speaking to a small audience of progressive activists in NJ:

“…the only reason not to do [single-payer] is that politically it’s hard to do in one step…You’d have to convince people to completely give up the insurance they have, whereas something that let’s people keep the insurance they have but then offers the option of a public plan, that may evolve into single-payer, but you can do it politically…”

There it is in a nutshell. Thank you Paul Krugman, economic adviser to the President, and eminent columnist for the New York Times, for filling us in on what’s really going on. Maybe one of these days someone in the mainstream media will enlighten the public on what so many prominent Democrats seem to have no problem admitting behind closed doors.

In the meantime, I have to admit a degree of frustration with Republicans in Congress for not doing more to highlight and expose the Democrats’ underhanded strategy with this. It seems like a pretty straight-forward point for them to make: why should we trust any version of the public plan given the Democrats’ transparent intent to deceive the public with this?