This weekend, President Obama sent out signals--and they're troubling, weak-willed, worrisome, and inexplicably conciliatory signals, if you ask me--that the important Public Option element of the health care reform package was in danger of being dropped altogether:
For Mr. Obama, giving up on the public plan would have risks and rewards. The reward is that he could punch a hole in Republican arguments that he wants a “government takeover” of health care and possibly win some Republican votes. The risk is that he could alienate liberal Democrats, whose support he will also need to pass a bill.
To my mind, having the ability to ditch one's lousy, inadequate, and invariably overpriced private policy and insure oneself through this so-called Public Option--a government-run insurance-providing entity that would offer affordable coverage for everyone while also serving as a formidable competitor to the for-profit insurance corporations--has always been the cornerstone of real health-care reform. Indeed, it is the only cornerstone remaining after proposals for a single-payer system were all but annihilated by various "special interest groups" (read: paid lobbyists for private health insurance corporations and Big Pharma, and the "jes' folks" people who love them and organize to shout down any and all proponents of reform).
Now this.
It's utterly unacceptable, President Obama, to betray Americans this way. If you cave on this--if you bow to Big Insurance, Big Pharma, and the assorted rightwing blowhards, and give up the Public Option while trying to convince us all that some patchwork system of "cooperatives" will somehow suffice--well, you've lost me, sir. And I think you will have lost the support of many millions of others, too, Americans who worked hard to elect you because you promised change.
Every other civilized nation in the world, in one way or another, takes far better care of its citizens, having long ago determined that when it comes to this one matter--health care--giving the profit motive exclusive dominion simply leads to denials of care and poor outcomes. So why does America not look after its own this way? Are we less worthy--less deserving--of this fundamental care than the citizens of Germany, Sweden, Canada, or France? Of course not!
Readers, comments are open; please weigh in, and we'll forward the whole lot to the White House later this week.