Russell Mokhber just wrote the piece “Single Payer Gold Standard HR 676 Rest in Peace,” published by CommonDreams.

He writes: “HR 676, the gold standard single payer legislation for the past sixteen years, is no longer.

“The House Democrats have decided that their single payer Medicare for All bill will not carry the HR 676 number.

“They let that number go this week to a bill that reiterates ‘the support of the Congress of the United States for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).’

“Some in the single payer movement see the abandonment of HR 676 as a betrayal of years of grassroots activism, activism that drew 124 co-sponsors to HR 676 in the House last year.

“Now, with Democrats in charge of the House, the Medicare for All single payer bill is being rewritten, watered down and renumbered.”

Mokhiber reports Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) is writing a new bill “behind closed doors.” Last month, he wrote the piece “Advocates Call on Jayapal to Release Draft Text of House Single Payer Bill.”

MARGARET FLOWERS, M.D., mdpnhp at gmail.com, @H_O_P4E

Flowers is with Health Over Profit for Everyone and said today: “Now that the Democrats can no longer ignore that their base is demanding a single payer health system, we have lost both HR 676 by number and its status as the gold standard. From what we have heard, as we have still not seen the text of the draft as promised, the new health bill being written by Jayapal has an unnecessarily long transition period and maintains the for-profit providers in the system. The delayed transition means more preventable deaths and suffering. Keeping the for-profits means higher costs and lower quality of care.”