This afternoon the House Budget Committee reported The Reconciliation Act of 2010 to the House of Representatives by a vote of 21 yays to 16 nays.  Included in the release is a Public Health Insurance Option on page 116.

The Public Option appears to have made it into the last incarnation of a reconciliation bill in the US House.  There has been immense pressure for 10 months over this component to health care reform, with those on the right comparing to socialized medicine and those on the left considering their fall back position, their line in the sand.

On page 116 of the document, released in pdf form and available for everyone to read on the budget.house.gov website, it reads:

Subtitle B- Public Health Insurance Option

Section 221. Establishment and Administration of a Public Health Insurance Option as an Exchange-Qualified Health Benefits Plan.

(a) Establishment – For years beginning with Y1, the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall provide for the offering of an Exchange-participating health benefits plan that ensures choice, competition, and stability of affordable, high quality coverage throughout the United States in accordance with this subtitle.  In designing the option, the Secretary’s primary responsibility is to create a low cost plan without compromising quality of access to care.

(b) Offering as an Exchange-Participating Health Benefits Plan.

1. The public health insurance option shall only be made available through the Health Insurance Exchange.
2. The Public Option shall ensure a level playing field.
3. The public Option shall offer basic, enhanced, and premium plans.

Soon after, it continues:

Section 222. Premiums and Financing
(a) (1) The Secretary shall establish geographically-adjusted premium rates for the public option.

If this is correct, that would translate into a version of the Public Option where prices would not be dictated by the very health insurance corporations who have jacked up prices over and over over the last decade.  Premiums have shot up 90% since Bush was elected in 2000.  Last year, the profits of the top 5 giants (Wellpoint, UnitedHealth, Cigna, Aetna, and Humana) rose by 56%.  The cost of health insurance is projected to nearly double again by 2020 with the lack of real reform.  To protect their scheme, these corporations have fought hard to preserve their hold on highly consolidated markets, and keep any version of a Public Option out of the plan.

Whether or not there are the necessary votes to pass the reconciliation bill are a matter of some debate.  Never the less, the inclusion of a Public Health Insurance Option certainly seems to be a big win for reformers.

Last year today was probably one of the best day in President Obama’s life, but today could not be more different. As if  it isn’t  enough to have to deal with the major humanitarian crisis in the aftermath of Haiti’s catastrophic earthquake,but  President Obama and the Democrats have now to cope with the political seismic shock of Scott Brown’s victory for  the seat of Ted Kennedy. If the “Lion of the Senate” was still alive today, he would very likely be even more upset than the President. Ted Kennedy died for a second time last night, not literally of course, but in spirit. What some of Massachusetts’ voters did, by electing Scott Brown, could kill the Senator’s political life work & legacy.

The Obama administration has now the major headache of trying to get bills voted in the Senate without their previous super majority. The Congress was already barely functioning, but with the magical 60 votes gone, the legislative process could become completely gridlocked. The first target will be of course the health care reform bill, which will be bounced around between the House and the Senate to become an empty shell of its original intention.

It is likely that the “political instinct” of the Obama administration and most Democrats will be to retreat & compromise even more with the GOP, just for the sake of passing some sort of health care bill. On the issue of a finance reform bill and an immigration bill, Americans should keep their expectations very low unless the Obama administration and the Democrats change their tactics in dealing with the systematic obstructionism from the Republicans. However, they are unlikely to do so, if nothing else it seems that the White House would rather use the “sharp elbows” of chief of staff Rahm Emanuel against the left rather than the right of the party.What has even more global consequences than a lack of action on finance & immigration reforms will be for Republicans to make sure that no significant bill is passed on tackling climate change.

After Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory in 1980, Ted Kennedy made the following statement, which strangely apply to  the Democrats’ current political predicament: “If the Democrats run for cover, if we become pale carbon copies of the opposition, we will lose and deserve to lose. The last thing this country needs is two Republican parties.”

Instead of sending the usual spin doctors to minimized yesterday’s fiasco, President Obama should meditate on the wise words of Ted Kennedy. It is not the left that has deserted the Democrats in their support yesterday, it is the other way around. President Obama’s political agenda is not “too ambitious” like some say, it is too tentative. The “audacity of hope” is long forgotten and has been replaced by the grind of pragmatism. The enthusiasm which carried Barack Obama to the White House last year is fading fast, it has been replaced by a populist raw anger which the GOP managed to ride to victory last night.

