advocates have been saying, everytime the Democrats tried to compromise in the past, the people lost.
Why have our politicians thrown the towel in might be the more appropriate question.
:shrug:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6258429&mesg_id=6258429Reply to critics of Bait and switch: How the public option was sold
http://www.pnhp.org/blog/2009/08/08/reply-to-critics-of-%E2%80%9Cbait-and-switch-how-the-%E2%80%98public-option%E2%80%99-was-sold%E2%80%9D/"...Single-payer legislation was the first out of the chute during the 1970-1973 cycle. In January 1970, Sen. Ted Kennedy introduced what we would today call a single-payer bill. But Kennedy and other leading Democrats quickly abandoned single-payer in favor of a theory about cost containment called the “health maintenance strategy.” This strategy revolved around a new-fangled type of insurance company proposed by a Minnesota physician named Paul Ellwood that Ellwood called the “health maintenance organization.”
....Two decades later, when the 1992-1994 cycle opened, single-payer legislation was not only in place in Congress it had also been introduced in many states (the first state single-payer bill to be introduced was introduced in Ohio’s legislature in 1990). The first modern-day single-payer bill was introduced in the US House by Rep. Marty Russo (D-IL) in 1991 and in the Senate by Senator Paul Wellstone in 1992. But as was the case during the previous cycle, the Democratic leadership was seduced by an alternative to single-payer. Once again, Paul Ellwood played an important role in luring Democrats away from single-payer.
Late in 1992, candidate Bill Clinton was persuaded by representatives of a group Ellwood helped form, the Jackson Hole Group, to support something called “managed competition.” The Jackson Hole Group was a coalition of insurance company executives and conservatives who met regularly at Ellwood’s mansion in Jackson Hole, WY. The theory of “managed competition” held that if the insurance “market” were tweaked (with report cards on insurance companies, for example), competition between insurers would intensify, Ellwood’s beloved HMOs would gradually seize more market share, and this would drive industry-wide premiums down. Clinton’s endorsement of “managed competition within a budget” catapulted what might have remained an obscure idea into the political lime light. When Clinton was elected, single-payer legislation once again languished while the Clintons, with help from groups like Families USA, AFSCME, and Citizen Action (now called USAction), flogged their managed competition bill. The 1994 cycle ended with the death of Clinton’s bill in September 1994, and the unraveling of similar managed competition legislation enacted in Minnesota and Washington.
Déjà vu
The cycle we’re in now bears many similarities with the last two cycles. When this cycle began (2007 is as good a year to pick as the first year of this cycle, although that is somewhat arbitrary), single-payer legislation was better positioned than ever before to be taken seriously by Democrats. Single-payer bills had been introduced in several states as well as the US House (Sen. Bernie Sanders would introduce a single-payer bill in the Senate in 2008). Polls were showing that two-thirds of Americans and 60 percent of doctors support single-payer (or “Medicare for all”) legislation.
But once again an articulate policy entrepreneur appeared on the scene to sell a market-based alternative to single-payer that would leave the insurance industry at the top of the health care food chain, and once again the Democratic leadership fell for it. This time the entrepreneur was not Paul Ellwood. This time the policy entrepreneur was Jacob Hacker, a professor of political science at Berkeley..."
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