Reps. Anthony Weiner and Peter Welch are reprising a question that proved thorny for President Obama’s last health care summit: Where’s the single-payer advocate?

Weiner and Welch — single-payer advocates who are not invited, yet — argue in a letter to the President today that someone from the single-payer side should be at the Blair House summit on Thursday.

“Dear Mr. President,” they write. “During the State of the Union address, you stated, ‘But if anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know.’

“We’d like to take you up on the offer.”

Their idea is pretty easy to understand: Medicare for all.

The letter is here:

Dear Mr. President:

During the State of the Union address, you stated, “But if anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know.”

We’d like to take you up on the offer. The best way to advance these goals is to expand what we know already works. We and many Americans propose Medicare for All. We would urge you to make sure that someone is invited to the summit that supports this position.

Building on Medicare, which has a 1% overhead rate, would reduce costs by eliminating insurance company profits and cut administrative costs which currently consume 31%, nearly double that of other nations. A universal Medicare for All system would provide Americans with complete autonomy in choosing their health care provider without regard to provider networks or referrals from primary care doctors. Patients would no longer be responsible for premiums, deductibles or co-payments. Government safety net programs, such as Medicaid and SCHIP, as well as the State and local government portions for these programs, would no longer be needed.

Furthermore, a Medicare for All system would be easily understandable by the American public. Medicare has been an enormous success for seniors and there is no reason, we believe, to not expand Medicare coverage to all Americans.

Thank you in advance for your consideration.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dc/2010/02/wheres-the-single-payer-advoca.html#ixzz0gT0CJomy

Two weekends ago, after the bait and switch of a vote on single-payer for a vote on an anti-abortion amendment, we felt wizened to the possibility of unknown threats in the legislative churn on health reform. As insurance and pharmaceutical companies, Catholic bishops, and the right wing throw in dollars, lobbyists, and pressure for no votes on the final bill, it is clear we who are in the business of protecting and improving our rights to access to health care, including abortion, must remain vigilant and ready to challenge these threats.

First, a little history is in order. In mid-July Rep. Kucinich passed in the Education and Labor Committee an amendment to the House bill for health insurance reform that would make single-payer easier to enact at the state level. On July 31st Rep. Weiner and 6 other members of Energy and Commerce Committee brought to committee an amendment to that would substitute the text of HR 676, the national single-payer bill, for the House bill. Speaker Nancy Pelosi offered a floor vote on single payer — if Rep. Weiner would withdraw the amendment from committee.

Single-payer advocates embraced these efforts wholeheartedly. And we counted upon our champions in the House of Representatives to stand with us.

Vigorous activity ensued, a fourteen week campaign involving millions of people in phone calls, petitions, forums, local protests and vigils, emails and faxes, op-eds and letters-to-the-editor and personal visits. There were conscientious objectors. 158 single-payer supporters were arrested performing acts of civil disobedience, peaceful sit-ins to register their outrage in the offices of health insurance companies and Congress across the nation.

As the grassroots clamor rose, Reps. Weiner and Kucinich sought to surf the wave. The crescendo grew and grew, until one day before the House vote on health insurance reform.

And then — poof! — single payer was back off the table.

Rep. Kucinich’s state-based amendment was out of the bill, “dead as a doornail.” And Speaker Pelosi explained that the substitute amendment couldn’t possibly have a debate and vote, for if it did, amendments to restrict health care for women and undocumented immigrant workers would also get to the floor. Congressional leaders suddenly opined that a losing vote for a single-payer amendment would be “tantamount to driving the movement off a cliff.” Even the President weighed in to discourage a vote on single payer. Rep. Weiner withdrew the amendment.

Yet the next day the Speaker allowed the anti-abortion amendment to the floor, where it passed and was added to the bill. In the end, the only progressive Democrats to vote against the House bill, abortion ban and all, were Reps. Kucinich and Massa, both single-payer supporters.

