GOP Rep. Mike Coffman Says Single-Payer Health Care "Works"

[kpete]

GOP Rep. Mike Coffman Says Single-Payer Health Care "Works"
by: David Sirota
Thu Jan 07, 2010 at 12:00
There's no other way to read this story from Politics Daily and the Denver Post than to read it as Colorado Republican Rep. Mike Coffman admitting that single-payer health care "works":
http://www.openleft.com/diary/16815/gop-rep-mike-coffman-says-singlepayer-health-care-works

Coffman, a former Marine who keeps buff at age 54, was jogging on the golf course bordering his home in Aurora, Colo., when he stumbled on a rock or some other obstruction hidden in the snow. He fell, cracking his ankle.

The congressman and his wife went to an urgent care clinic in a strip mall, where he paid $30 for a temporary cast and a prescription, and later he went to the famed Steadman Hawkins Clinic in Vail, where he paid $350 for an expert opinion, he told The Denver Post.

"I successfully tested our health care system," he said, with a laugh. "It works,"' he told the Post.

Of course the health care system worked for him, many Coloradans undoubtedly thought when they read the item in Saturday's Post. Coffman, a Republican member of Congress who voted against the health care reform bill in the House last year, is covered by the Cadillac of American health-care plans, the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) Plan.

That's why his X-ray, temporary cast and prescription cost him only $30. But if he didn't have insurance -- like some 45 million Americans --- the tab most likely would be closer to $375 ($150 for the visit, $150 for the splint, and $75 for the X-ray, according to prices quoted at a popular downtown Denver urgent-care clinic).

The FEHB is a single-payer government-sponsored health care system. The federal government is the single payer.* And as Coffman says very explicitly, "It works."


more:
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/01/05/rep-mike-coffmans-mixed-signals-on-health-care/

[valerief]

1. I want single payer for ME!!!!! nt

[drm604]

2. I don't think that's single payer.

By the definition used by openleft, employer supplied health insurance is "single payer", with the employer being the single payer.

I believe in single payer, but this isn't it, not by any reasonable definition.