Why is Senator Ben Cardin (D-Maryland) opposed to single payer?

We confronted Cardin yesterday in Hancock, Maryland.

First Cardin hid behind President Obama.

“President Obama — he’s our leader on this issue,” Cardin told Single Payer Action. “He and many of us support universal health coverage. We think the most effective way to get there is to build on the current coverage.”

Translation: we take so much money from the health insurance industry, we can’t afford to put them out of business.

The health insurance executives won’t have it.

(Cardin has taken $642,000 over his Congressional career from the insurance industry.)

“Single payer controls costs and covers everyone,” Cardin said. “But there are other options through which you can achieve those objectives.”

Wrong.

Dr. Marcia Angell says that single payer is the only option that both controls costs and covers everyone.

In mid-June 2009, Cardin met with Dr. Carol Paris, a practicing psychiatrist from St. Mary’s County, Maryland and a group of other single payer advocates.

“Senator Cardin acknowledged to us then that single payer was the most sensible way to go,” Dr. Paris told Single Payer Action. “But he said that it was not politically feasible.”

“Translation: ‘I’m in the pocket of the health insurance industry — and I’m a freshman senator and I’m going to go along to get along.”

Dr. Paris says she’s looking for a single payer candidate who will challenge Cardin when he’s up for re-election in 2012.