"I understand," the president said in his Wednesday night (Sept. 9) address to Congress on health care reform, "that the politically safe move would be to kick the can further down the road - to defer

reform one more year, or one more election, or one more term."

The president's statement was ironic, in that it expresses precisely what president Obama's proposal is doing - kicking the can further down the road.

It may be called "healthcare reform," but in fact what the majority of Americans want - and have consistently for decades - is the institution of a single-payer system of health insurance, such as that embodied in Rep. John Conyers' HR 676. This is the solution to what is frankly admitted in many quarters to be our "broken healthcare system," the solution that the president and the Congress now seek to defer.

Because of public support, and the problems inherent in the current system, eventual adoption of a single-payer system in America is inevitable. It may take a resurgence of progressive Democrats, or a wave of Green electoral victories before it happens; but happen, it will.

Of more than academic interest is the eventual price we will pay, in lives of the uninsured, and wasted billions of dollars, in the interim.

Michael R. Van Handel

Pacific Green Party of Oregon

Corvallis