Anti-"D.C. Dems" Democrats think a single-payer health care system could be a winning issue—read what Dr. Krugman says about the economics of it

In Howie's blast below denouncing the DCCC lie that it doesn't get involved in choosing congressional candidates, he provides a link to Molly Ivins' column, "Enough of the D.C. Dems," in the current Progressive (March). It's hard to imagine anyone being provided with a Molly Ivins link not following it, and we find her in fighting mode here, as hot under the collar as Howie is about the performance of the "inside the Beltway" Dems.

I've already noted in a comment that two of the three issues Molly suggests Democrats could productively focus on were also cited by Dave Lutrin in his open letter withdrawing from the FL-16 congressional race: getting us out of Iraq and moving us to a single-payer health care system.

Which has reminded me that I keep forgetting to call attention to a piece by Paul Krugman and his Princeton colleague Robin Wells, "The Health Care Crisis and What to Do About It," in the current New York Review of Books (March 22).

Krugman and Wells insist that in the years since the Clintons' ill-starred attempt at health care reform, there has been a vast growth in our knowledge about the economics of the subject, specifically which systems work and which don't and why. Based on this accumulated wisdom, they argue that, setting aside the political obstacles, a single-payer system (the sort of thing Canada has) is not only feasible but desirable—ideally as a stepping stone to a system that comes way closer to the in-some-circles dreaded specter of "socialized medicine," one that draws on the experience of our current VA medical system.

Krugman, you'll recall, has been a major proponent of the argument that it's no coincidence that everything the Bush administration does fails, because these are people who truly believe that government can't do anything right except national security—and never mind that the Bush crowd is if anything more incompetent at national security than at, say, a Medicare prescription-drug benefit or disaster relief. Once again, he and Wells suggest, the health care crisis is just an issue of ideology and lack of will, not of lack of knowledge.