SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE

Bruce Dixon , Black Agenda Report - Detroit's venerable representative John Conyers has, in each of the last several sessions of Congress introduced single payer legislation and sought the sponsorship of his fellow members of Congress. In the current session, that bill is HR 676, the Conyers-Kucinich National Health Care Act, and has been endorsed by dozens of city councils, state legislatures, county boards, and 90 members of Congress, including more than thirty members of the Congressional Black Caucus. If single payer legislation does not make it to the floor early in the next Congress, the blame can only be laid at the feet of the new president and his party.

The internet has not made up for the virtual banning of the subject in mainstream media, or for the unobstructed voices of opponents of single payer health care in the channels and newspapers most Americans rely upon for their news.

Organizations like the Citizens Alliance for National Health Care are raising money to buy ads for a national media campaign to achieve single payer health care. But they will have nothing like the nine figure sum the Obama campaign may have left in its coffers after spending a half billion in the campaign.

While president elect Obama has promised what he has called "universal health care", he and his advisors have explicitly rejected single payer health care. The president elect managed to avoid practically any mention of single payer by name except for the very few unscripted instances he has been asked about it in public. . . . The "solutions" advanced by Obama and his advisors will simply make government money available to consumers to buy private health care, and will subsidize a new risk pool, no doubt through other private insurers, for those who can't find any affordable private coverage. . .

This is a place where the Obama administration cannot serve two masters. It's a place where Democratic voters have to stand up and demand what they voted for, whether they are kindly disposed to deliver on their promises or not. The time is fast approaching to hold the feet of the president elect and his party to the fire on jobs and health care. An essential part of any auto industry deal must be single payer health care, or the solution will be as deceitful a sham as the Wall Street bailout. Only single payer health care will protect auto industry and other US jobs and deliver the universal health care that tens of millions of Americans voted for in November.