Jim Ferlo lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

He’s the state senator from the inner city.

Home to one of the nation’s largest health care corporations – UPMC.

“In this one area of Pittsburgh, you have this health care powerhouse — a high concentration of billions of dollars of health care delivery systems from primary to secondary care,” Ferlo told Single Payer Action. “At the same time, you have low income communities with the highest levels of infant mortality and morbidity rates in the whole area.”

Ferlo has been a long time supporter of a national single payer health care system.

“The people I represent do not want a half backward, half-baked plan that’s being debated now in the halls of Congress,” Ferlo said. “As nebulous as that plan is, it will not be cost effective and will not reach the intended audience of insuring the uninsured.”

“It will set us back in setting up a progressive delivery system. We have the most expensive health care system in the world. But we do not rank in major health indicators. So it has to change. And people would rather see fundamental reform than any notion to some half baked plan that is similar to like the Massachusetts Model which has been discredited.”