The people expected universal health care, and the House of Representatives delivered an anti-abortion bill.

Worse, the Democratic Party traded away fundamental women’s rights for a Massachusetts-style mandate, a law to criminalize the uninsured and subsidize unaffordable private insurance premiums with tax money, something we know already will not reduce costs and will not cover everyone, will not lessen disparities and will not improve the health of the nation.

It is astounding to think the Democratic Party has made a bid for the United States to join a few shameful nations that severely restrict women’s access to abortion. Earlier this year we watched, with great dismay, when Mr. Obama chose not to strike the Hyde Amendment from his federal budget proposal. The President has now gone farther, re-affirming the prohibition of federal funding for abortion as a “principle.”

Reproductive rights cannot be bargained away for any reason. Autonomy over our bodies is essential to health care and to democracy.

No nation on earth can call itself a democracy without equal and full access to health care. No nation on earth can call itself a democracy without allowing full personal autonomy over all health decisions, including abortion. These values are severely threatened under the proposed legislation. It is time for protest.

As single payer advocates, we firmly believe that health care decisions must be made between the provider and the patient, with full protection of privacy. Women must be able to access abortion if determined necessary — by either the patient or the doctor.

We call upon the President and the Congress to start from scratch and ask you to join us. Senator Bernie Sanders will introduce a single payer bill in the United States Senate in the coming weeks. Demand that your Senator vote for this bill. In addition, join the National Organization for Women, strong single-payer advocates, in organizing days of action in DC and Pennsylvania to protest the Stupak-Pitts amendment.

The solution to the health care crisis must provide personal freedom from a dysfunctional and unsustainable system that ties health care to the employer and to the spouse. When Medicare was enacted, it reduced poverty in those over 65 by 60%. By this measure, a universal, single-payer system would also provide economic freedom, by raising over 22 million people out of poverty, while providing each of us with full and necessary access to health care. Nothing less will do.

Katie Robbins is National Organizer of Healthcare-NOW! Andy Coates, MD, is a member of Physicians for a National Health Program.

On the eve of what could have been the first vote on single-payer legislation in our nation’s history, we have just learned that because of last minute developments, the vote and debate on Congressman Weiner’s single-payer amendment will not happen.

Speaker Pelosi received a statement from Rep. Kucinich and Rep. Conyers, the co-authors of HR 676, that they do not think that this is the right time for a vote on national single-payer legislation. They made this statement despite the extensive mobilization in support of this vote across the country. In addition, Speaker Pelosi felt that offering a single-payer amendment would open the floodgates to amendments proposed to limit abortion funds, restrict immigrant access to healthcare, and other regressive legislation.

Let us remember that the potential vote on Congressman Weiner’s single-payer amendment resulted from holding fast to our principles of universal, comprehensive healthcare with no financial barriers. These efforts have brought truth and clarity to a national debate on healthcare reform that has been polluted by the corporate influence over Congress. While the private insurance industry has sent 3,000 lobbyists to Capitol Hill this year, spending 1.4 million dollars a day to shape reform that protects their profits, our calls, faxes, and demonstrations have created the momentum to bring legislation based on HR 676 to the floor of the House and Senate.

The vote for Congressman Weiner’s single-payer amendment would have allowed advocates to have their representatives on record as single-payer supporters.

But this legislative battle is not yet over. Our focus can now turn to two remaining efforts for single-payer in this Congress. Sen. Bernie Sanders will introduce S 703 in coming weeks, and we understand that he is considering editing it to be more like HR 676. We will have the opportunity again to see the first ever vote on single-payer in this Congress. In addition, Rep. Kucinich’s amendment to allow states to more easily implement a single-payer system may be reinserted into the bill during the conference committee between the House and Senate.

All of these efforts are crucial to building the movement for the only solution to our healthcare crisis – single-payer national healthcare.

