I'm ALL FOR single-payer, but I feel some of you are just not living in reality sometimes.

[FarLeftFist]

This is not personal towards anyone, just speaking my opinion.

Can anyone even show me a path to single-payer (besides Obamacare) that could have passed the House & Senate? Show me the votes! Here's the thing: Sometimes progress is measured one inch at a time. I feel some here truly believe Obama has a magic wand he's hiding from you because he couldn't address all the worlds problems in 90 seconds, or even only 3 years. Take Canada for example, they didn't just implement universal coverage over-night, NO! It took almost 15 years for them to slowly move towards universal healthcare. But somehow some people here expect MORE from this Pres. than any previous D Pres. in history. Where were those calls for single-payer during Clinton? Or Carter? Or even since MediCare was founded? Sure there may have been people calling for it, but those people didn't harbor the sheer animosity towards the Pres. of the time the way some here do. It's becoming like the teabaggers here sometimes the way people will go above and beyond to not give this Pres. credit for ANYTHING! He LAID THE GROUNDWORK for possible single-payer, but THAT'S not good enough. MILLIONS of people will now be eligible for MediCare that otherwise would have gone uninsured and possibly even died from lack of coverage. STILL, not good enough!

We currently have a Pres. in the WH that has been the MOST progressive Pres. we've seen in a generation and some seem willing to want to just 'throw the baby out with the bathwater' so to speak. I'll put Obama up against ANY Progressive in history:

FDR? Sure, great guy, had 12 yrs to enact his agenda and a VERY comfortable majority in house & senate (322 & 76). His Social Security bill had built-in exclusions that exempted nearly half of the working population from benefits, namely two-thirds of African Americans and about half of women. Furthermore, FDR’s New Deal employment programs discriminated against blacks and he was too scared of political backlash to support either an anti-lynching bill or a bill to abolish the poll tax, despite urging from First Lady Eleanor. But talk to me when Obama starts rounding up people and putting them in internment camps like FDR did during WW2 or starts discriminating against people based on race. I'm sure today's Progressives would just love that, right? Plus FDR backed down on HC reform. Still, he's considered one of the greatest Pres. of ALL TIME.

Truman? Truman broke up a railway workers strike by threatening to draft strikers into the military, exhibiting complete hypocrisy on his pro-union campaign rhetoric, not to mention a total disregard of the workers’ civil rights. Truman also failed to stop the anti-union Taft–Hartley Act from passing. Congress overrode his veto of the bill, which established the “right-to-work” standard that supersedes workers’ right to organize and collectively bargain in some states. Surely Progressives at the time saw this as a monumental failure and embarrassment for Truman. Truman, who is seen as a Progressive pioneer, is responsible for a near apocalypse in two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Talk to me when Obama starts threatening to draft strikers into the military and nukes 2 cities. Still...Truman is considered a great Progressive Pres.

LBJ? LBJ, who helped bring about the historic Civil Rights Act, wasn’t an absolutist. He continued wire-tapping of Rev. Martin Luther King and even eavesdropped on King’s sexual encounters. When an assistant once defended King’s antiwar activities, LBJ exploded: “Goddammit, if only you could hear what that hypocritical preacher does sexually.” Despite once saying that “The worst thing in our society would be to not be able to pick up a phone for fear of it being tapped,” LBJ was known to wiretap others as well, including the Vietnamese friends of a Nixon associate. Running for his first elected term in 1964, Johnson said on Vietnam: “Our response…will be limited…We seek no wider war,” thereby presenting himself as a peace candidate. Johnson increased troop numbers in Vietnam from 16,000 under JFK to 536,000 by 1968. That thirty-three-fold increase in troops greatly exceeds Obama’s four-fold increase in troops to Afghanistan since assuming office. As for casualties, more than 31,000 Americans died in Vietnam under LBJ’s watch, with American fatalities totaling 58,000 throughout the entire war. LBJ believed he had the right to intervene unilaterally to support the overthrow of left-wing, democratically elected President Juan Bosch of the Dominican Republic and João Goulart of Brazil in order to maintain authoritarian, anti-communist rulers in Latin America. Talk to me when...yeah, you know the rest.

Again, we currently have the ACTUAL MOST Progressive President, possibly in this country's history, and the problem Progressives have with him is that he's not as Progressive as people who they compare him to even though those people were actually LESS Progressive than he REALLY and ACTUALLY is?!

