Why is anyone making a profit off our misery?

Since we pay the most per capita of any country, why don't we have the best healthcare with the longest lifespan and lowest infant mortality rate where everyone in the country is covered?

Why do we make our companies pay for healthcare when companies in other countries get their employees covered by the government for free?

Are you planning to win your primary challenge next year?

If you think about the questions, the answer is clear. Only a single-payer system makes sense. Everything else is off the table.

Single payer is the only competitive option on the world stage. We cannot reasonably compete in the international market while our companies are paying healthcare costs and their competitors are not. Beyond that, there is no reason for Americans to be paying billions of dollars in profits for healthcare--especially healthcare that compares so poorly with that in other countries. We fail to cover tens of millions of people, and we come in well down the list in quality of healthcare delivered. Why is it that the "greatest country in the world" can't have better healthcare than Britain, France or Canada?

We know why, of course. Lobbyists are whispering in your ear that you can ignore the voters. I don't think you understand the degree to which people outside the beltway might have a different idea.

It seems like the Bush Administration was on a campaign to undermine democracy in the United States. From illegal spying on Americans to torture of detainees to packing the US Attorneys offices with political hacks to ignoring fundamental constitutional rights to acting as if the executive is some saucer detached from the mothership, Bush officials broke or twisted any law that got in their way. Is this the new norm for how government will operate? If so, by what right do we call ourselves a "democracy"? Trials are the minimum necessary to show that we aren't living in a dictatorship.

Single-payer is the only option that is competitive in the global economy. We send almost a trillion dollars a year overseas to pay for what we import. One reason is because our companies are not playing on a level playing field. They are paying healthcare costs directly, while millions of people in this country don't even get healthcare. Their overseas competitors get their healthcare subsidized. We need to make sure that any healthcare plan that we institute is competitive. If the result of this isn't a plan that is at least as good as the one in Britain or France, then what's the point?

Can the progressive caucus at least take one of those plans as a starting point?