If this Congress passes inadequate legislation, there will no doubt be emboldened state movements in the coming years. We welcome them. But let us not forget the movement to push our federal legislators to meet the demands of the people, not roll that responsibility onto the states. Healthcare-NOW! and the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care remains committed to a national, single-payer solution to the healthcare crisis. Comprehensive, quality healthcare is a right that should be extended to every U.S. resident.

At this important time, let us not forget how far we have come. Either now or later, a single-payer national healthcare system must come to the table. We will keep building the movement to make that happen.

For healthcare justice,
Healthcare-NOW!
Physicians for a National Health Program
Progressive Democrats of America
California Nurses Association
Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care
Public Citizen
Healthcare for All Texas
Western PA Coalition for Single Payer
Alliance for Democracy
Single Payer New York

We are in danger of losing the opportunity to bring Improved Medicare for All, a single payer plan, before the Congress. Last July Congressman Anthony Weiner and six of his colleagues on the Energy and Commerce Committee attempted to substitute the real public option—HR 676, a single payer plan—for the healthcare reform in the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi assured them that if they withdrew the amendment in committee they would have an opportunity to bring it to the House floor for a debate and vote. Now Pelosi is threatening to keep the Weiner Single Payer Amendment from seeing the light of day.

If we were able to get this plan really on the table and before the nation in a meaningful way, we could win this hands down. Even Blue Dog Mike Ross, in an unguarded moment, asked why not just have Medicare for All. HR 676, the national single payer legislation introduced by Congressman John Conyers, would cover everyone for all medically necessary care through an Expanded and Improved Medicare for All. The bill and its advocates have been blocked, excluded, and beaten back in the current national healthcare reform debate.

Yet Medicare for All continues to raise its head. When single payer advocates were excluded from the White House kick off meeting for health care reform, doctors’ opened the door to two single payer advocates with a plan to protest at the White House gate. When Senate Finance Chair Baucus ruled single payer off the table, thirteen doctors, nurses, and others rose to protest. Baucus had them arrested. Those gutsy advocates pried open another door and won a round of publicity for single payer. But still not a place at the table.

Yet support for single payer continues to grow. Its simplicity, humanity, and economic efficiency win more supporters each day. The Kentucky House of Representatives, four other state legislative bodies, scores of cities and counties, a half dozen giant religious denominations, NOW, the NAACP, and the National Conference of Mayors have called for passage of HR 676. For unions, it’s the plan of choice. At each contract deadline the double digit rise in health care costs gobbles up the lion’s share of bargaining power. For that reason, 578 unions including 39 state AFL-CIO’s and 134 central labor councils have endorsed HR 676. In September the national AFL-CIO Convention declared unanimous support for single payer as the social insurance plan necessary to achieve social justice.

When Physicians for a National Health Program founder Quentin Young, testified before a House committee last June, Representative Weiner listened and was impressed. Weiner turned HR 676 into an amendment that would transform the House bill into a single payer plan. He popularized it as Medicare for All and catapulted the discussion into the national media with his feisty good humor and popular style.

Now Pelosi wants to renege on her promise to Weiner. We have sent an action alert to over 19,000 unionists asking them to contact Pelosi, and Waxman (who relayed Pelosi’s commitment publicly) and Slaughter (who heads the rules committee) to assure that they allow the Weiner amendment to come to the floor.

The “public option” that remains in both the Senate and the House bills is pitiful and powerless–totally incapable of providing cost control. Those bills, with their forced mandates and fines, their massive transfer of public funds to the insurance industry, and their ban on bulk buying power to rein in the pharmaceutical companies, will fail woefully to cover our people and to make that care affordable.

Pelosi should stick to her promise. We’ll keep up the effort to make her do so. Either now or later Medicare for All will have to come to the table. We’ll keep building the movement to make that happen.

As President Obama prepares to address the nation about his vision for health care reform, we should not overlook the last, best truly transformative change to our health care system: Medicare. We have been staring so intently at the lessons of 1993 that we may have forgotten the universal rule of successful lawmaking: “keep it simple.”

