Daily Kos on Obama & single-payer

There's a wonderful essay by a serious healthcare reformer, a professor of Health Policy; Director, Center for Health and Public Policy Studies, UC Berkeley. She writes about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (and Hillary's nasty clip accusing Barack of lying about single-payer):

Both of these candidates are very smart people. They both understand that single payer is THE best system for affordable, comprehensive, equitable, secure, efficient health care for all Americans. This is good news.

But the realities of our current system and how it has evolved over time, make it difficult, if not impossible, to move from where we are now to 100% single payer system over night.

I actually proposed this idea of giving Americans the choice of a single payer plan that competes along side the existing system in 2002. I first developed the idea for the state of California as part of the State's HRSA grant for Health Care Options. I will provide links below to both the original proposal as it was developed for California and the a link to the ESRI report (funded by RWJ) on Covering America, which includes the federal model I developed for CHOICE as a plan that would voluntarily transition the entire US health cares system to a single payer system, with private plan options for those who do not want single payer.

Interesting. Here's the link to her site about CHOICE OPTION for California and her federal plan as well -- about which she writes,

The federal plan speaks specifically to the point of having a single payer plan compete with the existing system and allow people to choose which they want. And guess what? Our current inefficient, inequitable, ineffective system cannot compete with a single payer plan. The Lewin Group, using their Health Benefits Simulation Model, modeled the CHOICE proposal and found that within one year of adoption a plan with the option of single payer, 70% of Californians would chose to enroll in the single payer plan and 94.4% of the Californians have health insurance coverage, all without a mandate.

For the sake of the health of the American people let's agree to agree. The goal of health care reform for the Democrats is universal coverage and they all support a plan that will enable the US to voluntarily transition to a single payer system.