Jim Spencer reappears!

The Denver Post's fine columnist Jim Spencer was given the boot earlier this year — a matter of rationing liberal views, evidently.

We all missed him — and so I was pleased to see his byline on this column: "In the Matter of Health Care Versus Baloney" at Colorado Confidential, Colorado's preeminent progressive blog.

Spencer, as always, did his homework responding to the Rocky Mountain News's scurrilous attack on Health Care for All Colorado's proposal to the Blue Ribbon Commission for Health Care Reform. The title of that RMN piece? "Single-payer Baloney."

They got just about everything wrong. No. They got everything wrong.

Unlike the Rocky, which didn't evidently do any research, no quotes, no references, and they certainly didn't get in touch with us or the Colorado Nurses, Jim quoted Donna Smith:

But on the business side, the U.S. system “doesn’t even make economic sense,” said Donna Smith of Aurora, whose family health problems forced her and her husband to declare bankruptcy. “Single payer would lower the burden on American businesses.”

Smith and her husband, Larry, appear in Michael Moore’s documentary “SICKO,” which lambastes the U.S. health care model. Smith testified before Congress in July about the inability of many Americans to afford health care. She just started a group called American Patients for Universal Health Care.

If you’re worried that Smith isn’t objective because she has a dog in this fight, then check with Colorado’s own financial consultant on health care reform. The Lewin Group has issued a preliminary finding that cumulatively, a single payer health system will save Colorado money on health care.

The Rocky did print Fran Ricker's and my rebuttal on Saturday — which was good of them, since it's a combined circulation that day of both Rocky subscribers and Denver Post subscribers.