This item from Overheard in New York:

Redhead: I wish I was a pirate.
Brunette: No, you don't. Pirates are dirty. They don't have toothbrushes.
Redhead: Yeah... But they drink so much alcohol that it kills the bacteria in their mouths anyway.
Brunette: Really? Well, they still don't have health insurance...

illustrates, I think, the degree to which health insurance is on the minds of all of us. UPDATES AFTER THE JUMP

Now that The Simpsons have replaced SICKO as movie topic in my house, perhaps it’s possible to try to think through how to put health insurance on front and center on the agenda of Congress. I hope not to understate the difficulty of doing this. Some people, much better informed than I am on the nuts & bolts of health insurance, seem to think that universal single payer is just around the corner. For this view more hopeful than mine, check out this interview in The American Prospect of founders of Physicians For A National Health Program .

SiCKO, the Michael Moore documentary on health care and health insurance opens Friday to a chorus of articles, publicity, and policy debates. Shamelessly building Harvy Weinstein's movie promotion, I called the offices of four fairly progressive New York Congress Members: Joe Crowely, John Hall, Nita Lowey and Nydia Velazquez. None of them are co-sponsors of HR 676 -- the bill introduced by Rep. John Conyers. (For a description of the bill click here, for a list of current co-sponsors click here "Why doesn't the Congress Member support HR 676?" I've received answers which I plan to post tomorrow. In the meanwhile, check out these SiCKO assessments from The Nation and from Truthdig. Then, go see SiCKO and call your Congress Member in the morning. Or, more immediately, click here to sign onto the AFL-CIO campaign to improve health care.

Last night, at Judson Memorial Church, I went to a party thrown by Progressive Source Communications

You may think universal single-payer health insurance is an item whose time has finally come. Opening nationally next weekend, Michael Moore’s SiCKO, the documentary about our outrageous, expensive, irrational anarchic crazy-quilt patch work of health insurance has been the subject of substantial discussion and buzz everywhere. 43.6 Million Americans have no health insurance at all. Perhaps as many as 100 million more have insurance so porous that any illness will clean them out completely. Corporations and public employers which provide health coverage are being drained of cash by the costs of coverage.

Kevin Stack’s NY Times story features a photo of Moore with Congressional supporters of HR 676, the Medicare for all, universal single payer bill. (Where is your Congress Member? Mine, Nydia Velazquez, whom I like, refuses to favor single payer for no reason I understand.)