As our favorite politicos fall all over each other to see who can further erode the healthcare package likely to emerge from Congress, it’s worth recalling that there is another way.

But first, get a glimpse of the latest fiasco moving forward in the Senate Finance Committee, where Max Baucus is leading the charge to develop the all important “bi-partisan” reform bill.

Today’s news is that “everyone’s smiling” — says Kent Conrad, author of the embarrassingly weak proposal for “non-profit coops” as an alternative to the public option, much less the real reform, single payer.

Why? Because they’ve found a way to cut the price tag by $400 billion. How?

largely by reducing the amount of subsidies for low-income individuals to buy insurance

Well, thank goodness. At least that means less public money going into the pockets of the already gorged insurance giants.

Too bad it means more people are likely to go bankrupt or self-ration needed care when Congress passes a bill forcing everyone to buy insurance with no meaningful limits on what the private insurers can charge.

Is there another route? Yes, and it’s not a secret.

The rest of the world has figured it out, as T.R. Reid reminds us in the forthcoming publication of “The Healing of America. A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care.” (Penguin Press) Essentially it’s the print version of the acclaimed Sick Around the World PBS show from last year.

By now, most people have heard how the U.S. ranked just 37th in the World Health Organization’s overall scorecard earlier this decade. Or how the Commonwealth Fund listed the U.S. last year as last among 19 industrial nations in preventable deaths.

But how about this one.

When the WHO assessed 191 countries on the barometer of “fairness,” the U.S. stumbled in at a bare 54th, barely beating out the impoverished African nations of Chad and Rwanda, but still behind Bangladesh and the Maldives. Not exactly a badge of honor.

Can we do better? Of course we can, says Reid, just by learning from the experiences of the rest of the world, especially those other comparable industrial nations which all have some form of national healthcare system — one in which their citizens’ health is not held hostage by profit-making private insurance companies. He concludes:

most rich countries have been national health statistics — longer life expectancy, lower infant mortality, better recovery rates from major diseases” than does the U.S. And they also perform better in presenting patients “a greater choice of doctors, hospitals, and procedures

For those who say we should not taint our borders by emulating France or Germany or Canada, Reid offers this retort:

We have borrowed numerous foreign innovations that have become staples of American daily life: public broadcasting, text messaging, pizza, sushi, yoga, reality TV, The Office, and even American Idol

Apparently we consider our health to be less important.

Reid also provides a useful service in knocking down most of the myths about other national systems that are common grist for the likes of Fox TV and the conservative think tanks.

Such as “they ration care with waiting list and limited choices;” in fact the data varies widely among other countries, and if you want to see really hideous waits, rationing of care, and limited choices, check out most American ERs and insurance network restrictions.

If there’s one crucial difference between the U.S. and all the other countries he surveyed, says Reid, it’s the moral dimension.

Whether a society should guarantee health care, the way we guarantee the right to think and pray as you like, to get an education, to vote in free elections? Or is medicine a commodity to be bought and sold, a product like a car, a computer, or a camera?

Apparently that is what makes our system “uniquely American.” As Reid puts it, “all the developed countries except the United States have decided that every human has a basic right to health care.”

And, that “no other country relies on for-profit insurance companies to pay for basic health care.”

President Obama who in 2003 notably described himself as a single payer advocate, now says it would be too disruptive to the present system to do that now. Well, a lot of people believe our dysfunctional, profit-focused healthcare system needs some good disruption.

And, there’s plenty of examples abroad that you can remake your healthcare system, and make it better, as a number of industrial countries did in the wreckage after World War II.

There’s a more recent example, Taiwan, which in 1994 scrapped its own broken system and adopted a single payer approach similar to Canada.  

Almost overnight, Reid notes, every resident of Taiwan, in their new national single payer system, had complete choice of provider, cut administrative costs to a mere 2 percent, and experienced striking improvements in patient outcomes.

While Taiwan, like some other national systems, has some problems today, mostly with underfunding, it has a much more equitable healthcare infrastructure, and guarantees healthcare coverage for everyone.

With immensely more resources than other nations, there’s no reason we couldn’t learn from their successes, their mistakes, and adopt a national system that would be far more humane than the disaster we have now.

Is the public option that some have deemed the sword we should all fall on in the healthcare debate little more than fool’s gold?

