Single Payer: Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Zahler.

[denem]

As per LBN, now, as the "Public Option" is getting rebranded as Medicare, it strikes me that Universal Health Care would have stood more of a chance if advocates had not chosen such an insanely Orwellian term as 'Single Payer' in the first place.

[BadgerKid]

1. If Medicare was the predestined answer all along

then they might have needed to manufacture a name to switch FROM. It's entirely Obama's approach to offer one option and arrive at something else later only after waiting for the GOP to soil itself.

[enlightenment]

2. To rebrand the public option as Medicare is

disingenuous. The public option is not Medicare - not even close to it.

There is nothing Orwellian about the term 'single payer' beyond the idiocy of the people who chose to make it such a big, bad scary thing (I'm not referring to you, btw - but all those people who jumped on the 'ooh, scary socialist stuff' bandwagon). Call it single-payer, call it universal health care, call it nationalized health care - it doesn't matter. It is the only real reform that would make a substantive difference and it's a damned shame that as a nation we're too cowardly and too self-absorbed to recognize it.

[denem]

6. Lets see: Single Payer; Single Party. One letter different. Yep, that's a great brand.

[Oregone]

3. Orwellian?

In single payer, there is a single payer for all medical expenses. It describes a structure, not a specific implementation. In Canada, its implementation is referred to as Medicare. Often here, single payer advocates say "Medicare for All".


What is Orwellian is branding a self-sustaining system with limited enrollment "Medicare for Everyone". You trying to be sarcastic?

[denem]

4. I know single payer is the description of a structure. So is electric fillament illumination.

I'd still market it as a light bulb.

[Oregone]

5. And its often marketed as "Medicare for All"

But we all know that can mean anything, being that is close to the co-opted term being applied to the Public Option now.