Colorado single-payer calendar

The businessman and the immigrant

A couple voices from the day —

I talked with a businessman based in Colorado Springs who said he was in favor of a 4 percent payroll tax in order to cover his employees — and that's even though he's not paying for health insurance now.

How about a 6 percent payroll tax?

Hell yes.

He said that right now his cost for employing his three employees was 25 percent of his budget. Not payroll, budget. He wants to insure his people, but who can spend 25 percent of their budget on it?

At the 208 Commission meeting yesterday, there was the clear implication that single-payer wouldn't be fair to small businesses, which couldn't afford a 6 percent payroll tax. It makes you wonder how many couldn't.

The San Francisco Chronicle has a piece today on businesses supporting single-payer. Turns out that 42 percent of them do. In fact, 55 percent would be willing to pay into a state fund to help cover their employees.

The other conversation was with an Englishman who had immigrated here. I didn't ask the circumstances, but he said he hadn't taken into consideration what losing the NHI would really mean in his life. He says that the enemies of single-payer make preposterous arguments. Nicely said.

Divide and conquer

The Atlantic Monthly continues its downward spiral with a new writer, Megan McArdle, who fits their criteria for clever writing that leaves aside those quaint notions of morality, as Alberto Gonzolez has said. Entertaining!

The benchmark for this kind of dross ran a few years back, positing that the earth could easily support 30, 50, who knows how many billions of humans! and that our human population could vary by huge amounts — 30 billion to 3 billion! — within a few generations, without problems.

Right. Unless, I suppose, you consider starvation, war, pestilence and economic dislocations problematic.

Megan performs this trick on a smaller scale in "The Morality of Health Care Finance," by accusing those of us who see single-payer financing as a way out of the immoral and deadly morass in which healthcare is now mired in the United States. We are, she thinks, simply in love with government, and would be in favor of single-payer even if it could be proven that private health insurance could do a better, cheaper, more efficient job — "as long as a substantial population remained uninsured."

What?

Huh?

Megan. How is a system better if it leaves "substantial" numbers uninsured? How could that be cheaper in the long run? How more efficient? You've been reading too much Ayn Rand.

That's like accusing progressives of being against torture, even if it could be proven that torture does a better, cheaper, more effective job — "as long as a substantial amount of the information gathered turned out to be false."

See, the fact is that torture is wrong because it's immoral AND it doesn't work. Same as our private health insurance system.

Megan's argument that single-payer is a way to transfer money from the young and healthy to the old and infirm sounds like a trial balloon from the health insurance industry. Will we learn in a few years that she was lavishly compensated by that industry for this bit of "journalism"?

The fact is that our current system transfers money from the young and healthy to the old and infirm without benefit to the young and healthy. A single-payer system does collect from everyone, but its efficiency and appeal lie in the fact that there is benefit for the young and healthy. They have the security of knowing that if they hit a tree snowboarding next winter, they'll be cared for. They have the satisfaction of knowing that if they're one of the unlucky few who wake up tomorrow morning suddenly transformed by a diagnosis of cancer, suddenly no long one of the healthy but one of the stricken, that their children will continue to have a parent, and they can concentrate on recovery, not the consequences of bankruptcy.

Shame on you, Megan, for working to divide people, to set the young against the old, and suggest to them that their interests are served by turning their backs on others. She complains that liberals have been calling her "evil," but in fact, to work to divide people, one from the other, is an evil action.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out -
because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out -
because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out -
because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me.

Shame. We're in this together, Megan. Because it's moral, and because it's what works.

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.

HCAC Boulder at the Peach Festival

Join the revolution!
HCAC's Boulder chapter turned out to gather signatures and hand out information at the Lafayette Peach Festival today. They got a great response — bravo!
Thanks to Terry Fedak for this photo.

Edwards writes about his plan

It's hard to think that John Edwards isn't talking about single-payer universal healthcare when he writes like this:

We have two healthcare systems in America. People who can afford insurance get the best care in the world. But most families are one bad break, such as a lost job or a serious illness, away from going right off a cliff.

I believe we should build one America, with one health system where every person can get decent, affordable healthcare. I am proud to be the first major presidential candidate to propose a specific plan to guarantee true universal healthcare.

