Robert Polin — Why Single Payer, Now, Is for Real

Is a single-payer health care system workable in California? My short answer is “yes.” I reached that conclusion by writing a research study, along with co-authors James Heintz, Peter Arno, and Jeannette Wicks-Lim, of the Healthy California single-payer bill (HB562) that was introduced into the California state Senate last spring. Our study was commissioned by the California Nurses Association, a lead supporter of the bill....

Commentators of all persuasions, but especially progressive ones, are doing nobody a favor by offering up overwrought pronouncements on why Healthy California must inevitably fail — especially when these pronouncements are grounded neither in evidence nor the growing political support for creating a decent health care system in California and the U.S. overall.

The worst enemy of progressives seems to be other progressives. But the so-called left is notorious for being unable to unite. So this is nothing new.

The Intercept
Why Single Payer, Now, Is for Real

Robert Polin | professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and founding co-director of its Political Economy Research Institute