How can you tell when a politician is trying to pull the wool over your eyes?

Ask Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland).

She’s so good at it, she can do it in her sleep.

We ran into Senator Mikulski this morning in Frederick, Maryland.

We wanted to know why she doesn’t support single payer national health insurance.

Why is Mikulski opposed to single payer?

“I’m not opposed to it,” she says.

Well, you haven’t signed onto it.

“No,” she says. “I’m for the public option.”

Dr. Marcia Angell, the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, says that single payer is the only way to cover costs and to cover everyone.

Dr. Angell says the public option won’t do it.

“Why don’t you get me the article?” Senator Mikulski says.

Wait a second, we say.

You don’t know about Dr. Marcia Angell’s critique that single payer is not only the best way to cover everyone and control costs — it’s the only way?

Senator Mikulski then admits that she understands what single payer is about.

And you know about the Congressional Budget Office scoring of the public plan? we ask.

And how they say that even the most liberal of the public option plans — Senator Kennedy’s plan — will cost $1 trillion over ten years and still not cover 37 million Americans?

Wait a second, Mikulski says.

Are we on a tracker?

A tracker?

Well, yes, we are videotaping this.

Why?

Is there a reason for being on a tracker? Milkulski asks.

Well yes, we say.

There is a reason for being on the tracker.

Because we’re going to put your video up at singlepayeraction.org.

And we’re concerned that sixty Americans die every day due to lack of health insurance because Senators like yourself won’t stand up for single payer.

Senator Mikulski then launches into her insurance industry talking points.

“I believe in a USA way, not a UK way,” Senator Mikulski says.

The UK way — that’s where the government pays the hospitals and doctors? we ask.

But under single payer, we say, the doctors and hospitals are private.

And the patients get to choose any doctor or hospital — anywhere in the country.

“I have to go meet with my constituents,” Milkuksi says. “So, we’ll see you later.”