David Sirota: Obamacare noise carries a single-payer signal
Whenever scandal arises in Washington, D.C., the fight between the two parties typically ends up being a competition to identify a concise message in the chaos - or, as scientists might say, a signal in all the noise. This week confirms that truism, as glitches plagued the new Obamacare website and as insurance companies cancelled policies for many customers on the individual market.
Amid the subsequent noise of congressional debate and cable TV outrage, Republicans argued that the signal is about government -- more specifically, they claim the controversies validate their age-old assertions that government can't do anything right. Democrats countered that the signal in the noise is about universal health care -- Obamacare is a big undertaking, they argue, and so there will be bumps in the road as the program works to provide better health services to all Americans.
This back and forth is creating an even more confusing cacophony - and further obscuring the signal that neither the two parties nor their health industry financiers want to discuss. That signal is about the need for single-payer health care - otherwise known as Medicare for all.