A bill to create single-payer healthcare in California has passed that state's senate for the third time now. Californians just need to persuade a governor to sign it. Single-payer healthcare bills are advancing in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and a growing list of states, including New Mexico, where State Senator Jerry Ortiz y Pino, a long-time supporter of single-payer healthcare, is running for Lieutenant Governor.

Now North Carolina house candidate Marcus Brandon has pledged to introduce a bill to create single-payer healthcare in that state. Brandon, whom I know and like and who worked for Congressman Dennis Kucinich's 2008 presidential campaign, is a candidate in North Carolina House District 60. That's near Greensboro, where I can just picture Marcus sitting at a lunch counter and refusing to be provoked.

Brandon has promised that if he is elected, the first piece of legislation he will introduce will be the "North Carolina Healthcare Act" which will provide universal single-payer healthcare to every citizen of the state.

Brandon says that he remains a supporter of national single-payer healthcare and will continue lobbying for passage of HR 676, Congressman John Conyers' bill:

"The HR 676 fight is definitely not over, but we must now strategically shift the focus to the state level.  When other states see that we can cut the cost of healthcare, streamline our medical industry, and still provide universal coverage to all North Carolinians, then all of the sudden, single-payer health care doesn't look so bad."

Brandon argues that a single-payer system could save over $1.5 billion per year in reduced bureaucracy in the state of North Carolina alone. And he speaks confidently about making this happen:

“North Carolina is poised to be the first state to adopt single-payer, once I am able to introduce it.  North Carolinians are ready for real solutions to healthcare.   North Carolina has the third  highest healthcare cost of any state, while it sags at 37th in average income.  This is a disparity that most North Carolinians feel when they have to think about healthcare.  Every day, as I am knocking on doors to talk to voters, I hear stories of people who cannot afford insurance and become victims of this for-profit industry."

Brandon says his bill is similar to other states' initiatives such as the "Minnesota Health Act" or the "California Universal Healthcare Act."  Brandon points to these two bills as excellent examples of how a single payer healthcare system could be both fiscally sound and provide full coverage.

Brandon served in 2007 and 2008 as Dennis Kucinich’s National Finance Director and Deputy Campaign Manager.  He says that Kucinich inspired him:

Ah, the politics of it all. Healthcare reform may or may not pass through the 111th Congress. President Obama may or may not be successful in crafting further concessions to a Senate or House version of health reform that he dubbed “health insurance reform” in order to step away from any appearance of a deeper government role in the debate or in the final product. But who will claim the dead?

As they debate and now gather for more push-me-pull-me meetings, more Americans will die waiting for healthcare. 124 every day, according to a Harvard study oft quoted by President Obama. Those who will die later today and tomorrow and every day thereafter aren’t playing politics and their deaths are the direct result of bi-partisan failure to stop the killing.

The debate needs to be about the dead and how to prevent more from dying. Reframe and reclaim this debate for them – not for political gain.

Republicans and Democrats will join at the White House on February 25, 2010, to talk about it. In the meantime, the political strategists and media pundits who like to simultaneously influence public opinion and also then predict how successfully they have influenced public opinion will go into high wind trying to find out which political position will garner the highest ratings, listenership and readership and therefore sell the most ad time and space.

America is under assault. From coast to coast, we are being invaded by horrific, body-consuming mutants that are already destroying 65,000 American lives a year. As a Duke University scientist puts it, "This is a living, breathing problem. It's here. It's arrived."

These are not invaders from mars, but from within our own countryside. Ironically, these are mutants of our own creation, leaving America face to face with a spreading plague of drug-resistant germs.

For decades, we have benefited enormously from the healing wonders of antibiotics. These drugs save millions of lives that would otherwise be lost to microbial infections. But more and more of the antibiotics in America's medical kit are proving to be ineffective against the plethora of germs that endanger us. Why? Too much of a good thing.