I guess I don’t get it. Why is “single payer” seen as such a magic cure by American progressives?

Yes, the current American system sucks and yes the current crop of insurance company funded presidential wannabes don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them. And yes, government can provide health care more efficiently than the private sector.

But “single payer” is merely a payment mechanism. It’s just one component of a good health care system. And it isn’t quite accurate to say Germany and France have single payer systems. Private plans are part of those systems. England definitely doesn’t. They have socialized medicine (doctors work for the state). And Canada, which is lauded as the single payer example, has only slightly better health outcomes than the United States (of course their single payer system helps provide health care coverage MUCH more cheaply).

Single payer is not a panacea. It is a good tool for efficient payment but is only one tool. We also need to develop enough political power to regulate the pharmaceutical company prices, do preventive care, and force some planning on the market. And maybe we should address the absurd salaries of doctors (or just import cheap doctors from overseas- that ought to make the Thomas Friedman adherents apoplectic).

Of course we’d be better off if we got rid of insurance companies. We should also nationalize the energy industry and change our entire cheap food agriculture system. But these goals will require a fundamental shift in the current power dynamic and it don’t look like that’s going to happen anytime soon.

Ask yourself what you have done in the last two months to lay the grassroots political groundwork for taking on a gazillion dollar industry that will shut single payer advocates out of policy discussions in the back rooms of DC and Albany? A good idea goes only so far in politics.

Most Americans have never heard of single payer and are suspicious of government solutions that are imposed on them. You can advocate for single payer just as much as you can advocate for mandatory car pooling and an end to product packaging. But speaking truth to power is not organizing. It might get you into heaven but it won’t budge public policy one iota.

Our system is totally screwed up and if we are really savvy and are able to build a powerful grassroots groundswell we might be able to budge the current system several degrees to the left and shrink the private sector and expand the public sector.

I’d love for the system to work a little bit better. I’m working two jobs while my wife goes back to school and we’re just trying to make it. Health care coverage is a huge problem. I know some upper middle class professionals (who own second homes) and they scoff at the idea of changing the system a little bit. They call it “incrementalism.” I don’t call it incrementalism. I call it health care for my kids.

$68,885                 The amount of wealth produced by the average U.S. worker in a year

$29,544                 Average annual income of American worker

$39,341                 Amount of wealth that the average American creates in a year but does not retain

1 day                      The amount of time the average CEO of a large American company has to work to earn the amount that the average American worker earns in a year

22,255                   Number of years the average American worker would have to work to earn the average annual salary of the top 20 private equity and hedge fund managers in 2006

84                           Percentage of American wealth owned by the richest 20%.

21.9                        Percentage of children living in poverty in the United States

$12                         Minimum wage in Ireland

$5.85                      New American minimum wage

7                              The percent decrease of the buying power of the new minimum wage compared with the old minimum wage ten years ago

45                           The percent increase in average American CEO pay over the last ten years

1:3                          The ratio of European CEOs’ income to the income of their American counterparts

33                           Percentage of Americans who don’t take their allotted vacation time

25                           Percentage of American in the private sector who do not get any vacation.

240                         Difference between the number of hours worked by the average American worker and average French worker in 2006

477 billion             Amount that Bush tax cuts give the wealthiest one percent of Americans

20                           Percentage of Americans with subprime mortgages expected to lose their homes

11                           Percent that Congress has cut federal funding for housing over the last two years

40.8                        Measure of income inequality (Gini coefficient) shared by three nations: United States, Turkmenistan and Ghana (The Gini coefficient measures income distribution. A score of 100 means that one person has all the wealth and a score of 9 means that everybody shares wealth equally. The United States is the only industrialized county with a score above 40).

33                           Percentage of federal revenue from corporate taxes in 1950’s

7.4                          Percentage of federal revenue from corporate taxes in 2003

17.7                                    Percent tax rate paid by Warren Buffett

30                           Percent tax rate paid by Warren Buffett’s secretary

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