It is clear to all of us that single payer is the best plan for national health care. Most of the opposition lies (and lies and lies) primarily in the system for campaign finance that we now suffer with. A member of congress, either chamber, has to spend a significant fraction (sometimes a major fraction) of their non-appearance on the floor time raising money.
Follow me over the fold for the solution.
To remain in congress, either chamber, one must scrounge, and sometimes sell one's soul, to raise money. They all know that; some despise it; some enjoy it. The health care reform bill came down, in the senate, to two senators, Lieberman and Ben Nelson, who represent states with major insurance companies. I don't have the details, but I would wager that both have major funding from those insurance companies ("follow the money"). Nelson used to be an insurance company president (despite his not-impressive intellect). Lieberman used to be a significant player in the civil rights movement (despite his not-impressive intellect). Both men appear to be owned by the insurance companies in their states. (I first moved against Lieberman in the Enron story, when it became clear that he had also been bought by the auditors that kept Enron afloat.)
So, in my opinion, the fundamental problem here is campaign finance. Since every member of both chambers is dependent on raising money constantly, they become dependent on the legalized bribery system that we call campaign finance. Even some of the good ones are dependent on this corrupt system of campaign finance.
It is likely true that, if we now had campaign finance reform, we would already have major health care reform. Without the hundreds of millions of dollars that the health insurance companies spent lobbying congress (they wouldn't do it if it had no effect), our representatives and senators would be free to vote for their voting constituents, rather than their financial constituents.
The ultimate question, of course, is what is the campaign money for? Clearly, it's mostly for tv advertising. Many of our fellow citizens are so god-awful foolish that they actually take political information from tv ads.
The single biggest, most important, and cheapest (for the republic) reform of campaign finance would be to pass a law forcing TV stations to allow a certain amount of free time for every qualified political candidate. But, of course, the problem with that is the TV networks' "campaign contributions."