In the wake of the now widely touted New York Times poll this weekend that showed 85 percent of Americans believe our health care system should be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt and that people are even willing to pay more in taxes to get that kind of system,  the next question ought to be why are Democrats and some liberal constituency groups willing to settle for so little?

From the news pages to the blogs, some progressive activists are counting up the votes and what can be done to persuade 12 recalcitrant Senators and a number of insurance industry fans in the House to vote for a “robust” public option.  

But is this really where we should be drawing the line?

One of those not willing to enlist apparently is Robert Kuttner, co-editor of the American Prospect, who wrote Monday

The public option is a not-very-good second best–because our leading liberal politicians lack the nerve to embrace the one reform that simultaneously solves the problem of cost, quality, and universal inclusion. The policy that dare not speak its name is of course comprehensive national health insurance, or Medicare-for-All.

Kuttner also identifies the central problems with the public option that its most passionate advocates have yet to explain how they will avoid:

Basically, it leaves the two worst aspects of the system intact. First, private insurers will continue to dominate. Second, most people will continue to get their insurance through their employers. Given these two bedrock realities, there is no way that the bill can make serious inroads on cost without cutting back on care.

and further:

a mixed system with a public option effectively invites the most expensive and hard-to-treat people to opt for the public plan, while private insurers will seek to insure the young and the healthy. This is a familiar problem known as adverse selection. The private insurers will then smugly point out that the public plan is less “efficient,” when in fact it simply will have a more costly population. The only way to avoid this problem is to have everyone in the same universal plan–what’s otherwise known as a single-payer plan.

Even the “robust” public option, assuming it is not gutted in the heated rush to accommodate the healthcare industry and pass a “bipartisan” bill, will almost certainly be burdened by these shortcomings.

Will the availability of a public plan genuinely stop private insurers from engaging in adverse selection?

Anyone familiar with the marketing techniques the insurers use now will know they have a hundred ways and more to weed out sicker, more costly customers, even with the toughest requirements prohibiting exclusion of patients with pre-existing conditions.

Nothing now proposed in Congress is likely to change these marketing practices.

Will the public option really stop insurance companies from price gouging? The theory we’re told is that the cheaper public plan will force the private companies to lower costs to compete. The reality is likely to be far different.

With the added requirement of an individual mandate, forcing everyone not covered now to buy insurance, many, especially those who are younger, and healthier, will opt for the barebones minimum plans the insurers will be sure to offer as a lure.

But without effective cost controls, the huge out of pocket costs will discourage even the healthiest people from actually using their insurance. And, in the event of an accident or unexpected illness, even greater financial distress looms when they find out all the services their skeletal plans don’t cover or the limitations in the fine print.

Meanwhile, the public plan likely to have a disproportionate number of sicker enrollees and unable to compete in market costs with the multi-billion dollar private corporations could easily face the choice of bankruptcy or, as Kuttner suggests, massive cost cutting in the form of rationing care. To see the future of the public plan, look at what is happening with many public hospitals and clinics today.

Finally, there’s the issue almost no one talks about. Insurance companies denying medical treatment, referrals to specialists, or diagnostic procedures they don’t want to pay for. Will the availability of a public plan prompt the private insurers to start authorizing claims they now deny?

If there’s a message to be drawn from the Times‘ poll, it is that Americans know our system is broken, and they want real change. They want reform that solves the crisis. They want a healthcare system that doesn’t leave them at the mercy of the private insurers, being forced to choose between house payments or going to the doctor. They want to be able to choose their care provider, or keep the one they have. They want coverage they won’t lose if they are unemployed.

And they won’t get that with any of the plans now being touted as politically viable.

One other lesson of the Times‘ poll. If President Obama, who once famously identified himself as an advocate of single payer, and the Democratic leadership were fighting for single payer as hard as they are for limited reform, they would have the overwhelming support of the public.

What’s the alternative for progressives? How about, let’s fight for the reform we need, not just one that might pass, no matter how ineffective the solution it offers.  

"It would be nice if something made sense for a change." – Alice, from Alice in Wonderland.

Perhaps we live in an alternative universe.

One in which two thirds of Americans want the government to guarantee healthcare for everyone, while the policy makers in Washington labor to craft a reform plan that caters first to the threats and demands of the insurance industry and the minority voices on Capitol Hill.

One in which the Senate Finance Committee plays congenial host to the insurance industry, the drug companies, and right wing think tanks and it's chairman Max Baucus can proclaim all options are on the table while slamming the door on the nurses and doctors — and arresting them when they speak out.   Why? For advocating the most comprehensive, cost effective reform of all, a single-payer/Medicare for all approach.

