Rep. Anthony Wiener of New York has backed off offering a single-payer amendment to the health care reform bill, House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Henry Waxman's announced earlier today. This will be a severe disappointment to single-payer advocates, who had mobilized a major campaign to pressure legislators to vote in favor of the amendment (full disclosure: I'm on their email list; I support single-payer).

It wasn't going to win, but it deserved a vote. When a substantial share of the electorate favors an approach that was sytematically excluded from this year's debate, it seems only right that they be offered a roll call vote so they know which legislators stand with them through thick and thin. In the end, those legislators will vote for the Rube Goldberg machine now moving Congress. This only makes it more difficult for them to do so.