General De Gaulle made the following statement half a century ago:“You may be sure that the Americans will commit all the stupidity they can think of, plus some that are beyond imagination.” This is exactly what a majority of voters did yesterday in Massachusetts, and by doing so they made the task of governing extremely challenging for the Obama administration.

President Obama is rallying House Democrats to support a deal with organized labor on the excise tax. President Obama has convinced labor to support the deal after days of meetings and union threats to oppose health care reform.

The deal is that instead of family health insurance plans worth more than $23,000 be taxed 40%, the threshold will rise to $24,000.

But will it be enough to convince 218 House Democrats to support the new bill?

The excise tax was a crucial issue simply because of the deadly combination of unions and elections. If Democrats upset the unions, their 2010 political destiny would suffer. For Democrats, the unions are top organizers, campaign contributors and election day participants. More so than any other single group.

But, Democrats have other constituencies as well, including liberals.

Some House Democrats are fighting more than the excise tax. They want to maintain subsidies for low- and mid-income people, an expansion of Medicaid for the poor, an end to the health insurance anti-trust exemption, mandates that employers provide insurance, and the public option. All of these are in the House version of the bill, not the Senate.

Attention has been placed on the excise tax because of the power of the unions. But no word if House Democrats will receive anything from their laundry list of liberal demands listed above. The next couple of days will reveal if liberal Democrats will accept the excise tax as the great compromise and decide to support for the bill, or if they will push for more.

Please follow Leigh Ann Caldwell on Twitter, and read this author’s  archive on News Junkie Post.

Discouraged House Democrats are meeting to discuss health care negotiations with the Senate. But at least two members will be absent from that meeting.

As members left the House chamber for the first and last vote of the day to bring in the second session of the 111th Congress, I chatted with Representative David Wu (D-OR) about the unimportant issue of brutally long plane flights.  (I just took one last month.)

As we spoke, out walked a casually dressed Representative Gene Taylor (D- Miss).  He and Rep. Wu had plans to see WAR, the legendary long-running funk band most popular in the 1970s, at the Birchmere in Northern Virginia this evening.  Rep. Wu told me about their plans and Rep. Taylor chimed in. Taylor said he would rather go see WAR than go to a Democratic Caucus meeting “to be persuaded to vote for a bill I’m not going to support.”

Rep. Taylor is a conservative Democrat from a conservative district and a member of the Blue Dog Democrats. He was  one of 39 Democrats who voted against health care reform in November.

Rep. Wu, an Oregon liberal, is likely to support the final bill.

As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi huddles her visibly frustrated Democratic colleagues in a room to hash out how to maneuver negotiations with the Senate on health care reform, Wu and Taylor, an unlikely duo, will likely be grooving to “Low Rider” and “Why Can’t We be Friends.”

For these two lawmakers, an evening out beat out politics, for one night anyway.

Please follow Leigh Ann Caldwel on Twitter.

Private health insurance companies showed the real power of their muscle after Saturday’s senate vote. Despite Harry Reid’s win in getting the 60 votes he need to move the health care bill forward, in the end, the legislation would do little to help working class Americans because it did not include a public option.

In order to get Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson to be the 60th vote needed to stop a GOP filibuster, Reid had to “compromise” and wipe out the public option from the bill. Other centrists also pressured Reid to get rid of the government-run plan, which would have been the only non-corporate option Americans could have had.

The Democrats also allowed the private insurance corporations to get away without paying an insurer tax for another year. That saves the insurers $70 billion. It’s sick.

But it’s not over, after the next few votes on the senate floor, the health care bill will have to be combined with the one Democrats passed in the House — that one does include a robust public option, but the fight won’t be easy.

It will take real leadership from Progressive senators to put the public option back in the final health care reform bill. The leadership in the House side will also have to be tough in order to squelch the centrists on both sides that with no doubt will still look after the interest of the insurance giants.

This health care bill will definitely go down in the history books as an epic moment in modern American politics. If the progressives in Congress are able to get the public option over the humps of conservative and centrist opposition, it will be a clear sign that the American people still have power. If the public option never makes it to Obama’s desk, consider Washington, D.C. done for; the corporations officially rule.

Many of you may feel demoralized by Reid’s comprise with the centrists in the Democratic party — the Blue Dog Democrats that have shown their true colors: Red. We can hardly wait for the next election to try to get them out.

Nevertheless, the ride has been exciting for many. Progressives have fought really hard to make the public option a reality. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee ran TV ads in Reid’s state of Nevada to get his attention on the issue. MoveOn.org also did its part by highlighting Joe Lieberman’s stupidity. Dozens of activists were arrested at sit-ins across the country where they blocked the entrance of buildings of insurance giants to raise awareness of the issue. Unions also joined the forces.