One in which single payer is considered off the table inside the rarified airs of Congress, but when President Obama ventures into a town hall meeting with regular folks, the first question he is asked is:

"Why have they taken single-payer off the plate?" asked one woman in the audience to great applause. "And why is Senator Baucus on the Finance Committee discussing health care when he has received so much money from the pharmaceutical companies? Isn't it a conflict of interest?"

Watch here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6d45duX_WU

And one in which Drew Altman, CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation can ponder today about how baffling it is that the "experts" — presumably people like him who was given a seat at the table by Baucus — sees the world so differently than the vast majority of Americans struggling to survive a cruel, inefficient, and inhumane healthcare system:

"Experts believe the health care system is full of unnecessary care and troubling variations in care, … The public has a very different world view: People think that underservice is a bigger problem than overservice. They want relief from the problems they are having now paying for health care and health insurance in very tough economic times. … And many are worried that they will not be able to afford their health insurance in the future or may lose it altogether."

The "experts" say the problem is too much "unnecessary" care. The public thinks too many people are being denied care they need.

The experts think costs are so high because consumers don't have enough "skin in the game" (i.e., we like to go to the doctor, get invasive tests, and endure long waits for care and high out of pocket costs). The public thinks the reason is "because drug and insurance companies make too much money."

The experts think health care information technology is a panacea to improve quality and cut costs. The public thinks it will probably increase costs (the Congressional Budget Office happens to agree) and are concerned about the privacy of their medical records.

The experts think we must have comparative research to limit future costs. The public thinks "insurers should pay even if their doctor recommends a treatment that has not been proven to be more effective than a cheaper one." (Imagine, getting the care you actually paid your insurance company to provide, what a concept)

Either we need to get more in tune with the self-appointed experts, or they ought to listen to what the people actually think. Or perhaps, as Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine told the Great Falls Tribune in Baucus' home state of Montana, "Single-payer is simply considered not realistic for a politician. The medical industrial complex just won't permit it."

But at a price, to our health, to the well being and financial security of American families, and to the cause of health care reform.

Or as Michael Lighty, national policy director for the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee put it:

"Hillary Clinton and President Clinton took single payer off the table much more dramatically than Baucus has, yet everyone draws the lesson that because of 1994 we can't do single-payer. They should draw a different lesson from the Clinton-era struggle. The lesson is we didn't fix the problem. We didn't offer a solution that works and so no one wanted it. That's the risk they run this time going down the road they're currently going. They won't solve the problem, it'll ruin their credibility even if it's enacted, and that's much greater risk."

With Max Baucus’ Senate Finance Committee continuing to shut out the voices of single payer advocates while rolling out the red carpet for the insurance giants and other health care corporations, five more were arrested today and dozens of other nurses stood before the committee in a dramatic silent protest.

Today’s action — the second in a week that led to 8 arrests — coincided with the anniversary of the birth of Nightingale. It also marked the kickoff of two days of actions by nurses from around the country who are pressing for a legislative agenda for quality nursing care and a single standard of quality care for all.

Here’s AP.  Here’s a link to a photo of the nurses being arrested.  The Wash Times covers it here and here’s Patricia Murphy.

Action!  Fax Mad Max and tell him single-payer deserves a voice in the debate!

All told, this is the most media coverage single-payer healthcare has received since SiCKO was released in 2007-ironic given that it comes from an attempt by Washington insiders to keep America’s caregivers out and stifle discussion of their healthcare plan.

“What a disgrace that RNs and physicians are shut out and arrested while the insurance industry is given a seat at the table. We would expect that from the Bush administration, not in the time the Obama administration,” said NNOC/CNA Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro. “The Baucus Committee can arrest nurses, but they can not silence the voices of RNs who will continue to speak from their hearts on behalf of their patients who want and deserve real reform.”

Standing up in the audience and speaking before she was arrested, Sue Cannon RN, said, “don’t guarantee drug profits, guarantee health care. We’re entrusted to care for our patients, and we can’t do that without single payer, guaranteed healthcare. We need no more Blue Crosses and double crosses.”

“In honor of Florence Nightingale, patients need access to healthcare. We need to protect our patients, we need single payer now,” said NNOC/CNA Board member DeAnn McEwen, RN.

