Is there any difference between requiring every American to buy health insurance from private insurers and taxing every American to pay for a government run Single Payer system like Medicare? The answer is NO. Except that in one scenario the princes of the private health insurance industry, like the banking barons on Wall Street, get to continue making obscene profits and bonuses while the costs of public employee and every other citizen's health insurance premiums shoot skyward.
The U.S. congress has chosen to travel down the Eisenhower/Nixon road. It remains to be seen what path the Oregon legislature will choose in 2011. Despite the dominance of so-called progressive Democrats, in 2007 and 2009 it choose Eisenhower/Nixon. However, that was before the following organizations publicly endorsed the Roosevelt Single Payer solution to America's and Oregon's moral and economic health care crisis.
AFL-CIO
AFSCME District Council 75
Amalgamated Transit Union Local 757
American Federation of Government Employees Local 2157
American Federation of Teachers Local 5017
City of Portland
Democratic Party of Lane County
Democratic Party of Oregon
Freedom Socialist Party
International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees
Lane County Commission
Mad As Hell Doctors
Multnomah County Commission
Oregon Academy of Family Physicians
Oregon Education Association
Oregon Federation of Nurses & Health Professionals
Oregon Nurses Association
Oregon Teamsters Local 206
Pacific Green Party of Oregon
Painters Local 10
State Council of Machinists (IAM)
So the questions arise:
1. How many candidates for the Oregon legislature that support Single Payer are being endorsed by the organizations above?
2. What kind of instructions are being given to lobbyists representing these organizations, especially and particularly the city of Portland, the Lane County Commission and the Multnomah County Commission, to advance a Single Payer solution?
I will be answering these questions in future Oregon Health Watchers.
Support for a Franklin D. Roosevelt Single Payer solution demands the repeal of the Billion dollar Eisenhower/Nixon, illegitimately derived health care bill passed by the Oregon legislature in 2007 that denied Single Payer advocates a seat at the legislative table.
There will be NO Single Payer national solution at the federal level. But there could be in the state of Oregon.