A Yugo-quality system at Cadillac prices: blogger Michael Rosen at midcoast describes our health system very precisely.

In Wisconsin, we are particularly hard-hit: Expansion Management--a publication aimed at the Corporate Masters of the Universe who decide which plant stays open and which new one opens up--lists Wisconsin as tied for 3rd highest insurance premiums.

This represents  a deadly blow to Wisconsin's economic competitiveness. As retired CEO and Republican Jack Lohman put it, "Free-market medicine is killing our free-market businesses."

Yet the prospect of fundamental reform like the Healthy Wisconsin plan that passed the State Senate sends shivers down the spines of the private insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies. The private insurance companies would be rendered largely irrelevant in Wisconsin under this plan, and if they choose to enter the market at all, they will be tightly regulated.

Similarly, the major drug companies know that a plan like Healthy Wisconsin will lead to the government using its bargaining power to negotiate fair prices for drugs for Wisconsin citizens. So the cries of outrage from politicians like Mike Huebsch, who are sponsored by the campaign donations of the health insurance-drug-medical complex, are quite predictable.

But it is disappointing to see some Democrats, mostly at the national level, fighting to keep insurance companies deeply involved in our healthcare. Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden is one of the worst offenders. At the state level, we have State Rep. Robert Ziegelbauer bizarrely declaring, "This really is an ideological battle going on in our society. Do we want Soviet-style central planning, or do we trust individuals to make their own health care decisions. It's really that simple."(Manitowoc Herald-Times, 3/6/07)

What Wyden and Ziegelbauer don't grasp are the following points:
a) The private insurance industry has swallowed healthcare, like a giant Anaconda snake devouring smaller prey. The Anaconda must get fed before anything reaches further into the system, hence the astronomical bureaucratic costs and dismal outcomes of US healthcare. If anyone is issuing Soviet-style dictates to doctors and patients, it is the private insurers seeking the maximum profit.
b) The single-payer model championed in Michael Moore's new movie "Sicko" has been a great success in diverse societies, from Canada to France to Taiwan. At half the cost, citizens of these societies are permitted to see their doctor more often, remain in the hospital until they recover enough to go home, and are generally far more healthy.
c) In a single-payer system like Canada or France's, doctors remain in private practice and hospitals remain in the hands of private non-profits. There is no government takeover of healthcare; the big change is the elimination of the parasitic and utterly useless insurance industry.
d) Contrary to what defenders of the status quo claim (and even some reformers like SEIU PResident Andy Stern, Ron Pollack of Families USA and Prof. Jacob Hacker), Americans are ready to embrace the single-payer alternative. Here's what Business Week concluded 5/16/05 in reviewing its poll results:"67% of all Americans think it's a good idea to guarantee healthcare for all US citizens, as Canada and Britain do, with just 27% dissenting." More recently, the Medical Society of Minnesota surveyed its membership, with the results released in March, 2007. An overwhelming 64% of Minnesota doctors preferred enactment of a single-payer system.

In response to popular sentiment, the private insurers, drug companies, and their allies have already showered $5 million on the presidential candidates of both parties, with the aim of maintaining a highly profitable status quo. But the prairie fire of revolt for a single-payer health system may soon be raging out of control, with the for-profit medical industries' armies of lobbyists helpless to stop it.

"Pluralistic ignorance" is an invaluable concept for understanding American politics, as Mark Buchanan suggests in a NY Times Select column May 24.

The basic idea is that a substantial number of Americans--often a big majority--are persuaded by the White House and commercial media that the progressive views they embrace are only held by a marginal minority.

Both the major parties and the Beltway media generally function as what Buchanan calls "subculture enforcers" who effectively persuade the majority that their views are far outside the mainstream. The White House--abetted by top Democratic leaders like Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman, and the like-- and the corporate media all seem wrapped in a cocoon of self-ratifying myths that reinforce a unique American brand of political discourse that is both remarkably narrow and serves the interests of those in power.

Anyone who dares to puncture the cocoon, like Stephen Colbert at the White House Press Corps dinner last year, is branded as a rude pariah by the insiders. But a truth-teller like Colbert gets embraced as a hero by the general public, as evidenced by the popularity of the video footage of his gutsy in-your-face putdown of Bush.

Consider as well the divergence between acceptable elite political and media views and the perspectives of the public on some of the most critical issues. As Mark Buchanan notes, 60% of Americans want a timetable for withdrawal of US troops (who, according to a Zogby poll, favored by a 72% majority a withdrawal last year).

Washington pundits and pols favor "free trade" agreements, but a University of Maryland survey showed that even among those earning $110,000 or more, 55% believe that such deals destroy US jobs (of course, it's much higher among the general public.)

The notion of a single-payer healthcare system is widely dismissed by the Capitol Gang, but a Business Week poll in 2005 revealed 67% explicitly supporting a single-payer health system like Canada or Britain's. But thanks to the "subculture custodian" leaders of both parties(guided far more by contributors than mere voters) and leading media voices, "pluralistic ignorance reigns--at the expense of democracy and a far more humane America.

Roger Bybee, Milwaukee.