Second opinion.

My weekly radio program, Second Opinion, which is aired by some forty listener-sponsored and community stations around the country (as well as eight in Canada and a Costa Rica-based short-wave station, Radio for Peace International) doesn't usually make news. It isn't that kind of show.

My guests have included such leading activists, writers, scholars, and artists as Frances Moore Lappe, Daniel Ellsberg, Barbara Ehrenreich, Christopher Hitchens, June Jordan, Holly Near, Lewis Lapham, Si Kahn, and Marge Piercy. These are interesting people, and they often have important things to say - but their remarks are rarely the stuff of front-page headlines, and they hardly ever make the TV news.

But one recent interview was an exception. Early in October, as I interviewed Senator Paul Wellstone about President Clinton's health-care reform plan, it occurred to me that the Minnesota Democrat was, indeed, making news.

Wellstone (who, incidentally, wrote for The Progressive long before he entertained ambitions of running for the U.S. Senate) is one of the few Democrats in Washington, D.C., to speak out volubly for a significantly stronger health-care program than the one Clinton has proposed. Like The Progressive, he favors a single-payer plan of the Canadian type - a plan that would get the insurance industry out of the health-care business.

"The President's proposal," Wellstone said on Second Opinion, "moves in the right direction with the focus at least on universal coverage and a comprehensive package of benefits, although it's not there yet. Single-payer meets these criteria better. Under a single-payer system, we would go after the administrative bloat; we would control costs where they should be controlled, and we would have a comprehensive package of benefits that really meets the needs of the people."

Wellstone, who is sponsoring a bill that would put a single-payer program into effect, explained why the Canadian plan had received such short shrift in the Capital.

"The noose gets drawn tightly here in Washington," he said. "It's that old issue of money and politics and power. Senators kept telling me when I first came here, |The single-payer bill you're introducing is the most desirable, Paul, but "the groups" won't accept it.'

"Three things happened:

"First, the pattern of power in Washington - if you will, the definition of what's realistic here-precluded single-payer, given the opposition of some powerful big-ticket interest groups.

"Second, Senators and Representatives didn't want to give up some of their respectability; they were unwilling to go with single-payer because they don't want to miss being part of the action.

"And third, the media themselves, from the word go, have had a kind of horse-race mentality on this - what's out of the starting gate? What's going to fly? What's feasible? - without doing an analysis for the public as to what's the best proposal. Instead, they should first go to desirability and then look at feasibility. I think that's part of the problem."

All this, I thought, was sensible and sound commentary - but it wasn't what I thought would make news. The news is Wellstone's proposal, discussed for the first time on Second Opinion, for a series of local town meetings all over the country on health care. It would be patterned on Earth Day, which launched the modern environmental movement. Wellstone's vision was of a day when Senators and Representatives would be summoned home to explain to their constituents why they were considering a feeble, watered-down health-care "reform" rather than the real change that most Americans favor. He was proposing, in fact, to introduce an element of democracy into the health-care debate. That, I thought, was news.

Is it? Will it be? It's not too late to begin organizing Health-Care Day. Let us hear from you.

A word about Second Opinion: The program began in 1987 at WORT-FM the community radio station in Madison, Wisconsin. After an enthusiastic local response, The Progressive began nationally syndicating Second Opinion on cassette in 1989, and initiated satellite transmission last spring. A list of stations currently airing "Second Opinion" appears on Page 20 of this issue. If your local noncommercial broadcaster doesn't carry the program, please contact your station and The Progressive (608/257-4626). Associate Publisher Joy Wallin, who is in charge of syndication of the program, or Producer Jeffrey Kosmacher, The Progressive's membership coordinator, will be glad to arrange for a sample tape.