The Oh, Hello and welcome to Behind the News my name is Doug Henwood

two guests today in seconds Robert Poland will outline the economics of how

single-payer could work in California and at the bottom of the hour, Michael McCarthy will explain how we got our current private pension system,

how workers savings got appropriated by Wall Street for its own ends. As many listeners probably know better than I, the built and set up a single-payer public

health care financing system in California was blocked last week by Anthony Rendon Speaker

of the State Assembly.

The move was applauded by mainstream Democrats who sounded like

Republicans used to before they went completely crazy, complaining about

costs and bureaucracy. This spectacle would be amusing if the stakes weren't so

high.

The Republican-controlled Congress is trying, without much success so far, to repeal Obamacare.

All mainstream Democrats are doing now is hanging back, hoping the move fails and brings disgrace in the GOP.

That may happen, but you can't really beat something with nothing over the longer term.

Obamacare never had an enthusiastic basis of support outside a vocal chorus of

neoliberal Democrats. It was a classic example of neoliberal social policy,

addressing a pressing social need through the creation of new markets, the insurance

exchanges, with the heavy involvement to the private sector, insurance companies.

It requires people to buy private insurance and offers subsidies for the less well-off to do so.

It has expanded coverage, The share of the population

without any kind of health insurance has fallen from about 16% before it took effect

to 9% today, according to the Census Bureau. Gallup's numbers are about two points higher on both ends.

But forcing people to buy a deeply flawed and expensive product, health insurance, from a sinister

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