October 26, 2013

Toward Single-Payer: We're Almost There

By M. Catharine Evans and Ann Kane
Seventy-five years ago, it was lawyers, doctors, and shop owners; today, it's insurance companies.  These free-enterprise for-profits are the main obstacle to instituting a single-payer health care system in the U.S.  They must be removed from the equation if Obama is to realize his dream. While everyone focuses on the latest ObamaCare IT screw-up, the ongoing abolition of for-profit insurance companies continues. Consider this timeline.  In June 2003, Obama made his future intentions clear. From an Illinois AFL-CIO speech: I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program. [Applause.] I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that's what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal...(Read Full Article)