It wasn’t long ago that I heard a report on NPR were “public option” was mentioned for the first time. Then, little by little, “the public option” was something mainstream journalists were writing about — it was on CNN, NY Times, etc. The hard work paid off, now the whole country knew that a public option was good and the poll numbers still show that support.

But the next phase is crucial. We can’t count on the Republicans, so the pressure must continue on the Dems. Keep those boxing gloves on and let’s get a second wind.

Follow Dolores on Twitter: @doloresmbernal

It is almost one year since President Obama took office, the expectations were high not only in America but across the world. In that time frame, President Obama’s approval rating has gone down by 20 percent in the polls as more people realized that he didn’t have a “vision for changing the world”, but instead has become the manager of a declining Empire.

During the 2008 campaign, President Obama had built what appeared to be a solid and unprecedented base of progressive Democrats. This support from the left is the only reason he had the upper hand over Hillary Clinton during the primaries. This segment of the electorate has been disappointed for a while by the Obama administration, but is now starting to be outright angry as most are coming to the obvious conclusion that the candidate for change has become the President of  more of the same.

In one year, the Obama administration has not delivered on most of the lofty goals and promises made during the campaign. The health care bill, which was the main focus of the administration for a full year, will likely pass this week-end but has been completely gutted of the public option, and is mainly a  nice Christmas present for  insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry.

During a recent interview with Oprah Winfrey, President Obama gave himself the grade of B plus. I would be curious to know what grade someone like Tom Hayden would give President Obama. Hayden recently wrote in an oped piece for the Nation that he was going to strip the Obama sticker off his car. Hayden’s statement captures accurately the growing frustration on the left.

On Climate Change

President Obama called the Copenhagen Accord a “meaningful agreement”, yet it is a complete meaningless non binding deal which the US and China imposed on the EU and the poor developing countries. Lunumba Di-Aping the chief negotiator for the G77, a group of 130 developing countries, called it “nothing short of climate scepticism in action” and added that “Obama has eliminated any difference between him and Bush”.

Even so President Obama is not the only one to blame for the Copenhagen fiasco, the US and China have the lion  share of  the responsibilities  for derailing what should have been a binding deal. Furthermore, in the final stage of the negotiations in Copenhagen the small countries were excluded and denied a voice, as if President Obama, despite his early claim of multilateralism, had  fully embraced the bullying unilateral diplomatic tactics of the Bush administration.

Author, activist and founder of 350.org, Bill McKibben, reacted by the following statement after the political compromise, known as the Copenhagen Accord, was brokered by the US, Brazil, South Africa and China.

“This is a declaration that small and poor countries don’t matter, that international civil society doesn’t matter, and that serious limits on carbon don’t matter. President Obama has wrecked the UN and he has wrecked the possibility of a tough plan to control global warming. It may get Obama a reputation as a tough American leader, but it is at the expense of everything progressives have held dear. 189 countries have been left powerless, and the foxes now guard the carbon hen-house without any oversight,” wrote 350.org’s McKibben.

The already weak climate change’s House bill will go to the Senate in the Spring, it is unlikely to lower carbon emissions much but it will lower our expectations on anything effective getting done to cut carbon emissions. The Republicans will call climate change a “hoax”, and a lot of Democrats  will do their best to please the coal industry and the oil companies.

On the Recession and Wall-Street

Lately we keep hearing from the Treasury and the Feds that the recession is over, and that we have already started an economic recovery. The road of recovery is very good for Wall Street; the two Indexes are back up and banks executives are getting ready to pick up some large bonuses in their Christmas stockings. Why should they be rewarded for collapsing the US economy? Because the system is rigged in their favor. As soon as President Obama was in office he followed in the foot steps of George W. Bush and continued the biggest transfer of public funds to the private sector in history.

The transfer was conducted under the jurisdiction of TARP.  The TARP funds had very few string attached to them, and were given to financial institutions deemed too big to fail. The justification and official goal of TARP was to give the economy a boost by unfreezing credit available to the consumer. But because the banks were not obligated under TARP to lend  back a substantial amount of the money, they kept credit as tight as possible.

The Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is Times Magazine’s person of the year. It is hard to understand why considering he was at the helm of the Federal Reserve and didn’t see the global economic collapse coming. But again, lets put things in perspective Adolf Hitler won the distinction twice and Stalin once. The Obama administration, under Treasury Geithner and Fed Chairman Bernanke, succeeded at  saving Wall Street from a financial precipice at the expense of  giving a life line to Main Street.

On Main Street unemployment is at record high, Americans are losing their houses to banks making no attempt to help by working with them to restructure their loans. During President Obama’s first year in office the rich are still getting richer, the middle-class is becoming poorer and some poor are literally becoming homeless.

President Obama had a unique opportunity to reform a catastrophic so called “free market” system, which reward speculation and create economic bubbles. Once again he did not take the necessary steps to apply real reforms, but instead kept Ben Bernanke at the Fed and hired former Goldman Sacks’ executive Tim Geithner to head the treasury. In this instance, expecting people such as Bernanke and Geithner, which fully belong to the culture of Wall Street, to crack down on their very own system is like asking somebody to think outside the box while knowing they are living inside the very same cozy box.

President Obama was elected at an exceptional time of history, in very difficult circumstances. Because of it, President Obama had  the opportunity to be a transformational President, but instead of  being the inspiration and the driving force of what could have been a peaceful revolution he followed in the foot steps of  his predecessors for the past 60 years and became the CEO of America Empire Inc.

Part two of this article will be  focused on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Pakistan and the peace process in the Middle-East.

To follow Gilbert Mercier on Twitter click here.

Too bad Howard Dean’s not calling the shots. If the former DNC Chair–who’s also a physician–was at the helm the so called Senate Health Reform bill might actually contain change we could still audaciously believe in. Dean drew the ire of both the White House and Senate Democrats when he said yesterday that the bill in its current incarnation should be killed. ” The way it is now, I’d vote no,” he said on MSNBC. Dean is pushing Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid to call for reconciliation, which would enable passage of a more progressive bill with a simple majority. “The Republicans would just ram it through,” he said. “Democrats have to get tough. We don’t have to be mean like the Republicans, but we have to be tougher.”

Today, as the nation’s largest union, the AFL-CIO joined the SEIU in vehemently opposing the current legislation, former President Clinton issued a stern statement calling opposition “a colossal blunder.” Clinton said the bill may not be perfect, but passing it is “the only responsible choice.”

As it stands the Senate version strips virtually all real reform out of the bill. Long gone is a public option, robust or otherwise ( a minimal public option remains in the House bill), And thanks to what “say no Joe” Lieberman called the “tyranny of the minority” when he co-sponsored anti-filibuster legislation back in 1995, so is the consolation prize Medicare buy-in option for folks over 55.

What’s left? For one thing, the mandates remain. Yeah, it seems the provision that would require practically every citizen to purchase private insurance or face a fine is encased in the cement of both the House and Senate bills. And the bill would put the kibosh on pre-existing conditions. But it’ll cost you. Something between three and five times as much as the “young, healthy rate.” Many of the widely ballyhooed penalties lodged against insurers vis-a-vis maxing out benefits and dropping coverage are dubious. Former Cigna VP turned industry whistle blower, Wendell Potter says the bill is filled with loopholes and the companies know just how to use them. ” This is a real gift to the insurance industry. This is the bill they wanted,” he said on ” the Ed Show’ on MSNBC Wednesday.

For his part, Pres. Obama continues to confound. He has stayed so far away from the legislative “sausage making,” choosing to spend inordinate political time and capital courting “bi-Partisan” support in the guise of Sen. Olympia Snowe and now has squandered the last two weeks coming out on the losing end of negotiations with Lieberman whose bitterness to the party that ditched him ( rightfully so) and allegiance to the health insurance industry that holds the deed to both his soul and that of his wife an ex-lobbyist for health insurance ( she’s under fire from Fire Dog Lake and others for her paid gig with the Susan G. Komen Foundation) made a brighter outcome improbable.

The GOP is a dead deal, Mr. President. Accept it and move on. They’ve been gunning for the bill from the get go. And anything else you come up with. The Republican effort is best summed up in the “Die-In” wackadoodle Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann staged earlier this week, and the “Prayer Fest” fright wingers including Bachmann and Senators Brownback and Demint held on the Internet Wednesday night to “kill the bill.”

Obama seems hellbent on getting a bill–any bill-passed so he can sign historic legislation and claim victory for the Democrats and his legacy. He admonished Senate Dems on Tuesday to stop fighting over” every element of the bill.” Some provsions may have to be dropped. You know, like all the good stuff. Just get him something, anything he can sign.