Also raising their voices and accepting arrest were Steve Fenichel and Judy Dasovich, two physician members of the Physicians for a National Health Program, and  Jerry Call of PNHP and Health Care Now.

Some 40 other RNs staged a silent protest — standing before the committee in red nursing scrubs and turning their backs to show signs reading “Nurses and Patients First. Stop AHIP. Pass Single Payer.” AHIP, America’s Health Insurance Plans, is the private insurance industry lobby arm that is given a regular voice by the Baucus Committee, which is in the forefront of discussion on a health plan.

The protests, before a sea of reporters and cameras marked a continuing escalation of voices of protest —  last week eight were arrested — in an ongoing spectacle in which the committee has bent over backwards to accommodate the insurers, the drug companies, the coalitions representing America’s largest corporate interests, even the rightwing Heritage Foundation and conservative think tanks. All while excluding the doctors and nurses who favor single payer and have the most direct, hands on experience with our failed insurance based healthcare system.

Noting the shut out, Call said to the committee, “60 percent of the chairs at the table should be for single payer advocates because 60 percent of the people want single payer” reform.

That’s a system in which choice of doctor and other providers is guaranteed, with comprehensive benefits, real cost controls, and an end to insurance industry denials of care.

And more pix here.

1. Karen Ignani, the president of the insurance industry trade lobby, America's Health Insurance Plans, offers to end the outrageous industry practice of charging women more than men for health coverage, and is widely praised for the concession.

Even though the reprehensible practice of institutionalized gender bias should have been considered out of bounds long ago. The industry was not even shamed by the report last fall by the National Women's Law Center that insurers charged 40-year-old women up to 48 percent more than men of the same age for the same coverage.

And even though the “offer” remains conditional. AHIP continues to demand conditions in health reform proposals now before Congress, including a requirement that all Americans currently without coverage be forced to buy private insurance, and that Congress block any inclusion of a public alternative to private insurance. Now they've increased the ante and want federal pre-emption of state-based public protection regulations on insurers, such as requirements in a number of states that private insurers must cover such critical basics as maternity care or preventive cancer screenings.

Instead of gushing over AHIP for being conciliatory, it's time to demand the insurance industry stop holding our health hostage and end all discriminatory practices, including all higher charges based on age, health status, where you live, or other factors that serve as a financial barrier to access to care.

There can be no more excuses, no more exceptions, no more impediments to care. If anything, the widespread disparities and offensive pricing practices that characterize the private system  are a major reason why so many Americans are fed up with the insurance based system and want real reform, such as a single payer/Medicare for all approach.

Which brings us to Ignani's other remarkable comment yesterday.

2. “We are not asking people to trust us, we are asking people to trust government.”

Yes, Ignani apparently actually said that. And it was presumably not just a Freudian slip. In other words, a tacit admission that the insurance industry has no credibility with the public — and given their legacy of practices such as charging women more because they are of childbearing age they don't deserve it — and have to rely on the government to give them any trust with the public.

Yes, that government. The same government the insurance industry regularly excoriates “government-run” healthcare and is doing its best to provoke fear and loathing of even a public option alternative to private insurance.

3. The very Republicans who the Democratic leadership is bending over backwards to accommodate on the final form of a health plan are making it increasingly clear that they will work to defeat the legislation no matter what it is.

As now reported, GOP strategist Frank Lutz has put together a 26-page memo for the

Republican leadership on how to revive the Harry and Louise ads from 1994 to campaign against the new bill, using almost identical language from that campaign.

So a bill is being crafted to please the Republicans who will oppose it anyway on the assumption that they can use the specter of “government-run” health care, the same government Karen Ignani admits the public trusts more than her insurance industry, to regain political power at the polls.

Which, finally brings us to:

4. The Senate Finance Committee and its chair Sen. Max Baucus held a hearing Tuesday shutting out doctors and nurses and community supporters of single payer while providing a red carpet to AHIP, the Chamber of Commerce, Blue Cross Blue Shield, America's Health Insurance Plans, Business Roundtable, and the rightwing Heritage Foundation.

No wonder that some finally turned to peaceful protest and subjecting themselves to arrest.

The irony or tragedy, if you prefer, is that by trying to silence the voices of doctors, nurses and advocates of broader reform the Democratic leaders have, as the Washington Times put it, “forfeit a crucial bargaining chip with Republicans, meaning that any compromise with Republicans would swing too far toward the center or right” and leave themselves in a position of crafting even more unworkable reform.