During the eleven town hall meetings I’ve held around my district, I’ve had some direct experience with the anxiety this debate has produced. Much of the fear comes from two groups: those who have Medicare and don’t want it changed and those who have never had a government-run reimbursement system like Medicare and are worried about the impact it will have on their quality of care.

In both cases, a calm, reasoned and vigorous defense of the American single-payer plan is just what the doctor ordered.

The truth is that the United States already uses single-payer systems to cover over 47% of all medical bills through Medicare, Medicaid, the Veterans Administration, the Department of Defense and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Understanding that these single-payer health programs are already a major part of our overall health care system should help us visualize what an actual public plan would look like. These institutions also provide health care to millions of satisfied customers in every community who would heartily agree that the government can build and run programs that work quite well.

Medicare also provides us with a case study in the hypocrisy of our Republican friends who have built their party on a 44-year record of undermining this popular program. And now their Chairman sees no irony in ripping “government run” healthcare while publishing an op-ed opposing changes to Medicare.

If Medicare has been such a success, why not extend it? Why not have single-payer plans for 55 year olds? Why not have one for young citizens who just left their parents or college coverage?

So far, the answers we hear to these questions have simply not been very convincing.

At one town meeting the President responded that that he was worried about its “destructiveness.”

Really? Americans would still go to the same doctor and the same neighborhood hospital. Sure, they would be able to delete the 1-800 number of their insurance company from their cell phones. And doctors would have to get rid of all those file cabinets full of paperwork while their assistants who spend time fighting with insurance companies would be able to actually speak to patients.

But everyone would adjust, I’m sure.

The real reason we haven’t seen the Democratic Party embrace the obvious and simpler idea is that it boils down to pure beltway politics.

We’ve been reluctant to tackle the real inefficiency in the current system, namely, the very presence of the private insurance companies. Too many in Washington would rather stay friends with the insurance and drug companies when real reform probably can’t be achieved in a way that makes these powerful institutions happy.

That’s not to say we should vilify the industry. When they pocket up to 30% in profits and overhead (compared to 4% for Medicare) or when their executives take multimillion dollar salaries, insurance companies are doing what their shareholders want them to do.

But let’s leave it to the Republicans to defend those actions. I, and most Democrats, should not join the chorus that sounds like we care more about insurance companies than taxpayers.

The same is true for Big Pharma. If Wal-Mart can pool its customers to be able to offer the $4 prescriptions, why shouldn’t the federal government drive the same hard bargain on behalf of the tax payers so they too get the best prices under Medicare? I pose this exact question at every town hall meeting I attend and if my colleagues and the President did the same on Wednesday night, they would mix good policy with good politics. Instead we have watched a puzzling dance as policymakers have effectively limited the savings we would find in the enormous drug expenditures that are a fixture in our current system. Is it any wonder citizens are confused?

I have no delusions about the muscle needed to overcome resistance from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. But I believe that for every American we may lose to a slash-and-burn TV ad funded by these businesses, we will gain five among those who are looking for a clear rationale for what we are trying to accomplish and an example for what it may look like.

We also achieve something else: realignment of the political universe. Democrats understand the role of government and are proud of our signature achievement: Medicare. The Republicans care most about big business.

I’ll take that fight any day. And I’m hoping that the President will tell us on Wednesday that he is willing to do the same.

Anthony D. Weiner is a Democrat representing New York’s 9th Congressional District.

Some House members who have previously backed a single-payer healthcare reform bill say they will not vote for a similar measure when it hits the floor this fall.

Of the 12 serving House members who co-sponsored Rep. John Conyers’s (D-Mich.) single-payer bill (H.R. 676) in the last Congress but not in this Congress, four have indicated they will vote no on a single-payer bill to be offered by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.).

The four members are Reps. Joe Baca (D-Calif.), Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), David Scott (D-Ga.), and Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.).

