Gail Collins, in her back-and-forth with David Brooks on The New York Times Web site, has this to say about the absence of a single-payer option from the discussion on healthcare reform:
Since something like a third of the cost of health care is in administration, and the problem with reorganizing health care has to do with all the multitudinous plans and policies, a single-payer system would be far and away the most cost effective answer. We don’t talk much about it because it isn’t politically possible. But it isn’t politically possible because we don’t talk about it.
Well said.