I recently received the following in an email, forwarded from the organization HCA. You don’t need to read all of it, but it gives an explanation of what his five-minute animation is about and who its target is. I preferred to just read to text version at Single Payer?. I’m a big proponent of this, but have had a difficult time explaining why it would work and countering the arguments against it. Graham does a good job of doing it in a short space.
Graham Walker’s animated message on single payer
Single payer advocates sometimes have difficulty understanding why there isn’t a groundswell of support for the single payer model of reform since its superiority as a method of funding health care is so clear (to us). But actually the model is fairly complex and not well understood by the majority of citizens. A brief explanation tends to be dismissed with the meme by which we have been thoroughly indoctrinated that “the government can’t do anything right.”
Graham Walker is a medical student at Stanford University and a former staff member of Physicians for a National Health Program. To no surprise, he found that it was difficult to deliver a simple message on single payer that would stimulate an inquisitive mind to investigate the model further. He then went to work on creating a message that would be directed to a broad spectrum of relatively uninformed individuals. He was especially interested in creating rhetoric that would connect with young adults who have been saturated with the message that Social Security and Medicare will not be there when you need it (essentially the same message that is being presented this week by President Bush when he discusses the “ownership society”). Graham uses the analogy of funding “Prom Night” as an example that might resonate with a younger audience.
Graham has created an animated explanation of single payer targeted to the larger audience that does not have a sophisticated understanding of health policy. You should view this five minute animation since you will probably find it very useful in your advocacy work. It is particularly suited to distribution over the Internet through an e-mail link that Graham has provided.
For the animation: http://www.grahamazon.com/sp/whatissinglepayer.php
For a written explanation of single payer (The animation can be accessed on this page by clicking “”animated version” near the top.): http://www.grahamazon.com/sp/
If you don’t have five minutes now, retain this message so that you can view the animation during a break. I suspect that you’ll agree that we should share this with as many people as possible (but avoid spamming those who wouldn’t be interested).