“That's why it looks like (Democrats) are moving so far to the Republican position because they're not even considering the advantages” of a single-payer system, said Michael Lighty, national policy director of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee.

After years of shredding our public health infrastructure and ill advised minimal preparations for the next great global pandemic, the spreading swine flu threat is at last making clear the very real calamity that could be just around the corner. If not today, surely from the next epidemic.

The Obama administration’s call on Congress Tuesday to allocate $1.5 billion for combating the virus is a start, but only a start. The RNs of the National Nurses Organizing Committee and California Nurses Association (NNOC/CNA) believe that far more is needed in federal action, in regulatory crackdown on insurance practices that potentially inhibit those who are infected from seeking help, and in global coordination.

From SARS to avian flu to the swine influenza, the only question has not been if, but when.

Three years ago, during the advent of an avian flu outbreak, in an article by Conn Hallinan and Carl Bloice in the national magazine of the National Nurses Organizing Committee, we warned that the “firewalls for stopping the next great pandemic are getting thinner.”

If the swine flu or the next pandemic has only the fatality of the 1918-1919 global influenza pandemic — 2.7 percent — it would have a catastrophic effect. That pandemic killed 675,000 Americans and anywhere from 50 to 100 million people at a time when the world’s population was less than a third what it is today, and when populations were far more isolated.

Obviously, there have been medical advances in the past 90 years. But on many other levels, conditions remain as precarious as ever.

In the U.S., public health services are often first on the chopping block when budgets are tight — such as the now evidently foolhardy decision of politicians to slash $870 million from the President’s economic stimulus bill that was allotted to fight pandemics.

And many politicians compete to see who can transfer more resources from the public setting into the pockets of private healthcare corporations — often while harvesting hefty campaign contributions from those same companies.

The result is a virtual decimation of many community clinics, especially in rural and medically underserved communities, and a starving of badly needed funds for public hospitals and services.

Over the past eight years especially, we’ve also seen a rash of hospital and emergency room closures, reductions in available hospital beds, and the type of equipment needed to fight pandemics. For example, in 2005, we noted, there were only 105,000 mechanical ventilators, between 75,000 and 80,000 of which are in constant use. Ventilators are particularly important if a pandemic takes on the characteristics of the 1918-1919 flu in which a major killer was acute respiratory distress syndrome.

Hospital and bed closures are all too often driven by the insatiable lust of healthcare industry corporations for greater profit that can be secured by relocating in wealthier communities or re-allocating resources to more profitable services, such as boutique clinics and surgery centers. Such is curse of our absurd reliance on the privatization of healthcare.

An immediate shift in priorities and thinking is needed, if not for swine flu, for the coming plague. Here’s the first call to action by the national nurses movement (link is a .pdf):

• Recruit and mobilize teams of scientists to create the appropriate effective vaccine for the virus.  

• Cease and desist any reductions in public health programs at federal, state and local levels. Lift any freezes on public health funding currently in place.

• Implement a moratorium on any closures of emergency rooms, layoffs of direct healthcare personnel, and reductions of hospital beds.

• Allocate funding for recruitment and retention of school nurses, public health nurses.

• Expand the network of community clinics, especially in medically underserved areas.

• Add thousands of additional ventilators/respirators, which are critically needed in the event of epidemics.

• Assure the availability of protective equipment for all healthcare personnel.

• Require all insurance companies to suspend or waive all out-of-pocket expenses, including co-pays, deductibles, or co-insurance that discourage individuals from seeking preventive care for early signs of infection.

On the international level, it’s apparent that the World Health Organization is overwhelmed. A global infrastructure similar to what is being discussed for the economic crisis should be formed and sanctioned, at least by the G20.  International cooperation and most importantly, transparency of data from all sources, health care facilities, governments, and individuals, is essential to identify the virus and track its patterns.  The global health community must have the authority to require systematic, uniformly collected information to be reported on influenza cases in order to start formulating an effective vaccine.

Within the U.S., we should learn the lessons of the 1918-1919 flu pandemic, one of which was the enormous mitigating effect on mortality of adequate nursing care. We need to rededicate our nation to expanding the supply of nurses and safe patient care in our hospitals and clinics, which is a central component of the healthcare safety net that is especially vital at times of public health crises.

Finally, in order to promote containment and convention, we must eliminate the greed-driven barriers to care based on ability to pay.

