Walter Reuther fought for single payer, universal health care and pensions 60 years ago.  Unfortunately, he was not heeded.  If he had been, the United States would have been the leader among those industrialized nations that have surpassed the US in single payer universal health care and public pensions instead of being so shamefully far behind, stubbornly stuck in the dark ages.

Roger Lowenstein writes about the late labor leader and his health care and public pension plans in the LATimes: "Recently, i [sic] heard three European journalists express astonishment at the primitive state of America's social safety net. "Do you have private pensions?" they asked. The system is unraveling, I explained. "Healthcare?" Some folks get it, some don't. "Public pensions?" Vastly underfunded.

"When I mentioned that Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama are touting innovative ideas for government savings plans, in the form of a national 401(k) -- the journalists harrumphed. Holland and Switzerland have had such plans for years.

"Why is the United States so far behind? The answer to this question goes back nearly a century, to the fiery Walter Reuther, the head of the United Auto Workers, and to a tragic missed opportunity by American business and government.

"In 1932, he either quit Ford or was fired for being an agitator -- the record is unclear. With opportunities for new work scant, he decided to set off, with his brother, Victor, on a fabulous world tour. They had in mind not museums and palaces but ordinary factories. The brothers hoped to sample working conditions of the world.

"After 32 months, the brothers returned, vowing to secure for Americans the best of what they had seen overseas. To Walter Reuther, this meant worker security.

"By the end of World War II, Reuther had squeezed out communist rivals and become the head of the UAW. He wanted a full pension for his workers (Social Security even in those days offered a pretty meager retirement benefit) as well as a healthcare plan and a wage for the rank-and-file that would be guaranteed even when the economy was slack.

"While Reuther bargained over these benefits with the employers in Detroit, his real aim was to secure them for workers in perpetuity from the federal government in Washington. Like other labor leaders of that era, he was imbued with a genuine feeling of class solidarity; he thought of himself as an advocate for all working people, not just those in the UAW. Therefore, he argued that pensions and healthcare were properly the responsibility of the state.

"In the late 1940s, Reuther urged the automakers to go to Washington and "fight with us" for government benefits. This would take the companies off the hook, provide workers with more security and spread the goodies to all citizens.

"In the late 1940s, Reuther urged the automakers to go to Washington and "fight with us" for government benefits. This would take the companies off the hook, provide workers with more security and spread the goodies to all citizens.

"Under pressure from Reuther and others, President Truman proposed government healthcare in 1947 and, for a brief moment, the U.S. seemed to be heading toward a version of the welfare state similar to those in European democracies. Harry Becker, a top UAW official, warned that either Congress would deliver social insurance or unions would demand it 'across the collective-bargaining table.'

"But big business, including the auto industry, which was led by reactionary General Motors Chief Executive Alfred Sloan, was hostile to the very idea of government benefits. Anything with a hint of collectivism in those dawning Cold War years was suspect.

"As the Cold War got underway, the political moment for a universal scheme passed. Well-organized unions were left to bargain for their own pensions and healthcare (which the UAW got in spades) while less-powerful workers got skimpier benefits or nothing.

"The United States thus developed a patchwork system of benefits that only two houses of Congress, 50 state legislatures and millions of individual companies could have "planned." Today, Reuther's dream of a national pension system is in shambles; fewer than one in five private-sector workers are covered.

And the industries that did provide pensions, such as autos, airlines and steel, were devastated by the burden. Steve Miller, the former chief executive of Delphi, the auto parts company that had been a part of GM and that Miller took into bankruptcy, told me that Reuther was right -- Detroit should have fought with the union for public benefits, not against them.  (Underline added.)

There is a single payer health care plan, HR 676 Medicare for All, the fruition of what Walter Reuther fought for already introduced in Congress.  It just needs to be passed and implemented.

It is long past time for the health care half-measures proposed by well meaning Obama and Clinton. (Forget about McCain's awful plan.)  It must be HR 676; otherwise the current private health care insurance debacle will continue as an unaffordable, unequal failed patchwork mixture and become an insurmountable disaster for hardworking regular Americans.

As Lowenstein continues: "With the safety net fraying, Americans are deeply worried. For 60 years, politicians have either deferred the dream of security or promised benefits without funding them. Management guru Peter Drucker predicted in 1950 that unfunded pensions would turn out to be a "mirage." Workers at many failed companies later learned this the hard way. As Reuther knew, the government would have been a better guarantor.

We must strengthen and protect Social Security....public pensions.

Let's get it right this time. The US should stop being the terrible failure among industrialized nations in health care coverage and public pensions. (Only the very wealthy, Bush corporate cronies can afford the most expensive health care while the Bush administration, Congress, the military and government employees receive the best health care coverage and excellent retirement benefits.) It's killing the rest of the American public.  It's unfair and unjust.

Health care and pensions are a human right not a commodity.