“It’s a whole new ballgame,” said Baca spokesman Mike Trujillo. “[Baca] supports a public option and not a single-payer system at this time.”

In an interview with The Hill, Scott said, “I support a public option. It’s an excellent compromise and the best vehicle to garner enough votes to pass….Single-payer isn’t going to get the votes. A public option is the best shot we have to lower costs and provide coverage to most Americans.”

Johnson adopted a similar tone in a statement to The Hill: “I have supported legislation like H.R. 676 in the past, but this year I support America’s Affordable Health Choices Act because it has a much better chance of becoming law.”

America’s Affordable Health Choices Act is the lead healthcare reform bill moving in the House.

Reps. Andre Carson (D-Ind.), Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.), Betty Sutton (D-Ohio), and James Moran (D-Va.), all previous co-sponsors of a single-payer bill, but not co-sponsors this year, did not comment for this article.

Moran was asked his position on Weiner’s amendment by a constituent during an Aug. 25 town hall meeting.

“I don’t know,” said Moran. “It will depend on what it takes to get the bill out of the House. Now that the president has endorsed a bill, I’m inclined to support that bill.”

Reps. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) and Laura Richardson (D-Calif.), also past supporters, remain open to Weiner’s amendment but have not made a final decision about whether to vote for it.

The retreat by some Democrats has caught the attention of single-payer advocacy groups.

“It doesn’t represent lack of confidence in single-payer, but more of what kind of assault will come from the extreme right wing,” said Quentin Young, national coordinator for Physicians For A National Health Program.

In late July, Weiner offered a single-payer amendment during the Energy and Commerce Committee markup but withdrew it after both panel chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) promised that his amendment would get a floor vote.

Of the three House committee chairman with jurisdiction on health reform — Waxman, Rangel and George Miller (D-Calif.) — only Miller is a current co-sponsor of the Conyers measures.

Waxman cosponsored the measure in the 109th Congress.

It is unclear how Waxman will vote on the single-payer amendment, but hinted he would vote no.

“I will support the bill with the best chance of passing and reaching the president’s desk,” Waxman said when he was asked on Aug. 1 how he would vote on the Weiner amendment.

Democratic leadership is expected to split on the vote. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) is not a cosponsor and neither is Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen (Md.).

Van Hollen has never co-sponsored a single-payer bill but said in a letter to Progressive Neighbors in 2008, “I will continue to fight for universal health care and support a single payer approach.” Van Hollen’s office did not return calls for comment.

Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.), who in past years co-sponsored a single-payer bill but has not formally backed it this year, indicated he would vote yes.

“He’s supported single-payer in the past and he supports it now,” Clyburn spokeswoman Kristie Greco said.

Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), vice chair of the House Democratic Caucus, is a current co-sponsor of H.R. 676.

H.R. 676 currently has 86 co-sponsors – all Democrats. In the last Congress, the Conyers measure had 93 co-sponsors, and 78 in the 109th Congress.

A single-payer amendment offered by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), which would allow states to set up single-payer systems, passed 27-19 with 13 Republican votes last month during the Education and Labor Committee markup of healthcare reform.

One Democratic aide close to the healthcare debate said, “It would be interesting to know whether the 13 Republicans who voted to pass a single-payer amendment during the House Education and Labor Committee markup plan on supporting Rep. Weiner’s amendment … Either these 13 Republicans had a serious change of heart or this vote is just further proof that House Republicans are more interested in political gimmicks than working to fix our broken health insurance system,”

Alexa Marrero, GOP spokeswoman for The Education and Labor Committee, fired back: “That vote was a states’ rights issue vote. Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.) [the ranking member on the committee] has not and will not support a single-payer plan … This is more about Democrats’ inability to form a coherent position on healthcare.”

We’ve all heard the story about Medicare. That once upon a time, about 40 years ago, it was an idea that had very little support and that many said would never succeed. Well, it did and many are saying it should serve as a model for a single payer healthcare system. With that in mind, a single payer proposal will finally be discussed on the floor of congress when members of the house reconvene in September.

