The forever brave Dennis Kucinich nailed it, “Is this the best we can do?”

Dennis Kucinich always tells it like it is, “Providing health care to all Americans is the moral responsibility of our government, consistent with the Preamble in the Constitution. Yet we are being told that it is not possible to have the kind of single payer health system which every industrialized democracy in the world has. 

“We compromised on single payer by backing a public option, and now we are being asked to compromise the public option with negotiated rates. In conference, we will likely be asked to compromise negotiated rates with a trigger.  In each and every step of the health care debate, the insurance companies have won. If they get hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxpayer subsidies, they get to raise their premiums, and increase their co pays and deductibles, while the public is forced to pay for private insurance, then the insurance companies win big. 

If this is the best we can do, then it is time to ask ourselves whether the two-party system is truly capable of representing the American people or whether the system has been so compromised by special interests that we can’t even protect  the health of our own people. This is a moment of truth for the Democratic Party.  Will we stand for the people or the insurance companies?” 

I think Kucinich has followed the money—Democrats have lost control of the health care issue, failed to stand up for the American people, and caved in to the pressure of their largest contributors, the insurance industry.

What is the public option?

A public option is simply a government run plan that would create competition in the marketplace and offer Americans alternative health care options. Of course the insurance companies are fighting to continue monopolizing an industry that now has power over who gets health care—they determine who lives or dies. The public option could be a monopoly-buster.

Since when is competition un-American?

Who opposes the public option?

"What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass. We will do whatever it takes." –Rep. Michele Bachmann

There is some fear because in the House bill, there is counseling for end-of-life. And from that standpoint, you have every right to fear. ... We should not have a government program that determines if you're going to pull the plug on grandma." —Sen. Chuck

"We're gonna have a government rationing body that tells women with breast cancer, 'You're dead.' It's a death sentence." —FOX News Channel's Sean Hannity, June 19, 2009

Conservative Democrats; Independent turned Republican Joe Lieberman—the Senator from Aetna; the Bluedogs; and the usual obstructionist Republicans, owned by the insurance industry, have been fighting against a public option and meaningful healthcare reform as if they’re trying to stop the sky from falling on their best buddies in the insurance industries whose profits have skyrocketed in the last decade. Joe Lieberman says he’d just as soon give the good ol’ boys in the insurance industry a few more years to clean up their act and be a bit nicer in their dealings with the public before rushing into anything as rash as a government run health care program like Medicare. We have all the time in the world to give them the chance to be real patriots. Of course, Republicans fought Medicare every step of the way until it eventually passed, and now they spread misinformation to their constituents raising fears the pubic option will be the first step toward taking away the very Medicare they opposed.

I recently heard the Bluedog caucus managed to get a health care bill that will cost even more than the public option proposed by the house would have cost. It has a watered down public option that has been criticized by Progressives who favor a robust public option.

The Congressional Budget Office is now saying the government option will actually cost more than private insurance. Michele Bachman, Representative from Minnesota, is praising Joe Lieberman for fighting healthcare reform and standing up for what she calls “freedom.” Apparently her idea of “freedom” is giving insurance companies complete power over who deserves to live, who should be left to die, who should be covered, and who should remain uninsured. The reasonable and pro-public option Senator Tom Harkin from Iowa recently reminded Lieberman that he is only in his current role as head of Homeland Security due to the generosity of Democrats. Remember, he backed McCain and Palin in the last election and has been fighting the administration’s attempts at reform ever since. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have been dealing with resistance within their own party, while Kucinich calls out the naysayers, insisting the current bill simply fails in so many ways, it’s a gift to insurance companies. How could premiums in a public option cost more than premiums in the insurance companies?

I’m afraid we’re about to get a watered down version of health care reform that allows the insurance industry to continue price gouging, denying services, and raising rates whenever they feel like it. Our government has supported obscene profits for CEO's of health insurance companies in exchange for campaign contributions. Our representatives fight against a health care public option because they are recipients of the enormous campaign contributions from a “for profit” industry. We have been conned into fighting against our own best interests once again, told we shouldn’t have access to a public health care program like other people living in western democracies. Our representatives have used propaganda to frighten the people they are elected to serve into believing socialized medicine is communism, fascism, anti-freedom, and anti-American.

The real death squads spread anti-heath care reform propaganda

Anti-public option propaganda is calculated to spread fear that choice will raise the deficit, take health care decisions away from people and their doctors and give “Big Brother,” the power to pull the plug on grannies nationwide, tell old people they are too old to get a flu shot, and make us un-American Nazi fascists. Since when is fighting for the rights of everyday people to have health care un-American? When it threatens the obscene profits of the insurance monopolies.

Where is the real change we can believe in?

What is President Obama’s mission statement on health care, and why hasn’t he pushed forward a strong public option or Medicare, a single payer system, for everyone. Why does he seem more concerned with bipartisanship and getting buy-in from those whose agenda is to “just say no,” defend the unsatisfactory status quo, and work with groups who use their power to see his Presidency fail? I campaigned for the President, made phone calls and knocked on doors for real change—you know, the kind we can believe in. Along with other Obama supporters, I believe real change means real health care reform. We want major health care reform; we need major health care reform. Has the President actually stepped up to the plate in the spirit of the late Senator Kennedy? Do we even know where he stands? Has he been clear he will do everything in his power to support health care for every single American man, woman, and child? Has he thrown the full weight of his office against the corrupt insurance industry with carte blanche decision making power over who lives and who dies in America—the real death squads?

While Americans are lined up at free clinics, ending up in emergency rooms across the country for services that will cost them more for one visit than they make in a month, while uninsured Americans are fighting to get the insurance benefits they’ve paid for, while over 40 million Americans have no insurance, I say, “You are either with us or against us. You are either for us, or for the insurance companies.”