Seems short-sighted, no? Obama’s disappointed a lot of people and infuriated his base. And it’s showing in his approval rating, which has slipped to 47%( the first time he’s been under 50%). A new Wall Street Journal-NBC poll finds only 32% supporting the reform bill as it now stands; and 44% believe doing nothing is better than the reform in its current incarnation.

“There’s still time to get–not a good bill-but a less bad one, ” said Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas on Wednesday’s “Countdown” on MSNBC. “But all the bad stuff will be on the backs of the Democrats.”

Progressive stalwart Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa–a proponent of universal, single payer insurance–thinks there is enough good in this bill to vote for it. “It’s like we’re buying a starter house, not a mansion,” he said Wednesday’s “The Ed Show” on MSNBC. “We have a solid foundation to build on.”

But Dean, Move On, the unions and other progressives strongly disagree. In a bold “special comment” on Wednesday’s “Countdown,” Keith Olbermann called for a citizen boycott of any plan that forces mandates without providing a public option. “No public option, no sale, ” Olbermann said. “Fine me if you have to. Jail me if you must. I will not pay.”

As for me, I think I’ll move to Whoville for a while. At least there’s only one Grinch there. And in the end his heart grows so big ( hope he’s got coverage)he does the right thing, Maybe there’s still time for our congressional grinches to follow his lead. ’tis the season for audacious true believers, after all.

We don’t usually copy/paste press releases, but this time we will.

Brave New Films last week released a new video, “Sick for Profit,” a compelling and eye-opening look at the wealth of those who manage for-profit health insurance companies.

We hope you get to watch this video and pass it along to anyone and everyone you know.

CEOs Reap Benefits While Insurance Companies Systematically Deny Care to Ill Policy Holders

WASHINGTON – August 6 – As Congress breaks for recess and the health insurance industry prepares to blitz the American public with attack ads on health care reform, Brave New Films kicks off its new “Sick for Profit” online campaign at http://sickforprofit.com. The first video contrasts the lavish lifestyle and extravagant earnings of United Health Group’s (UHG) CEO with their policyholders, who suffer from severe medical conditions but have been denied proper medical care. According to Forbes magazine, United Health Group CEO Stephen Hemsley owns three-quarters of a billion dollars in UHG stock options, and his 2008 compensation was a whopping $3,241,042.00.

At the same time, UHG is unwilling to provide the care for its insured.  UHG patient Holly Bailey suffers from idiopathic pseudoobstruction.  Ms. Bailey’s gastrointestinal system is unable to absorb nutrients from food.  Despite having gone through a series of invasive procedures, baffled doctors determined that Ms. Bailey could only survive through the use of TNP, or total parenteral nutrition (intravenous feeding as her sole source of nutrition).  However, UHG denied Ms. Bailey the TNP her body needed, citing that it was an unnecessary procedure.  UHG refused to pay for the only form of treatment that could save Ms. Bailey’s life, forcing her and her family to come up with the $6,000 cost. Only by taking out a loan on their home were Ms. Bailey’s parents able to come up with the money to pay for the costs of treatment.

“They deemed [TNP] ‘medically unnecessary’ and that they were not going to pay for any of it.  I tried to explain to them that if I do not have this, I will die, and still they refused.” Holly Bailey, United Health Group Patient

Stories such as that of Holly Bailey and others are highlighted in the videos.

As the health care debate rages on, powerful insurance companies are spending millions of dollars to control the direction of the debate, obfuscate these issues.

*According to Forbes.com

Watch “Sick for Profit” now:

It’s unclear where President Obama stands on a public option choice as lobbyist from the for-profit industry continue to meddle with the president on his health care initiative.

Since President Obama took office, he has received numerous visits from for-profit health insurance and pharmaceutical companies. A watchdog group even sued the White House to obtain the visits log to compare how many advocacy groups had been given the same access to Obama. The findings were, zero.

According to a Los Angeles Times article on Tuesday, the pharmaceutical companies have given the White House’s health care initiative it’s “blessing.” Obama and former Louisiana congressman Billy Tauzin, are reportedly working very closely. Tauzin has been the top lobbyist of the for-profit health care industry and his influence has had a huge impact on how Obama has molded his health care plan to the whims of the industry.

This is a snippet of the L.A. Times article:

For his part, Tauzin said he had not only received the White House pledge to forswear Medicare drug price bargaining, but also a separate promise not to pursue another proposal Obama supported during the campaign: importing cheaper drugs from Canada or Europe. Both proposals could cost the industry billions, undermine its ability to develop new cures and, in the case of imports, possibly compromise safety, industry officials contend.

