Single-payer system.

• Position: Letter to the editor

Here is a good reason that the AFL-CIO's announcement supporting a single-payer health care system did not receive media coverage: It wasn't news ("Labor Offers Business Health Care Cures," by Barbara Miner, May issue). Everyone knows where labor stands on this subject.

The Better Health Care Together coalition got press precisely because its organizers did something new. It is easy to criticize Andy Stern for breathing the same oxygen as Wal-Mart's Lee Scott. Believe me, no one has more antipathy toward Wal-Mart than I. Yet it is a simple fact that the health care debate will remain stagnant until corporate interests demand a change. Credit should go to Stern...