California governor Arnold Schwartzenegger last week vetoed a single-payer health insurance bill passed by the state's Democratically-controlled legislature last month.
Merrill Goozner writes: "The text of the veto message was instructive because it uses every Big Lie that will be thrown against progressives who unite around a national single-payer plan as the only real solution to the U.S. health care financing crisis." Goozner analyzes phrases in the governor's message, familiar phrases in the anti-single payer litany: "create a vast new bureaucracy...cost billions and lead to significant new taxes," etc.
Meantime, the latest U.S. Census Bureau survey shows there were 46.6 million uninsured Americans last year, up 1.3 million over the previous year. So almost one in six Americans lack health insurance. Nearly all the new uninsured were working adults ages 18 to 64 - a sign that employer-based health insurance is drying up fast.
Yet, as Goozner opines, Schwartzenegger's "rhetoric ... suggests honest discussions about health care reform is not on anyone's agenda."
And any reasonable, thinking adult must ask: How does consumer-driven health care make this picture any brighter?
Posted by schwitz at September 11, 2006 07:00 AM | TrackBack