Under my plan, businesses would either cover their employees or help pay their premiums. The government would make insurance affordable through new tax credits and by leading the way toward more cost-effective care. New “healthcare markets” would give families and businesses purchasing power and a choice of quality plans, including one public plan. Finally, once these steps have been taken, all American residents would be required to take responsibility and get insurance.

Under my plan, families without insurance would get coverage at an affordable price. Families that have insurance today—who sometimes have trouble paying their share of health insurance payments—would pay less and get more security and choices. Businesses and other employers would find it cheaper and easier to insure their workers. I have proposed steps that would save an average family $2,000 to $2,500 a year and eliminate at least $130 billion a year in wasteful healthcare spending.

An innovative feature of my plan would give individuals in healthcare markets a choice of insurance plans including a public plan based on Medicare. That choice would force private insurers to operate in a more competitive market, holding down costs and improving care.

I also recognize that we cannot achieve true universal care without making additional transitional investments. I have been honest about how I would pay for these—by repealing President Bush’s income tax cuts for Americans who make more than $200,000 per year....

We have to stop using words like “access to healthcare” when we know with certainty those words mean something less than universal care. Who are you willing to leave behind without the care they needs? Which family? Which child? We need a truly universal solution, and we need it now.

Faith and single-payer healthcare

Donna Smith, the editor who with her husband Larry was featured in "Sicko," has a new piece in The Black Commentator. It's Part 26 (!) in their series on single-payer healthcare. Donna writes:

Is universal health care the right and moral thing to do? Are we who reside in faith communities within our churches and our communities called to action on this issue? Will we cast off all the things we have accumulated and follow what we have been taught to follow, in the face of this battle on behalf of those who cannot join the fray? Or will the vast majority of us remain silent, as we have over the past 30 years, giving our power and our presence over to those who express only the narrowest of Godly intentions?

Donna also writes that "This health crisis cannot be prayed away."

It's a great piece, ending with a call to action: write or call or set up a visit with your representative to thank them for co-sponsoring HR 676 if they have, or to urge them to do so if they haven't.

Go to Healthcare-NOW to see where your legislator stands.

HCAC vs. Ave Cassandra

I'm taking another go at Ave Cassandra, hoping to find a way to balance the work I do for Health Care for All Colorado and this blog — oh, and my family. Sorry, family. Being program administrator for HCAC is stretching me to my limit — the organization is doing great, and there's enough work for half a dozen staff people.

Good grief, between Health Care for All Colorado and HCAC Foundation you could give a couple dozen people enough meaningful and crucial work to fill their days. HCAC and HCACF volunteers fill a lot of the gap, but a lot of essential work simply does not get done. If single-payer had adequate funding, just a couple years of adequate funding for education, outreach and lobbying!, we'd have single-payer. No doubt about it.

I'm thankful to have one of probably a dozen or so paid jobs in single-payer advocacy and education in the country. I'm working on delegation and prioritizing skills.

Hillary says it right

For all those who hate Hillary, take a look at this. In "Hillary Lashes Out at Health Care Critic," she answers someone accusing her of being for "socialized" medicine, like they have in Canada.

"Do you think Medicare is socialized medicine? Clinton asked, turning the tables on her inquisitor, who did not identify himself.

"To a degree," he responded.

"Well, then you are in a small minority in America," Clinton said to applause, before explaining that Medicare allows patients to choose their doctors even though the federal government foots the bill with money deducted from workers' paychecks.

Clinton then asserted that "on balance" countries with uniform national systems of health care, including Japan, Australia and Canada, offer their citizens better health care than the U.S. The answer left her questioner shaking his head in disagreement.

"I can give you the statistics and you can shake your head," Clinton said sharply. "You come and introduce yourself to the staff. And we'll try to give you some information if you're interested in being educated instead of being rhetorical."

Educating for democracy

C-Span's on downstairs, with educators talking about how they can better educate for success.

They're right — we do have to educate for success, teach children the math and language skills they'll need to be good employees. Unemployment and homelessness and shiftlessness are no substitute even for that job at Wendy's.

However, if we're only educating to train workers for the marketplace, we've lost the foundation of democracy, which requires educated and informed citizens able to reason and question, not just follow directions and give the right change.

Voters have to be able to distinguish between fear-based appeals and real threats. We have to understand the moral underpinnings of working for the common good, whether Christian, Muslim, or atheist.

We can't just educate for success.