Health Care Now - Paul Krugman

Op-Ed Columnist - Health Care Now - NYTimes.com:
"The bottom line, then, is that this is no time to let campaign promises of guaranteed health care be quietly forgotten. It is, instead, a time to put the push for universal care front and center. Health care now!"

Three Reasons Why Single-Payer Health Care Has Become Possible

Three Reasons Why Single-Payer Health Care Has Become Possible | Health and Wellness | AlterNet
"The alternative to single payer is multiple payer. That means massive waste and inefficiency, not what a new government ostentatiously looking for solutions that really work should settle on. It also means maintaining the only things in America less popular than Dick Cheney: health insurance companies, and funding them with public money as well as money directly from citizens. In a multiple-payer system, one of the payers is you If you can't pay, you may be out of luck. If you can and do pay, you are often out of luck as well."

Single-payer health bill has healthier prospects than ever

Minnesota Independent: News. Politics. Media. » Single-payer health bill has healthier prospects than ever: "Citizens would be free to choose their own physicians or practitioners and would not be subject to any preexisting conditions clauses. The premiums that employees and employers currently pay would go into the state-run system, and each user would pay premiums according to his or her ability to pay. Advocates say those premiums will shrink for everyone under the plan."

Nothing to fear but no health care

This article from Seattle lays out the issues well.

Excerpt:

"Obama knows well the issue -- while his mother lay dying of cancer, she still had to battle the insurance industry. He said in that 2007 speech, "Plans that tinker and halfway measures now belong to yesterday ... we can't afford another disappointing charade ... we need to look at ... how much of our health care spending is going toward the record-breaking profits earned by the drug and health care industry."

Yet Daschle proposes not much more than tinkering -- improving Medicare, Medicaid and the Veterans Health Administration, all examples of "single-payer health care" -- in which the government is the single payer for the health care -- while preserving the inefficient, multipayer, for-profit insurance model. "

If you want to read a good story on the split between single payer advocates and those that want the government to pay for private insurance for all, take a look at this article by Kip Sullivan.

Health Care Reform Debate Guide

This guide has some useful info. in a Myth and Fact format.

Is Universal Coverage enough?

Is Universal Coverage enough? Twin Cities Daily Planet Minneapolis - St. Paul
A very good essay on single payer. Thanks to Joel Clemmer for finding it.
An excerpt-
"Most Americans believe lack of health insurance is a “serious problem” (NPR/KFF survey, Feb 2008). Current reform proposals claim to be the way forward. However, expanding our flawed system will not solve the serious problems we face – rising costs and lack of coverage (for uninsured and under insured). Unfortunately, having coverage in our system does not guarantee care. One-fourth of the insured go without needed care due to cost; three-fourths of individuals bankrupted by medical bills had insurance when they became ill. Is this a system worth perpetuating?
Reform efforts such as those proposed by HCAN and outlined by Senator Daschle maintain a central role for private insurance companies, and are thus doomed to fail because they cannot control costs."

The goal: Affordable health care for everyone

The goal: Affordable health care for everyone
This is an article about expanding insurance coverage to all. That is laudable but it is not sustainalble and is too costly. The only way we can afford the reform needed is single payer universal care. Giving more money to the insurance companies is just throwing good money after bad.