Obama: Not Yet Ready for Single-Payer Health Care

Amy Chozick reports on the presidential race from Albuquerque, N.M. Barack Obama said Monday he would consider embracing a single-payer health care system, beloved by liberals, as his plan for broader coverage evolves over time. “If I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system,” Obama told some 1,800 people at a town-hall style meeting on the economy. But he again rejected an immediate shift to a single-payer system, which would eliminate private insurance companies and put a Medicare-like system into place where the government pays all health care bills with tax dollars. Many liberals have long embraced the coverage plan, saying it would cover everyone, take the profit out of health insurance and allow for greater efficiencies. But Republicans cringe at such deep government involvement in the private sector, calling it socialized medicine. And many Democrats, including Obama and former rival Hillary Clinton , have taken a much more ... (link)