That worth a thousand pictures. As one of the 15 mil self employed, here's what I expect. I have insurance so I won't get the exchange in 2013 or 2019 (House/Senate). But I fully expect that the 100% deduction I get for my very expensive plan (they're all expensive for us)will be eliminated, which will end up costing me money. As a citizen, I expect that this is really just another bailout for the profligate ways of these insurance mega corporations. Other than that, it's all good!

...that said; I live in a country known for it's massive and relatively open corruption. It bothers me less than the hypocrisy spewing out of the U.S. And, just as here; there will be no justice/prosecution. I no longer see much difference. Well, there is one difference: the corruption here is in the billions of baht; in the U.S it's trillions of dollars, so in matters of scale, there is a huge difference.

Or should it be just greed?

The point of my article was not to get wrapped up in the personalities, parties, and neologisms of the Money Party. They'll get you every time. Here's the cleanest question about single payer - government funded and administered health care. To say that this isn't single payer is to say Medicare isn't. In other countries with single payer, there are still private plan options. Here's the poll over time.

What I took from the Peterson article is that despite the pollution of terminology which by now means nothing (e.g. "public option").

Now, lets factor in the lack of broad and reliable information about a Medicare like program for all to choose. These numbers, as I said, would be much higher in that case. The disinfo has been present, prevalent, and pervasive on this issue -- and still these numbers show up.

This dialog and debate among citizens at its best. This is what they think with a tight MoE over time.

single payer is NOT a public option in a multi payer system. that is a confusion that the money party has been spreading this past year. please don't help them.

with single payer everyone is in the same program. it fosters social solidarity instead of class division. it is able to capture savings that weakly regulated multipayer systems with or without a public option don't (especially in administrative overhead) -- so much savings in fact that for about the same cost (total national health expenditures) we could have comprehensive universal healthcare in this country. that means first dollar coverage for all medically necessary healthcare for everyone. hence the saying that everyone pays a little in taxes for a health care system of:

everybody in, nobody out
no deductibles, no copays, no coinsurance
doctors and hospitals compete for your business

seriously, lots has been written about this (including in nejm, jama, etc) over many years. a good place to start to learn more is the single payer resources page at pnhp:

http://www.pnhp.org/facts/single_payer_resources.php

for a summary of hr 676, the main single payer bill embodying these principles, see john conyer's faq:

http://www.johnconyers.com/hr676faq

single payer, unlike the public option which is a creation of democratic party operatives, is a genuine grass roots effort that is supported by thousands of doctors, nurses, patients and other activists. it was single payer activists who went so far as to get arrested at 2 of the senate finance committee hearings to protest their exclusion from the proceedings (even though hr 676 had 93 cosponsor in the 110th congress). here is just one recent post to give you a flavor of the ongoing activistism that is not being adequately covered in either the msm or the progressive blogosphere:

http://www.counterpunch.org/zeese10202009.html

there's lots more, but i'll stop after one more link. the polling you cite has problems:

http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/10/19/“public-option”-bait-and-switch-campaign-fools-pollsters/

finally, none of this undermines your main thesis. in fact it strengthens it because it demonstrates how successful the money party has been in distorting out national "debate" on healthcare reform.

With the necessary improvements in Medicare like full drug coverage, the ability to drive down drug prices, uniform and fair fees for physicians, etc.

On defining single payer, this a public debate. Here's what Weiner and a good summary say.

Nice to see you

"The truth is that the United States already uses single-payer systems to cover over 47% of all medical bills through Medicare, Medicaid, the Veterans Administration, the Department of Defense and the Bureau of Indian Affairs." Rep. Anthony Weiner
http://tinyurl.com/lkl74u

Single-payer health care is a public service financing the delivery of near-universal or universal health care to a given population as defined by age, citizenship, residency, or any other demographic. ... Medicare in the United States is an example of a single-payer system for a specified, limited group of persons within a country. Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-payer_health_care

Single-payer--a model in which healthcare delivery would remain largely private, but would be paid for by a single federal health insurance fund (much like Medicare provides for seniors, and comparable to Canada's current system)--polls well with the public, who preferred it two-to-one over a privatized system in a recent survey (New York Times/CBS, 1/11-15/09). But a media consumer in the week leading up to the summit was more likely to read about single-payer from the hostile perspective of conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer than see an op-ed by a single-payer advocate in a major U.S. newspaper. FAIR http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3733

Various systems are described as single payer. I as clear about a universally available medical health care system like Medicare (Medicare for All) which would be the single source of payment for health care. If you want to adopt one definition of one particular group, that's fine. But arguing over definitions is begging the question. We need a universal health care system and one that the public can conceive - Medicare is one of those.

Yet there is this ridiculous debate in the middle of the political spectrum and a tiny one outside of that between people seeking a solution that will work and those who argue over definitions. Medicare works. Despite the shills out there saying it's a big mess, that's not the case. It's the one chance we have. Medicare for all is the best option that we've go now, obviously with reforms like negotiating ability for medication and more robust coverage. 3% overhead compared to 10%, 20%, & 40% depending on what kind of plan you have, will make up a huge difference.

One thing for sure is that when this is all over, the pathetic excuse for a bill that is produced by the bipartisan, semi-partisan, partisan coalition will cause real anger among those who listened to the debate and heard what was said, rather than the obscurities that Congress and the administration are putting forward.

oops