I had the pleasure of watching Bill Moyers' Journal on single payer health care last night. (Moyers is, in my opinion, one of our true national treasures. I am grateful he has remained active into a relatively old age and hope we have the benefit of his work for a long time to come.)
The focus of the show was not just on single payer itself - how it would work, how it saves money, the reasons why we need to do it - but also on the reasons why the Washington establishment has gone to such great lengths to shut single payer out of the debate.
We saw great footage of nurses and doctors demonstrating in Washington last week for single payer and we heard from some of the strongest and most effective single payer advocates in America - many of them, like me, the providers who see the healthcare crisis close up every working day.
The first segment of the show focused on the confrontational public advocacy that doctors and nurses are engaging in to try and force congress to take single payer seriously. Bill interviewed Donna Smith (donnasicko here on dailykos) at some length, interspersed with footage of the demonstrations in Washington May 12 and 13. Those two days saw hundreds of nurses from CNA/NNOC, the UAN, the Massachusetts Nurses Assn and SEIU join with our allies from PNHP and others to march and rally for single payer - and other health care improvements, including nurse staffing ratios. (Okay, I have to confess to a little thrill seeing my own face in the crowd there.) We also saw some of the Baucus 13 being arrested including a couple of my nurse friends - also known as kossacks RN4Mercy and ludlow. It was a sterling example of the kind of advocacy it will take to win real health care reform for all of us.
Then it settled down to a nice long, fairly wonky discussion - the sort of thing Moyers does so well - with David Himmelstein of PNHP and Sidney Wolfe of Public Citizen. These two are long-time veterans of the fight for single payer and they know the policy stuff inside and out. And they are both physicians who know first hand the frustration of fighting the insurance bureaucracy for what your patient needs.
I highly recommend watching the video if you didn't get to see it last night. And for anyone interested in single payer, the Moyers web page is rich with links to past shows on the subject, the excellent Frontline documentary "Sick Around the World" and other useful information.
The Washington elites of both parties are obviously determined that the only health care "reform" we are allowed to have is one that keeps the private insurers at the center. Since most of the best cost savings in health care are only available with single payer, the sort of system they envision is guaranteed to fail - it will be complex, cumbersome, ruinously expensive and poor quality. We need to be advocating for real change.
Update: well, wonder of wonders. This had made it nearly to the bottom of the new diary list with about 30 comments and so I went out for a ride and come back to find it has jumped to the rec list. Life surprises sometimes