In today’s New York Times (6/19/09), Kevin Sack’s article about the prospects for healthcare reform devotes all of a paragraph to single-payer:
Seeking broad popular support, the president and congressional leaders have played between the 40-yard lines of the health policy spectrum. Those who favor a single-payer, government-run insurance system have been marginalized, along with those who would unleash the system to the free market.
This is exactly wrong. Single-payer is, in fact, broadly popular–at least according to many polls, including the most recent from the New York Times (1/11-15/09). The decision to marginalize single-payer is a decision to avoid playing between the 40-yard lines. The Times and the rest of the corporate media are the ones who have decided that single-payer isn’t popular–no matter what their polling tells them.
