Yesterday’s Quote of the Day message left off as the reading of the the Sanders amendment to the Senate health reform bill continued. It was suggested that this abuse of process and lack of civility on the part of Sen. Coburn and the Republican leadership be used as a teaching moment. That moment is here. The video of this Senate floor speech by Sen. Sanders should be shared with others who believe that everyone in our nation should have the health care that they need without having to face financial hardship.

Today’s message was to have been composed after the introduction of and action on Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) single payer amendment to the Senate health care reform bill. His amendment would replace the body of the entire bill with a single payer bill.

What is health care reform going to cost us? To help answer this question, numerous reports have been generated by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Office of the Actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), private foundations, and numerous consulting firms representing the private insurance industry.

Reason magazine is a publication of Reason Foundation, a libertarian organization advancing “free minds and free markets.” In this refreshing moment of candor, Reason’s editor in chief, Matt Welch, does not allow libertarian ideology to cloud the truth about the contrasts between our health care system in the United States and France’s system of social insurance.

It has been said the the profligacy of our boomer generation, in wanting to keep our Medicare and Social Security benefits, is resulting in an intergenerational transfer that will drown our children and grandchildren in debt racked up by the tsunami of federal budget deficits caused by these two programs.

Congress and the Obama administration decided up front that reform would be based on private insurance plans, rejecting without consideration the single payer Medicare for all model.

The most efficient, most effective, and least expensive method of providing reasonably comprehensive health care for everyone would be to replace all current public and private financing programs with a single, improved Medicare program that covered absolutely everyone. Some have suggested that we can do this incrementally, with the first step being to allow individuals 55 and over to buy into Medicare. Is this a good idea?

Fotolyn is a new miracle drug brought to us by our highly revered pharmaceutical industry. This new drug has no demonstrated clinical benefit, though all patients have adverse reactions, almost half of them serious – including death.

Why shouldn’t we all have the same insurance that members of Congress have? They and all other federal employees are covered by the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), an exchange of private health plans from which they can choose their coverage.

Recent reports from the insurance industry, including this report from the BlueCross BlueShield Association, have been targeted by proponents of the current leading reform model as biased reports without credibility – witness the comments by The White House and The New York Times (both also biased). But the fundamental message from the insurance industry is very valid: the reform proposal before Congress does not do nearly enough to control health care costs, and the mandates, subsidies and penalties are inadequate to ensure that all risks are adequately pooled.