Recent reports have emphasized the growing number of Americans who are skipping routine medical screenings, exams, and general preventive care due to the skyrocketing co-pays, deductibles, and other use charges imposed by insurance companies.

Price gouging by the healthcare industry has already put tens of millions of families in healthcare jeopardy, especially in an economic crisis. At a time when untold numbers are already exposed to a dangerous virus, we need to be removing any barriers to medical care that would exacerbate the spread of contagion. We can not afford to wait.

The updated CNA/NNOC swine flu page is here.

While thousands of activists step up efforts to make single payer a part of the national debate on healthcare reform, similar efforts are underway in many state capitals as well.

With a dual purpose. Single payer might end up enacted in a few states first, then spread like a prairie fire across the nation — the approach that worked for Canada. And the grassroots campaigns in states should reinforce the national push.  

California is a case in point. Twice in the last few years, a single payer, Medicare for all style bill has passed the state legislature, only to be vetoed by the insurance companies’ ever loyal Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.  

But the campaign to pass the bills has brought together dozens of healthcare, labor, and community organizations across California who have subsequently become a central component of national coalitions for single payer, and an impressive army of activists who have made their voices heard on healthcare.

Just ask the insurance trade lobby association which hosted a national convention in San Francisco last June, only to be greeted by 3,000 people surrounding the conference center and resonating it with chants that were heard throughout the conference hall.

Fast forward to today, and the re-introduction of a single payer bill in Sacramento in a press conference jammed with dozens of nurses, health care activists, doctors, medical students, union members, seniors, and many others.

As bill author State Sen. Mark Leno of San Francisco, put it, the new bill, SB 810, “is not just legislation. It’s one of the fastest growing social movements in California.”

California State Sen. Mark Leno with California Nurses Association/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro to his right and community activists at Sacramento press conference.

Despite the political pragmatists or cynical policy wonks or legislators who have tried to shut single payer out of the healthcare reform debate, the movement itself has taken on a life of its own.

“We’re not going away — and our ranks are building,” said Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, principal sponsor of the bill, said at the press conference.  

Among the many others represented were the California School Employees Association, One Care Now (a coalition of many other community and senior groups), Los Angeles Unified School District, California Physicians Alliance, medical students, and about a dozen other legislators.

“What we are doing here will influence and impact the debate nationally,” Leno pointed out, adding that it just might be passed in California — or any number of other states — first.

And he used a national example, the banking meltdown, to emphasize part of the argument for the single payer. “In health care, it is the industry who decides who they will insure and who takes the profit, and we the public who take all the risk. Just as in the banking system, the private banks took the profits, and now we the public are taking the risk.

Anticipating the expected opposition of Schwarzenegger again, Leno noted, “we intend to keep the debate alive through the facts” of the bill, place it on the governor’s desk again, said Leno, and, if needed, “work hard to elect a governor in 2010 who will sign our bill.”

SB 810 is an successor to SB 840, the single payer valiantly carried for years by now retired State Sen. Sheila Kuehl.  From both a health care policy and economic perspective the bill is more critical than ever.

As if any more reminders were needed, one came with a Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index survey reported today in USA Today which found that 21 percent of Americans have difficulty paying for needed medical care or medications, with great disparities based on race and class. And the numbers facing that financial stress grew rapidly in 2008. http://www.usatoday.com/news/h…

Single payer remains the most cost-effective, comprehensive way to fix the broken system.

Cost effective by removing the bloated private insurers with their high administrative costs and financial incentives to continually raise premiums, co-pays, deductibles, and other fees that are the primary cause of rising costs.

Comprehensive in guaranteeing choice of provider, all you lose is your claims adjustor and utilization review team blocking care recommended by your doctor.

And, as a CNA/NNOC study has demonstrated, DeMoro added,  single payer “not only saves lives and people’s health, it is also an economic stimulus.”

Nationally, the study found, implementation of a single payer system would create 2.6 million new jobs, infuse $317 billion in new business and public revenues, and inject another $100 billion in wages into the U.S. economy. The jobs, through increased spending on health care delivery, ripple through the economy, creating employment in retail, manufacturing, and other sectors in addition to healthcare. But in healthcare alone, DeMoro noted, the impact would be especially great in California where an estimated 15 percent of the new jobs would be generated. http://www.calnurses.org/resea…

A large part of the task of the coalition, several emphasized, is public education. The campaign has begun.