The name has changed…

…but the spirit of McDermott-Wellstone lives on. Via The Sideshow...

Bernie Sanders and Jim McDermott have introduced single-payer bills in both the Senate and the House, as well. The twin measures, both called the American Health Security Act of 2011, would provide federal guidelines and strong minimum standards for states to administer single-payer health care programs.

The dream will never die.

And, yep, I'm proud to say that that's my own personal Congressman keeping it alive.

Chart of the day.

Via The Incidental Economist, eh...

(If you click it bigger you can see the itty, bitty red line.)

Good question…

...from Paul Krugman...

How bad does a bill have to be to make it too bad to vote for?

The subject, of course, is health insurance reform, which is problematic to begin with. Nobody's really talking about health care at this point. That discussion would be about a single payer or national health plan. For folks like me, who believe that the private health insurance industry is a, if not the, central problem with our system today, all of the bills under serious consideration are "bad" bills to the degree that their central focus is preserving the private health insurance industry's profitability.

Perhaps an even better question is how good does a bill have to be to make it good enough to vote for? If the eventual bad bill includes elimination of pre-existing condition exclusions, lifetime maximums and cost-driven cancellations, it would be, at the least, a better than nothing bill. If the same bill includes a personal mandate without a public option, would it still be good enough, for the time being, at least, to vote for?

Probably. As an uninsured worker still seven years away from our current single payer for seniors health care system, I don't really expect to get any personal benefit from anything under current discussion. Any premium I might be able to afford, publicly or privately administered, would almost certainly include deductibles and co-pays that would make it essentially worthless to me. While some fret about the healthy young who would duck insurance costs without a mandate, the simple fact is that most of us who live without health insurance or health care do so simply because at the end of the month there's no money left for health expenses.

Sill, while I'm an advocate for replacement, rather than reform, of the current system, there's no doubt that even elementary reforms like those mentioned above would be a benefit to millions, if not to me.

So how bad does a bill have to be to make it too bad to vote for?

Worse than most anything we're hearing about so far, I'm afraid.

The 9/12 marchers were right!

No, not those 9/12 marchers. These 9/12 marchers...

Health care reform supporters march up Chestneet Street in Bellingham Friday, Sept. 12
Seems to me that single payer's still the only health care solution that can bring supporters into the streets, and no matter what kind of insurance reform Congress eventually passes, there are folks who will only see it as an incremental victory in the long fight for universal care, as opposed to insurance, an idea that was rejected out of hand in this round.

Yep, I'm one of those folks.

Hat tip to Sam Taylor.

Good question.

Check that. Excellent question. Avedon asks...

"If you are worried about costs, why don't you support single-payer, which will save hundreds of billions of dollars?"

Yeah, why not? Because the 'socialism' thing, well, they're going to use that anyway. Like Avedon, I'm not much interested in promoting a public option, mainly because it seems to lend legitimacy to the existence of a private option, which belongs in the 'part of the problem' column. The main part.

As it stands, any health care solution coming out of this Congress, while perhaps marginally better than nothing at all for some, will remain woefully inadequate for many.

From the "One can only hope" file.

Senator Michael Enzi (R-WY)...

"Forcing private plans to compete with a public program like Medicare, with its price controls and ability to shift costs to private payers, will inevitably doom true competition and could ultimately lead to a single-payer, government-run health care program."

Sounds like a cunning plan to me.

Hat tip to Steve M.