Barack Obama’s former doctor thinks Barack Obama is wrong about health care. David Scheiner, M.D., thinks Obama and Congress should be pursuing a government-run single-payer system. That’s probably because such systems are cheaper and produce better health outcomes than our current system. But nevermind that. Scheiner and the advocacy organizations Physicians for a National Health Program, Healthcare-NOW, and Public Citizen are holding a press conference and rally for single-payer in Washington on Thursday. Needless to say, it won’t go anywhere. The president actually said in the past that he supported single-payer, but that’s gone out the window due to the vagaries of a political system that gives Max Baucus, Kent Conrad, Olympia Snowe, Chuck Grassley, and other small-state senators who have taken large amounts of money from the health care industry enormous amounts of power over health care reform.
If Dr. Scheiner really wants single-payer, he should support political reform—including publicly-funded elections, for example—first. He should also read that Hendrik Hertzberg article I mentioned earlier.
