Learn something new every day on these crazy intertubes. I queried some of my betters about the individual state insurance scheme. Since they are on a listserve and I don't have their permission, I'll just paraphrase. You'll just have to trust me that they are not lunatic extremist whack-jobs. I realize that my role as AmCop's own Statler & Waldorf might make this difficult, but you'll just have to deal.

The first pointed out that several US states are bigger than European nations that have their own universal healthcare systems. So if they can use their leverage to provide healthcare cheaply, there's no obvious reason why individual US states couldn't either. He also believed that the display of a good example would be persuasive to other states. He finished by noting that Hawaii has apparently been covering "most people" for a long time. News to me. If only there were any Hawaiians with some pull in Washington...(sigh).

Then there was some back and forth sniping about the Massachussetts plan, which resulted in people saying it was probably a slight improvement over what Mass had before, but not even close to the sheer commie awesomeness of single payer.

A nice man subsequently introduced me to this link, at which you can learn that Saskatchewan was the first province to offer single-payer in...wait for it...1946. The rest of Canadia followed suit by 1962. Which means that if my parents had had the good sense to move to Toronto instead of Washington in 1966, I would be free to procrastinate by cavilling about the evils of state-capitalism for some other reason.

Lastly someone else expressed interest in the question. S/he noted that her mother was a nurse in Vermont who is part of a new coalition fed up with the Federal attempts and working to get Vermont to be single-payer. S/he also mentioned, interestingly, that some businesses were part of the coalition since they believe it will raise the state's social indicators and subsequently lure more commerce.

So, that's what I got.