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Thought I would post this today before DU becomes totally engulfed with discussions about Afghanistan.
I care about the Public Option on its merits and I care about the Public Option for its message. I start out by acknowledging that our health is the most important thing that any of us can possess, so any attempted reform of the health care system by our government is a core test of the effectiveness of our government to protect our rights and essential well being. In that regard fighting for our basic health outstrips the importance of virtually any other issue government can confront. Far more Americans die annually because of our deformed health care delivery system than have or will die sum total in both Afghanistan and Iraq over the entire course of both of those wars.
I look at the long, consistent, and brutal track record of the private health insurance industry in America and I am appalled that any elected Democratic could pretend that it is the foundation upon which we should reconstruct our entire health care system when it is obvious that the private insurance industry is the quick sand that always swallows every attempt to provide quality affordable health care to all Americans. There will be no real solutions to the health care crisis that kills tens of thousands of Americans annually through malign neglect and forces tens of thousands others into bankruptcy if the private sector is granted a new clean mandate by so called reforms, with Americans now mandated to purchase their products under penalty of law.
I accept the necessity of the art of political compromise but reject an assertion that political capitulation can qualify as a compromise. It is for sake of pragmatic compromises that I supported a Public Option to begin with rather than holding out for a single payer insurance system for America now. And it is also why I accepted the principle of a "level playing field" that would force public option health insurance to compete without public subsidies with private insurers. But I will not pretend that the Democratic Party now needs to find common ground with a defeated and obstructionist Republicans Party on the direction that health care reform must take. And I will not accept allowing a small hand full of Democrats in Congress to hold real care reform hostage to their self and corporate serving demands now either.
Not when the Democratic majority in Congress has powers that it is reluctant to use to get this job done right for the American people. Not when Reconciliation - the same tool that George W Bush used to rim tax cuts for the rich through Congress - is available, and not when the rules that govern cloture itself are subject to possible revision. The stakes are too high, the results are too important, to compromise people's lives away to get an easier and less confrontational legislative victory.
Which brings me to my final point. The fate of the Public Option is now tied to something else besides the lives of Americans which could be lost without a real one. It is also tied to the fate of the Democratic Party in my mind. And in a two Party system where the other Party is increasingly falling under the command of the radical right, the fate of the Democratic Party is critically important to all of us. What is our Party to become? Just a somewhat kinder, slightly gentler face of the same status quo that puts corporate health in front of people's health whenever push meets shove, or a true at least partial counter to corporate greed in America?
The answer to that question has profound repercussions for all Americans, and the answer to that question in large part is being shaped by the progress of health care reform legislation in Congress now. Sometimes we get to chose our battles, sometimes they are thrust upon us. Sometimes we choose where to make a stand, sometimes events make that decision for us as well. If Progressives are routed on health care reform now, the balance of power in the Democratic Party will be re-established on terms many of us will not like, some of us will not tolerate, and all of us will have live with the consequences of for many years to come.
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