Single payer was originally the key plank of Obama's health care plan. But then he dropped back to offering only a public option.

Opponents of true reform, the monied interests and healthcare companies that want to continue to raise costs far above the inflation level, have been fighting single-payer from the get-go, because they know that they will have to stop ripping off the public. They're trying to convince senators to support a proposal called the "trigger," which is designed to kill single-payer health care. Their plan will only mean that the sickest individuals end up in a single-payer option, and the weakened single-payer arm of the reform plan will be unable to negotiate lower costs.

The trigger proposal is a last-ditch effort by opponents of health care reform who want to kill real health care reform. .

It would delay single-payer health care for years, if not forever. Single-payer is the only plan that will cut costs and ensure that all Americans have high-quality, low-cost health insurance. Nothing else will cut the cost of healthcare, make it affordable, ensure that all citizens are covered, and reform the corrupt and bloated healthcare system.

Cohen and CNN are doing a great disservice to their viewers and are enervating informed and enlightening discussion.

I was continuing my research on why the single payer healthcare system was not getting the coverage on CNN and other networks that I would think warranted. You are quite influential with your medical reports and I am in fact a fan of the great service you provide. I hope you will give the single payer system a third and fourth look. It is neither Hillary’s plan or socialized medicine. Mathematically and objectively speaking, it is the most efficient way to pay for healthcare.

Single payer healthcare passage would have a material impact on small businessmen like myself with a wife that has been battling Lupus for the last 16 years and now uninsurable by private insurance. She currently gets state high risk insurance which cost three times standard insurance. I fear even this may be cancelled given the state of state budgets. My daughter and myself have private insurance with a $10,000 deductable to make it more cost effective. I take very good care of myself exercising and eating well. I have not had a physical in 5 years because I refuse to have any potential negative information in the MIB while I feel healthy as it would affect my insurability and indirectly the well being of my company.

I have created a website (http://SinglePayerHealthcareNow.com) of people’s real world experiences and factual information last week and will continue to grow it to show that this issue is not an academic or ideological exercise but one of life and death and the well being of the country as a whole. Please visit it frequently or follow my tweets at http://twitter.com/EgbertoWillies as I send out updates when new information is added.

Ms Cohen, we are depending on objective reporting from quality correspondence like yourself as opposed to the disingenuous hacks at FoxNews. Please live up to your reputation.

Most Sincerely and Respectfully,
Egberto Willies

Im a retired attorney working for healthcare reform on the Oregon Coast.

This month we obtained a unanimous resolution from a small city council for immediate reform including a fair debate on the advantages of single-payer-type solutions like expanding Medicare. That council had a banker and a doctor.

This week we obtained a half-page on the editorial page of a rural conservative town…the healthcare reform piece asked for full consideration of single-payer.

Working the grassroots…which is what I do…I see significant political will for consideration of single-payer reform.

…if Nobel winner/World Bank economist Dr.Stiglitz thinks SP is the "only alternative"…

— one has to ask what is the problem with media perception?
(example: our tv coverage for the city rez…every reference to SP was cut…)

rand dawson Oregon 541-997-3950

What kind of country would tie health insurance to your job? Only in America. Out of a job- out of health insurance is, of course the main point of your most recent story. Or should have been, but you missed the point, instead offering "insights" on how to shop for health insurance when you are out of a job.

Is it too much to ask for you to take a more balanced view? Couldn't you at least include the single-payer proposal as an option in the healthcare reform debate. An option that has continuing popular support.

I wonder where you get your figures when you say that Americans would resist a single payer health system. As you said, "If in time, Americans start to think what President Obama is proposing is some kind of government-run health system--a la Canada, a la England--he will get resistance in the same way that Hillary Clinton got resistance when she tried to do tried to do this in the '90s

A New York Times/CBS poll (1/11-15/09) found 59 percent of Americans are in favor of government-provided national health insurance. In other words, contrary to your claim, people are on pretty much the same page today as they were 15 years ago.

And, of course, Clinton wasn't proposing a single payer system but rather one that would keep the insurance companies at the center, albeit competing with one another.

You as a senior medical reporter should know better. Perhaps you do. I would hope that your allegence is to the truth rather than to the medical insurance industry.

yours sincerely,

Bob Judd