Single payer is often misunderstood.

Some people believe, for example, that you need to be single to get insurance under a single payer system.

That’s according to Dr. Oliver Fein, President of Physicians for a National Health Program and Professor of Clinical Medicine and Public Health at Cornell University.

Earlier this year, Dr. Marcia Angell, the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, warned about what she called “the futility of piecemeal tinkering.”

Obama and the Democrats did not heed her warning.

Earlier this week, the most liberal of the Democrats tinkering plans — Senator Kennedy’s — went up in smoke when the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the Kennedy plan would cost $1 trillion over ten years and still leave 37 million Americans uninsured.