CBO won't do market analysis of Single Payer system

I find it interesting that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) refuse or perhaps hasn't been persuaded to a market analysis of Single Payer and its cost or BIG savings. I wonder what they are afraid of here??

Before you start making allegations about their integrity, I would suggest looking at that. CBO is as much of a group of dedicated professionals as you will find in this world.

I wanted to know why we don't have federal government cost projections for single payer, so I called the Congressional Budget Office -- and reached an answering machine.

Two days later, Melissa Merson, the Communications Director with the CBO, called me back and left a polite message, explaining that the CBO takes its orders from Congress, specifically the leadership, (House Speaker and Senate Majority Leader), as well as the chairs of various committees:

Finance (H-Barney Frank, D. Massachusetts; S-Max Baucus, D. Montana)
Health, Education, and Labor (S-Ted Kennedy, D. Massachusetts)
Budget (H-John Spratt, D. South Carolina; S-Kent Conrad, D. North Dakota)
Appropriations (H-David Obey, D. Wisconsin; S-Daniel Inouye, D. Hawaii)
Ways and Means (H-Charles Rangel, D. New York)
Energy and Commerce (H-Waxman, D. Los Angeles)


"We are fully aware there are members of the public who would like us to provide a cost estimate of single-payer," said Merson, "but we are inundated with requests from committees of jurisdiction. The priorities are set for us by the Congress."

Now, single-payer activists, rallying behind Progressive Democrats of America and the California Nurses Association, are demanding the congressional leadership request a CBO analysis of single-payer. Not projecting the costs is another way to marginalize the growing single-payer movement.


All U.S. Senators and U.S. House Representatives can be reached by the links below, but please start with the Committee Chairs listed above in Marcy Winograd's article.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/cbo-estimate-single-payer-now

It's not exactly easy to pull off a detailed analysis as to the impacts on cost and the federal budget. That would take at least several weeks of analysts working around the clock to crunch those numbers. They're not going to do it just for some people off the street. Congress does have to request it.

And I figure that all we're going to wind up with is a system that borrows money from the Chinese to pour into the coffers of the private health insurance companies, with either a very weak public option, or none at all.

I'd rather have nothing than that, a Band-Aid that is falsely labelled 'reform' is just going to put off the eventual day of reckoning. Obviously, we need a lot more people in this country to take the blinders off.