i second that.

if you want the public — actual voters — to learn/hear/care more about single payer, it’s actually going to have to make it out of committee and onto the floor for a real vote. and it can’t be voice vote, it’s got to be recorded, so that people can see who is [ostensibly] on their side and who is not.

you mean you can point to a part of the bill that hasn’t been written by insurance companies?

/snark

There’s considerable likelihood that the present bill with its terribly weak PO and its “band-aid period” between now and 2013, will have the unintended consequence of destroying the legitimacy of further efforts at hcr for some time to come, whereas a more limited bill ending the worst insurance company abuses, might have no serious unintended consequences. Something to think about while we’re supporting a bill with a PO and an exchange that may run to two thousand pages of legal language, much of which has been written by the insurance companies.

We all really have to ask ourselves how would the great Democratic Presidents of the last century (and their political parties) have acted? Do you think they would have been caught dead with a bill that was primarily a giveaway to the insurance companies, and that was likely to end only 1/3 of the fatalities due to lack of insurance we have currently during the first 3.5 years? Don’t make laugh. They wouldn’t have given a proposal like HR 3962 a second thought.

In any event, I developed a counter-argument to your interpretation of reality here. I think Knox has seen it, but you may already have left the thread when I posted it.

In any case, this is about messaging and what content may be best communicated to and successful in persuading the public. Medicare for All is that content.

And we have not been trying to sell for it for forty years or even 60 years. The Democrats haven’t had the guts to try it since Harry got beat by the companies and the AMA in 1948-49. The record we have is failure to sell half-measures, compromise positions, and complex BS that no one can understand. No one really knows what would happen if we go for it for full bore again with something that would really solve the insurance problem. But we do know all sorts of things among which are:

1) We need it now more than ever and anyone can see it when the need is pointed out

2) The savings from it would dwarf the savings from anything else including even Jacob Hacker’s PO

3) It’s been formulated in a 30 Page bill that is relatively easy for a regular American to understand

4) Experience with similar programs is well-recorded by other nations and that experience can easily be promoted

5) There’s a nascent movement to back it with demonstrations, civil disobedience, heros, songs, enthusiasm, ideology, and commitment that would make the tea baggers look like amateur hour.

All that has to happen is for Obama to act like ML King for a change and call forth the movement. Meet with Paul Hochfeld, Margaret Flowers, Kevin Zeese, Marcia Angell, Steffi Woolhandler, John Conyers, Dennis Kucinich and Bernie Sanders and get it going with the blessings of the White House.

In fact the more that eligible people buy into the PO the beter, since their rates will go down over time. Hostility against private insurers works to the benefit of the PO and to those insured by it. Mandates work to the benefit of private insurers only to the extent that people choose to buy their insurance rather than that offered through the PO.

Further, no one who advocates for the PO sees it as the end game, but rather a small step in that direction.