A prominent Harvard-based health policy analyst will warn a House subcommittee today that the leading incremental models for reform, including those patterned after the Massachusetts plan, are incapable of containing skyrocketing health care costs or providing quality, affordable care to all.

Dr. David Himmelstein, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a primary care doctor at Cambridge Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts will tell the House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions that only a major overhaul of the existing system, one which replaces the wasteful, for-profit, private insurance industry with a publicly financed, single-payer program similar to Medicare, can rein in costs while guaranteeing universal, comprehensive coverage.

A group of Seattle belly dancers are planning to protest outside the Seattle office of Senator Patty Murray (D-Washington) on Monday.

The belly dancers are calling the demonstration “Shake It Up for Single Payer.”Shake it Up for Single Payer is being sponsored by Single Payer Action, a newly formed non-profit that is organizing protests at Congressional offices around the country.

Single Payer Action has posted a belly dancers for single payer flyer on its web site and is encouraging all single payer advocates to print it out and plaster it around their neighborhoods.

Senator Murray is opposed to a single payer health insurance system.