Dr. David Scheiner, President Obama’s former physician, Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York’s 9thdistrict, Bob Fertik, founder of Democrats.com on whether single payer will ever really be on the table. Scheiner says the argument that a government run program will stand in the way of you and your doctor is a myth. Private health insurance not medicare stands in the way. The less care they give the better their profits.

How should serious supporters of health-care reform spend the month of August?

Not by getting trapped in the narrow “debate” between “party of no” Republicans who favor no reform at all, and Blue Dog Democrats, whose “reform” is to make a bad system worse.

And not by campaigning for “buzz words – “public option,” “employer mandates” – or whatever President Obama or Speaker Pelosi happen to favor this week. There will be plenty of advertising and organizing to that end, including a $15 million expenditure by the AFL-CIO.

Americans who want to tip the debate in the most progressive direction should take advantage an opening provided at the last minute during negotiations to get a bill approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

And they should do so by advocating even more aggressively for single-payer health care.

One of the many side deals that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, and Energy and Commerce chair Henry Waxman, D-California, had to cut to get the votes they needed for the compromise reform measure that was approved before the House broke for its August recess will allow a floor vote on real reform.

Waxman sidetracked a move by New York Congressman Anthony Weiner to replace his proposal with a single-payer plan by agreeing – with Pelosi’s approval – to schedule a vote by the full House on the plan to replace the current for-profit system with a Medicare-style plan that covers all Americans and controls costs.

“A lot of members on our committee want a vote on that,” Waxman, a California Democrat who has worked closely with the Speaker to advance a moderate reform agenda, said of single-payer. “I believe their wishes will be accommodated.”

Weiner is declaring a sort of victory, saying that: “Single-payer is a better plan and now it is on center stage. Americans have a clear choice. Their Member of Congress will have a simpler, less expensive and smarter bill to choose. I am thrilled that the Speaker is giving us that choice.”

Of course, getting a September vote on single-payer does not mean that single-payer will get the votes.

With the Obama administration and congressional leaders determined to compromise rather than fight, it is unlikely in the extreme that the current debate will end with the adoption of a single-payer plan. Even if the House approved one, it would still face a fight in the Senate.

But just as Republicans are willing to just say “no” to any reform, progressives should just say “yes” to real reform.

Campaigning for single-payer in August – by demanding that members of the House agree to support such a plan when it comes up for a vote, and by urging senators to schedule and support a similar vote in their chamber – is the best was to assure that whatever reform ultimately comes will err on the side of Americans who need health care rather than insurance companies that would deny them that care.

At the very least, single-payer advocacy should preserve an amendment sponsored by Congressman Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, which would allow states to experiment with single-payer programs even if the federal government refuses to do so. That’s a significant matter, since Canada’s national health care program began with single-payer experiments at the provincial level.

The worst mistake that progressives could make in August would be to put their time and energy into getting members of Congress to agree to back a barely-acceptable compromise that could end up being unacceptable by the time the lobbyists and their political handmaidens finish with it.

Better to get representatives and senators to commit to back single-payer bills.

That does not prevent them from ultimately agreeing to compromise measures.

But it gets them to begin on the side of real reform, and lessens the likelihood that the eventual deals will be as bad as the schemes that the Blue Dogs tried to impose before the break.

Perhaps just as importantly, a strong vote for single-payer will remind the Obama administration that the president was right when he said six years ago that single-payer was the right response to the mess that private insurers and their allies have made of our health-care system.

Groups that back single-payer are gearing up for August activism.

Keep track of the most important advocacy on the health care issue by following the work of Physicians for a Natonal Health Program at www.pnhp.org, the California Nurses Association at www.pdamerica.org.

Activist David Swanson is suggesting that this should be “Single-Payer Summer.”

Swanson’s right.

