Health Care Reform Partners

This happened a few days ago, but John Conyers has teamed up with Health Care For America Now, which is a big deal. Conyers is carrying HR 676, the single-payer health care bill. When HCAN was announced, it was criticized from the left for being a sellout in terms of their principles for a solution to the health care crisis, which was insufficient for single payer advocates. I always considered HCAN as an attack dog against the insurance companies, which would mobilize to try and kill any meaningful change to the health care system. HCAN's policy prescriptions didn't seem to me to be that germane. And now, with Conyers' backing, it seems like he considers it that way too.

"I am proud to join HCAN’s broad progressive campaign to raise awareness about the need for true universal health care reform. The HCAN coalition and I are united by our belief that the current non-system of health care run by profit hungry insurance companies is unsustainable and inhumane. It will take a monumental effort to defeat the entrenched special interests that benefit from the status quo. I remain firmly committed to the passage of my single-payer universal health care bill, H.R. 676, and believe that private insurance will never provide the kind of guaranteed affordable health care America needs. However, I agree with HCAN that a true policy debate in the Congress can only begin when there is broad consensus that the sham reform trumpeted by the industry is off the table."

HR 676 and HCAN are indeed compatible. In fact, spokesman Jacki Scheckner has explicitly said so:

A properly designed single-payer system could meet our principles, but it’s one of many approaches that would meet our principles.

We appreciate the passion and commitment of the single-payer movement and hope they will work with us in opposing the health insurance industry and health care reform plans that benefit the industry by leaving us alone to fend for ourselves in the unregulated, bureaucratic insurance market.

What's most important here is the team concept. Conyers and his allies can work inside the system to get the best bill out of the Congress. HCAN can work outside the system to beat on the insurance companies and win in the court of public opinion. And both of them can make sure that John McCain's principles in health care are never allowed to see the light of day.

• McCain's health care plan will increase taxes on employer-based insurance, and kick 20 million people off the rolls.

• McCain's plan will throw you into the individual market, where the same plan your employer offered will cost $2,000 more, and you can be refused care because you were sick 10 years ago.

• McCain's plan will shift costs onto the sick.

That would be mutually distasteful to anyone who seeks health care reform.