Sometimes I feel like the people in Washington don't live on the same Planet as I do. Anothre poll showed 83% these fools need to be falling over themselves for a public option.

The debate on single payer was squashed by a cabal of legislators and our CIC, with their continuing meme that single payer isn't: politically viable, on the table, etc. Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor of the NEJM, says that because of the political forces arrayed against single payer, it’s not going to happen in this country. She goes on to say,

"If we had set out to design the worst system that we could imagine, we couldn't have imagined one as bad as we have."

Then goes on to urge the US scrap our existing healthcare system altogether, a sentiment that is largely echoed by the majority of independently funded health economists.

Our health care system is based on the premise that health care is a commodity like VCRs or computers and that it should be distributed according to the ability to pay in the same way that consumer goods are. That's not what health care should be. Health care is a need; it's not a commodity, and it should be distributed according to need. If you're very sick, you should have a lot of it. If you're not sick, you shouldn't have a lot of it. But this should be seen as a personal, individual need, not as a commodity to be distributed like other marketplace commodities. That is a fundamental mistake in the way this country, and only this country, looks at health care. And that market ideology is what has made the health care system so dreadful, so bad at what it does.

Even though such a reform has widespread public support, the meme presented by our president and others such as Chris Dodd and Max Baucus penetrates the thinking of all 'reasonable', (read: manipulatable), citizens and pundits. The one true obstacle to single payer is the reassignment of the labor force in the insurance and medical industries that currently accounts for up to 30% of our (national healthcare bill, $2.4 Trillion in 2008). If we're going to waste that much of our GDP on inefficient bureaucracies, why not pay that part of our workforce to produce something that benefits society as a whole, rather than a few private corporations and their stockholders?

Yes, please, more on domestic issues, particularly healthcare.

Greetings folks. Normally I don't get into much about why we're covering this or that story. But in this case, there's a much more straightforward answer than you might imagine. Brian Beutler is our congressional correspondent and the one covering the health care debate for us. And he's on an eight day vacation. He'll be back on Tuesday. With a bigger organization, you have more redundancy of reporters. And with a less complex topic we could throw another of our reporters at it. But it's too complicated and you need more experience with the story. Anyway, this isn't to make excuses. But I want to make that it's not a lack of interest or recognition of the importance of the story. This week we're just not really able to do. Next week and going forward it will be different.