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Posted on June 23, 2008

A Presbyterian Minister Blogs for Single Payer

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The Mystery of Opposition to Single Payer National Health Insurance

by David Bos
Louisville Letter
Published June 9th, 2008

Of course the cynics will say that there is no mystery to the fact that the Single Payer solution to our nation’s health care crisis doesn’t seem to be getting much traction. They will say that our legislators, our presidential candidates and our media are in the pocket of the health insurance companies — bought out by millions of dollars of contributions that come with implicit strings and pressured by hundreds of lobbyists who are paid at least partially with taxpayer monies that go to subsidize these companies rather than provide the health care that we are not getting. Indeed, they will say, even PBS’s Newshour uses Johnson and Johnson as their main consultant for health care issues — a pharmaceutical corporation that lobbies heavily against Single Payer solutions.

Yet, is it really possible that it just takes a lot of money to thwart the public will on an issue as important as this? Hillary Clinton said that she didn’t support Single Payer because it is not “practicable” Is this an admission that indeed the money calls the shots — from someone who took more money from the heath insurance industry than any other person in Washington except George Bush? Barak Obama says that he would have supported Single Payer if we were starting from scratch. Does he really not get the fact that we are starting from scratch? And John McCain says that Single Payer is socialized medicine without bothering to discuss the issue on its merits. Sooner or later a statement such as his will be recognized for what it is — a lie. Such irrationality? Maybe they are right. Maybe it is the money.

But, to me, Its still a mystery why we have 100,000,000 who are either uninsured or underinsured with the numbers and heart-rending stories growing day by day and millions of others with insurance who are just a serious illness away from backruptcy with apparently no political voice. Just think, polls show that over 60%, perhaps 70%, of the people want a Single Payer plan. The most recent polls show that a majority of doctors favor Single Payer. There are 90+ co-sponsors of Single Payer Bill HR 676 in the House of Representatives. Labor union locals are endorsing Single Payer at a rate of several a week. How can it be that these numbers represent no real decision-making power or influence in the political realm?

I wish someone would explain it. Are the party leaders and candidates so gutless that they won’t give the majority of people the time of day on this issue? Maybe it has something to do with the word “privitization”. Could it be that the Reagan/Bush administrations (and to no little extent the Clinton administration) have managed to persuade the people that privitizaton trumps all — so much so that we are willing to sacrifice tens of thousands of lives each year to lack of health care in the name of for-profit, privitized health insurance. Perhaps the people really want to put profits before patients even when those profits are supplied by taxpayer dollars and go to obscenely paid CEO’s and highly paid staffers whose job it is to figure out how not to give you and me the health care we need. Has the ideology of privitization captured the populace to this extent? If so, then the way is clear to privitize everything: the mail, the school, the water. Why not just do away with government by the people and admit that we would be ruled by nonaccountable businesses? I don’t know. As the song goes, “Its a mystery to me.”