Only if Americans who favor real reform make this “Single-Payer Summer” will we have anything worth considering in the fall.

By John Nichols for the Nation.

Friday night as the House Energy and Commerce Committee completed its markup of HR 3200, the House health reform bill, Chairman Henry Waxman interrupted Representative Anthony Weiner of New York to say that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had promised that single payer legislation, HR 676, The United States National Health Care Act would come before the entire House of Representatives. Chairman Waxman:

The Speaker has said that she will allow this to be brought up on the House floor, and debated, and voted on.

Representative Anthony Weiner (NY-9, Brooklyn/Queens) had placed an amendment before the Energy and Commerce Committee that would have replaced the text of HR 3200 with the text of HR 676, the United States National Health Care Act. He was joined by fellow Energy and Commerce committee members Peter Welch (VT, Vermont), Mike Doyle (PA-14, Pittsburgh), Tammy Baldwin, (WI-2, Madison), Jan Schakowsky (IL-9, Chicago), Bobby L. Rush (IL-1, Chicago), Eliot L. Engel (NY-17, Rockland/Westchester).

Chairman Waxman asked for the single payer amendment to be withdrawn from committee debate in exchange for a debate and vote on the House floor. Representative Weiner hailed this victory in a brief statement:

Single-payer is a better plan and now it is on center stage. Americans have a clear choice. Their Member of Congress will have a simpler, less expensive and smarter bill to choose. I am thrilled that the Speaker is giving us that choice.

On the Mouth of the Potomac blog, NY Daily News Washington Bureau journalist Michael McAuliff reported:

The Brooklyn-Queens Rep. looked a little surprised when Chairman Henry Waxman said Pelosi would allow that vote, and made Waxman repeat the deal to be sure it was clear and on the record. It’s an especially big deal for advocates of a single health care system — who see it as cheaper and simpler than the complicated measure being drawn up — because they have been complaining that they have not even been able to get an airing of their position.

And having the vote of the floor of the House will force members to declare a position, and bring much more attention to the idea.

Reporting for The Hill Mike Soraghan wrote:

Legislation creating a single-payer system would be expected to lose, but would allow liberal members to record their support for the proposal. It will also be a tough vote for some Democrats who will be wary of upsetting the liberal base.

Many liberal lawmakers feel that the controversial “public option” that would compete with private insurers is a compromise from single-payer.

Single payer advocates should not be surprised by this turn of events. Chairman Waxman himself was a co-sponsor of HR 676 in the 109th Congress. Speaker Pelosi has also supported single payer in the past. Only this spring, at an event sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, the Speaker told the audience:

…over and over again, we hear single payer, single payer, single payer. Well, it’s not going to be a single payer…

Just one day before the Energy and Commerce Committee meeting, on July 30th, over one thousand single payer supporters swarmed through the halls of Congress to celebrate Medicare’s 44th birthday. Congresspeople and staff told us over and over again that back home grassroots clamor for single payer continues to build. In other words, across the nation, representatives have had the same experiences as the Speaker of the House.

Anthony Weiner’s initiative has created a new opening for us to educate our colleagues, our patients, our elected representatives, indeed everyone, about the need for a single payer program of national health insurance. A strong single payer vote in the House will mark a turning point in history.

Video links:

The full Weiner amendment discussion at the Energy and Commerce Committee can be viewed here. Look at the bottom on the screen. The session is 6 hours 5 minutes and 38 seconds long. The Weiner piece begins at 3 hours 15 minutes and 40 seconds and ends at 3:32:53.

Representative Weiner introduces the single payer amendment at the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Representative Tammy Baldwin (Madison, Wisconsin) speaks for single payer at Energy and Commerce Committee

Representative Eliot Engel (Westchester/Rockland, New York) speaks for single payer at Energy and Commerce Committee.

Chairman Waxman interrupts Representative Weiner to ask that the amendment be withdrawn because Speaker Pelosi has promised to allow single payer before the entire House of Representatives.