is money that was paid out in premiums by individuals and by employers  (who every year are shifting more of the cost of health coverage onto employees).

A big part of that $179 billion you and your employer pay for insurance company “administrative expenses” goes to fund private “death panels” whose job, as insurance company whistleblower Wendell Potter has testified in Congress, to deny coverage to sick policyholders.

And that $179 billion wasted on administration (Medicare, a federally-run program, only devotes 4 percent of costs to administration by way of comparison), isn’t all. Doctors, hospitals and pharmacies also spend a similar sum on administrative expenses, much of it devoted to fighting to get paid by those same insurance companies.

How many of us have spent hours struggling over claims forms, and getting signatures from physicians in order to get reimbursed for care, or on the phone arguing with insurance company “customer service” people on the phone? Doctors, hospital administrators and pharmacists do the same thing. That’s why your doctor’s office has such a large staff of people who aren’t there to take your pulse or blood pressure—just to work with paper.

Insurance companies, in their discussions with investment analysts, actually refer to their payouts for patient care vs. their premium take as their “medical loss ratio,” a figure which they vow to improve by clamping down on “losses” (meaning benefits paid).

I took a look at the latest 10-Q financial statement filed by Aetna, one of the nation’s largest private health insurers. Through June 30, Aetna took in $14 billion in premiums, $10.7 billion of that amount from employers and employees, $2.9 billion more from Medicare recipients who bought a supplemental insurance plan to cover the gap in what Medicare covers, and another $400 million for handling Medicaid claims.  Aetna reports that it paid out $11.9 billion in health care reimbursements, and $2.3 billion in administrative expenses (20 percent).

By the way, this same Aetna is headed by CEO Ronald A. Williams, who earned 24.3 million in 2008 according to Forbes magazine (about the norm for insurance CEOs), as well as another $296,639 as a board member of American Express. Williams also has unexercised options on Aetna stock worth $194.5 million, according to Forbes. He owns a palatial home in Farmington, CT assessed at $1.7 million. According to Opensecrets.org, Williams has spent close to $10 million on lobbying activity for his company and the insurance industry since 2005.

Somebody tell me why this is a system we not only want to keep, but that, under proposals working their way through House and Senate, would force another 40-50 million currently uninsured people, most of them low-income, to pay into under threat of being assessed a $3800 tax penalty by the IRS.

Common sense says that if this insurance intermediary were removed from the process, besides Williams and the other industry CEOs and other executives losing their fat paychecks and bloated homes, planes and portfolios, the whole American healthcare system would run a lot more smoothly and cheaply.

I remember back in 1990, when I was working on my book Marketplace Medicine (Bantam 1992) about the for-profit hospital industry, talking to the administrator of a Canadian hospital in Ontario. He told me he had formerly worked as a hospital administrator in the US.  He reported that back then, when new less-invasive technologies, as well as reforms introduced to Medicare, had begun reducing the amount of time people were spending in hospital beds, his hospital had been able to shut an entire wing because of a declining patient census.

“But one year later, we had to reopen it to accommodate all the staff needed to deal with paperwork from the insurance industry,” he said.  That problem has only gotten worse over the ensuing two decades.  Meanwhile, this same administrator told me, “In Canada, I have only three people doing paperwork for the whole hospital: one for Canadians, and two to deal with paperwork for the occasional American tourist who gets sick or injured.”

Let’s be clear. The only reason Congress and the White House are pushing a plan that relies on the private insurance industry is that the private insurance industry is flooding the capital with money. It’s a great investment for them. If health insurers are collectively earning $150 billion in profits in a year, and it only costs them perhaps $50 million in legal bribes to keep their scam operating, they’re earning a 3000 percent return on investment!

We would all be far better off if Congress just passed Rep. John Conyers’ bill, HR 676, to expand Medicare to cover everyone. As I have explained in an earlier article, expanding Medicare would result in no net increase in taxes, and because it would eliminate insurance premiums, workers’ comp and public employee health expenses while also lowering car insurance rates, not to mention lowering the prices charged by doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, also a substantial savings for all Americans.

Some people worry that if we were all on Medicare, medical research would suffer. But this is a spurious fear. Much of the most important research in medical care and treatment is funded by the federal government through the National Institutes of Health. In fact, arguably, the profit motive leads industry to focus research on highly profitable, but much less urgent things, so we get research on cosmetic uses for Botox, but little or no research on finding a cure for Malaria or drug-resistant TB.

There may be a valid argument for competitive markets, say for cars or food production and distribution. But it should be abundantly clear by this point that when it comes to health care, the market doesn’t work. In fact, it is perverse. The end user—your and me—will never have the information needed to make a wise decision regarding either cost or quality.

Furthermore, unless we were all buying our own insurance and selecting our own doctors unimpeded by “preferred provider” or HMO lists, we are being forced to chose, if we get any choice at all, from a limited selection made available by our employers, who are motivated only by bottom-line concerns. In fact, in countries like Canada or France, which have Medicare-like single-payer systems, people have vastly more choice as to physician and hospital than any American patient.

Some people also worry that a government-run single-payer insurance system, by pushing down the reimbursements to doctors and hospitals through its monopoly position as sole paymaster, would lead to a defunding of hospitals and would drive away the “best” students from choosing the medical profession. But really, if you look at what hospitals in the current “competitive” market spend much of their money on, it turns out to be cosmetic things like fancy building exteriors, pretty rooms, etc.—things that help lure patients, but that do nothing to improve patient care.

As for future doctors, does anyone really think that having people go into medicine because of the prospect of earning millions of dollars and driving fancy sports cars results in better doctors than having people choose a medical career because of a passion to serve humanity, or a passion for research into curing disease? What changes is not the quality of the medical students, but their motivation.

All the sturm and drang in Washington and in the media over the course of health care “reform” in Washington is really much ado about nothing. We are not getting real reform.

In a replay of last year’s to-do over mess in the banking industry, we are watching our dysfunctional and corrupt government simply, to quote President Obama, “kick the can” down the road, leaving the next Congress and the next President to deal with the same disaster.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Americans will continue to die needlessly every year because the care they need will be denied to them by insurance companies that are focused on making as much money as possible, and by a government that has sold its soul to the lobbyists.

Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist. He is author of Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal (Common Courage Press, 2003) and The Case for Impeachment (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is available at thiscantbehappening.net