Three Reasons Why Single-Payer Health Care Has Become Possible

By David Swanson, After Downing Street. Posted January 31, 2009.

Compared to the cost of wasteful programs at the Pentagon or bailouts for bankers, or even the new economic stimulus bill, single payer is a bargain, doesn't kill anyone, saves and improves lives, and even stimulates the economy better than most of the measures being used toward that end. The movement for single payer has organized a lot more than numbers; it has also marshaled persuasive arguments.

The third reason that this is the moment for single payer is that it is so obviously the best solution. When put into consideration with other proposals, single payer wins the debates hands down.

The alternative to single payer is multiple payer. That means massive waste and inefficiency, not what a new government ostentatiously looking for solutions that really work should settle on. It also means maintaining the only things in America less popular than Dick Cheney: health insurance companies, and funding them with public money as well as money directly from citizens. In a multiple-payer system, one of the payers is you If you can't pay, you may be out of luck. If you can and do pay, you are often out of luck as well.

And the bureaucratic waste extends to your own life. You fill out forms for the privilege of paying through the nose for the privilege of being told you can't be helped unless you get a second mortgage. Talking about "universal" systems that are "affordable" is all well and good, but they cannot actually exist as long as the for-profit health insurance companies are running the show.

How does this alternative sound for affordable: Go to whatever doctor you choose, and then go home with no bill and no paperwork? What if such a system could be paid for with taxes on businesses that amounted to less than what most of them currently pay for health care? What if the removal of the profit motive allowed a shift to preventive and truly comprehensive medicine?

This is not a dream. It's far more possible right now than giving trillions of dollars to bankers would have seemed a year ago or polite debates over which torture techniques are acceptable would have seemed eight years ago.

Here's what you can do:

Call Rep. James Clyburn, and ask him to whip his colleagues for H.R. 676: (202) 225-3315.

Call your own representative and ask him or her to co-sponsor and promote H.R. 676: (202) 224-3121.

You can also help by signing the Healthcare Not Warfare petition.

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