I don't get it. He is President of the ENTIRE country, not Pres. of only Progressives, or only conservatives, but EVERYONE. Meaning, you will not ALWAYS like his every move because YOU don't represent the full extent of the sheer diversity that makes up our Nation. You are just one part of a whole. All I see is a man who has done nothing but govern above & beyond every single day with only the best interests of ALL of our citizens in his heart. And THAT feels refreshing. Here is a man who has had to be the Jackie Robinson of Presidents. Playing with style, grace, class & determination while having to ignore the ignorant, racist taunts from the stands. All while walking on eggshells. A President, a Father, a Husband, a Leader, a Role Model, in his personal life and his politics. And YES, also a Progressive.

Btw: 2 Dems killed the public option. If you truly harbor resentment at least direct it in the right direction: Max Baucus (D-MT) and Joe Lieberman (D-CT). Baucus, the chairman of the Senate committee that drafted the law, received a $1.5 million “donation” from the health insurance lobby from 2007-2008, and another cool $1.5 million in previous years. Lieberman was the deciding vote at the time between Democrats and Republicans in the Senate, and he [link:http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29698_Page2.html|vehemently and explicitly said he would vote against any health reform bill with the public option.
]

[Cleita]

1. Not in this House and Senate, but in November we have the opportunity to change that.

We do have to many Dems killing any attempt at single payer like the public option. It happened here in California when two Dems made our single payer law fail. We need to change them too. November is coming up quickly. Time to hit the streets and maybe get the Occupy movement to start working on a big Senate and House cleaning for the November elections. I would like to see it as a majority that can override a Presidential veto. Not that it probably will be necessary, but it will give us an overwhelmingly progressive Congress. We have to do this because the Republicans have already accomplished this in the past and made a mess out of our nation, so we need to do it in November and take our country back from what is a minority of oligarchies running things.

[Bluenorthwest]

2. In what reality is single payer the only other choice?

We are the only nation among our 'peers' that does not do health care for all. Only 3 nations on the planet use a true single payer system. Other nations use mandates as well, not one of them allows profit from mandated products. They also offer public options, which ours does not.
There are many, many ways it can get done. The one way we simply did not discuss was true single payer. So this sudden framing of the issue as if the choices were what was passed or 'single payer' is just nonsense. Nonsense.
Also, until this law gets past the SCOTUS, the argument that 'this is what we could do' is not ready for the stage. If it does not in the end get done, it was not in fact 'what we could do'. Passing law that does not stand is not really a good use of time, nor of the moment in terms of teaching the issue.
They will let it stand, I think. Still, the choices were not 'single payer or this' and they still are not limited to those two choices. To pretend that is the case is just that, pretense.

[Cleita]

4. All the successful health care programs use single payer of some sort, even in France.

Basic health care is single payer and mandated. Then private insurance can be bought for co-pays and bells and whistles. It's pretty much how our Medicare works, which we should extend to everyone. If we can't do that then Medicare should be offered on the open market to be purchased by companies and unions for their employees and members. But, the insurance companies don't like that, so they got their lobbyists to poison the ACA by eliminating the public option buy in. So here we are today. The SCOTUS has no business making laws or appointing presidents. That's Congresses job.

[OnyxCollie]

3. Eat your peas and like them.

BTW, Lieberman is NOT a Democrat. He just receives support from the Democratic party over progressive candidates.

[kestrel91316]

5. I'm going to keep demanding it. In spite of Debbie Downers who can't refrain from

the negativity.

[kenny blankenship]

6. In June we will see for certain what reality is, won't we?

We will know whether or not you can legally force people-all the people- to buy a private businesses' product.

My own opinion is that you cannot. Now I have projected, contrary to my view of what ought to happen, that the Supreme Court will bend with the forces of corporate corruption which elevated most of them to their positions in the first place, and that they will give the individual mandate a pass for the sake of their party's campaign donors. But at this point, most observers seem to think they will prove me wrong, and strike it down.

I'm wondering how you're going to process that reality if it comes out badly for you.

Because unlike the mood of the electorate or the composition of legislative bodies or the wussiness/grit ratio of any particular President, this particular bit of reality that will be handed down in June will be definite and not subject to change anytime soon. THAT will be the real reality that must be faced up to.

When and if the only Constitutionally viable solution to the health care crisis is revealed to be Single Payer, will you stop blaming and attempting to lecture those of us who pointed that out from the start?

Maybe instead of berating people who have proven to have a better grasp of the political/ Constitutional terrain that health care reform must eventually cross, you should be asking whether all those clever clever people who patronizingly assured us that the Individual Mandate would have no problems passing Constitutional muster were not full of shit?

[eomer]

7. You're right about single payer but wrong about the public option.

The public option could have been added to the reconciliation bill that enacted the final changes, so it didn't need those last couple of votes on the margin of 60. It needed 50 Senators plus the VP.

[libtodeath]

8. I live in reality and that means the only way we get nothing is when we fight for nothing.