From a Physicians for a National Health Program press release:
Yesterday the prestigious American College of Physicians (ACP), the nation's second largest medical association (124,000 members), endorsed single payer national health insurance as "one pathway" to universal coverage. This is the first time the group has endorsed single payer and represents a huge step forward in the movement for fundamental health care reform.
The ACP's decision followed a careful evaluation of lessons from other nations' health systems. The central lesson, they said in an article in the Annals of Internal Medicine, is the need for the United States to provide universal health insurance coverage. While the ACP's own proposal is based on a "pluralistic" model, they urged lawmakers to seriously consider a single payer system as one way to provide universal access to health care. They noted that single payer systems have the advantage of being "more equitable, have lower administrative costs, have lower per capita health care expenditures, have higher levels of patient satisfaction, and have higher performance on measures of quality and access than systems using private health insurance."
This is me writing now:
This is a national emergency which none of the presidential candidates are addressing in any kind of meaningful way. The sole exception is Dennis Kucinich, co-author of H.R. 676, a bill that would create a UK/Canadian style single payer system for the U.S. Obama, Clinton and Edwards are squabbling over details regarding some type of insurance-based band aid approach to the wretched state of our health care system. It is all so much hot air, IMHO. It is getting increasingly difficult for me to support any of these front runner candidates; I just wish Kucinich was a more visible, viable candidate.
