There are two competing health reform groups competing for your attention.

One is Health Care for America Now.

The other is Health Care Now.

What’s the difference?

Both are “liberal” groups that favor universal health care.

Health Care Now favors single payer.

Health Care for America Now does not.

Health Care for America Now is supported by the big unions and has a budget of $40 million to $80 million.

Health Care Now – the single payer group – also has union support, but nowhere near the funding of Health Care for America Now.

“Health Care for America Now launched about a year ago with a set of principles calling for quality, affordable health care – something that the single payer movement has called for,” says Katie Robbins of Health Care Now. “They claim that Americans want the choice between a private health insurance and a public insurance option.”

“Single payer advocates call that a false choice,” Robbins says. “What we really want is a choice between doctors and hospitals that guarantee that we can get needed care. We don’t want a choice between what insurance plans we want.”

But Health Care for America Now has dominated the media.

Why?

“It’s a coalition of unions that is backed with a great deal of money,” Robbins says. “I’ve heard 40 to 80 million dollars. They have paid organizers across the country to push these positions and they feel like what they do is politically feasible.”

“We believe there is a real need for education on what a single payer system is and why it’s the only solution to the health care crisis as opposed the these set of principles that may be politically feasible but really are bad health policy.”

So is it your position that anything but single payer should be defeated in the Congress?

“We haven’t publicly made that statement,” Robbins says. “But it looks like the proposals coming from Congress are worse than the system we have now. People under a mandate system are mandated to purchase private insurance which does not guarantee them access to needed care or protection from bankruptcy. In many ways it looks like a bailout for the insurance industry.”

Are you going to try to defeat the legislation you see coming down the road?

“Yes, the legislation as it is now is no answer to the health care crisis in the United States,” Robbins says.