If You Care About Single-Payer, You'll Care About Massachusetts' Gubernatorial Election

Could the same statehouse that brought us ObamaCare (errr...RomneyCare) be the statehouse that brings us BerwickCare (errr...Medicare for all)?

Don Berwick, former pediatrician and Center for Medicaid and Medicare Administrator,  is now quite serious about a Democratic run for Massachusetts Governor:

I'm proud to call Massachusetts home - as a student, a pediatrician, a teacher, a CEO, a father and grandfather, I have enjoyed all that our great state has to offer.

Massachusetts has given me an abundance of opportunity and an abundance of great friends and neighbors. I feel a tremendous obligation to do my part to give back to the community that has given me so much. That's why I'm planning a run for Governor.

Here's what he has to say about health care:

Massachusetts should be proud that ours was the first state in the nation to make health care a human right. But that is not going to be sustainable without major changes and improvements in health care delivery - improvements that Don has been working on worldwide for the last three decades. The best route to sustainable care is to improve care, and that is a cornerstone of Don's agenda. But that means helping our amazing health care organizations navigate through a difficult change to team-based, integrated, truly patient-centered care, with an emphasis on prevention and healing. It will take courage, confidence and expert leadership from the Governor's office. With that, we can show America what the new health care system can look like - with better care, better health, and lower cost for all. And, that is key to a successful economy.

Could that 'new health care system' include a public option? Perhaps a statewide single-payer system? Tough to say, but if you elect Berwick as your governor, you can be sure that you're going to get a pretty damn progressive health care system.

Remember, he was the guy that enraged Death Panel-fanatics with these honest words:

If we really want America to move towards efficient and socially-just single-payer health care -- a policy supported by Republicans, too -- we could do much worse than to put our time and money behind Don Berwick for Massachusetts Governor.