Obama has already said that he does not intent to do a government “take over” of the health care system, but the GOP continues to argue that his true motives are to adopt a single-payer system.

The Washington Post reported today that Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans is “lashing out” at groups that “demonize” the health plans that the for-profit health care industry offers.

She also reiterated her group’s opposition to a government-run health insurance option, saying it would bankrupt hospitals, send private insurers into a death spiral and break the promise that people could keep the coverage they already have.

Without mentioning President Obama by name, she tapped into allegations that Obama supports the public option as a way to put the nation on a path to a government-run single-payer system. If that is the intent, it should be discussed openly, she said.

Where does Obama stand then if on one side he is being accused of pushing for “socialized” medecine, but on another, he is having drinks with the top for-profit health care lobbyist?

Opinion by Ole Ole Olson, Blogger

Barack Obama was elected with a strong mandate for change. Despite unprecedented conservative attacks and obstructionism, with the executive and legislative branch under Democratic control, the progressive movement that brought them to power needs to see some tangible results. The fight for health care reform is a test to see if any real change is possible against the establishment and corporate power. If the bare minimum of a public option fails, the results could be devastating.

I am proud to be a part of the movement for change that started following the disastrous reelection of King George W Bush in 2004. At that time, there seemed to be a collective awakening of progressives that inaction and having faith that there would be no way this master of disaster could possibly win. Millions of people realized that simply their vote was not enough, they needed to volunteer, donate, organize, and speak out on important issues publicly. The result was turning of the tide in the 2006 elections, and the big win in 2008, where a black man with a funny sounding name defied all the odds and became our president.

Then the attacks started. These were not the typical partisan attacks, these were intense, outrageous, inflammatory, and completely unfounded. Obama is a communist, Obama is a fascist, Obama is an Islamist with a secret agenda to give Iran nukes so it can destroy Israel, etc. The magnitude of this slander was off the charts.

The diminishing GOP carried these attacks through to new levels of shame in the US Congress too by engaging in delaying tactics on literally everything that came up, from nominations to legislation. In the 6 short months that they have been out of power, the Republicans have done a record number of filibusters. The RNC fueled endless frivolous lawsuits to deprive the state of Minnesota from its second US Senator, simply to deprive the Democrats of 1 more vote.

I understand why the conservatives are doing this. They are trying to poison the well to force the voters to a new trough in 2010, hoping to retake congress and hamstring Obama, the exact thing they did to Clinton in 1993-1994. However, this time, the Democratic party has a majority who favor change in both the House and Senate, a president who is actively seeking positive solutions, and a base network of energized progressives willing to support these important reforms.

In a genuine effort at bipartisanship, Obama has reached across the aisle and compromised on a number of issues. In the words of a disappointed liberal on Digg.com:

“Obama and the Dems are just burnin me. Here he got elected on a mandate for change and we’re just getting mild modifications of the status quo. We’re in Iraq, we’ve rolled back Americans civil liberties, Guantanamo is still open, gays can’t marry, the rich still pay a smaller tax rate than they have since Ford, our school’s suck, and we’re going to get a watered down health bill that means we are less likely to get one that really represents a change for the better for that much longer. It’s all very disappointing.”

I understand how difficult it is to take on an established and thoroughly entrenched system, so I have always advocated patience and accepting incremental changes. The hope has always been to steer things in the right direction and increasing make things better for an 8 year stretch. However, there are certain minimums that must be met at each stage to keep the ball rolling. In the health care debate, that bare minimum is the public option.

Every other country in the developed world has universal health care for its people. The United States is the sole hold out from this. In an ideal world, the US would model itself after the fully socialized health care systems in the Scandinavian countries. They are very cost effective, provide world class care, and reward their citizens with some of the longest life expectancies on the planet.

The problem is there’s that dirty word: socialism, and the red-scare tactics of the conservatives since Sarah Palin came into the picture make this a tough sell to a majority of Americans, despite the inherent advantages of a socialized system.

The next best scenario, and something that would work well in the US is a single payer system. Costs would be slashed by 31% by eliminating administrative overhead, and would provide near-universal coverage. The public is already familiar with this approach, because of Medicare, so this would be the best solution that we can realistically expect at this time in the US.

Unfortunately, this was almost immediately taken off the table by the Democrats as a way of ‘compromising’ with the giant health insurance corporations who have strategically donated $187 million to the campaign coffers of mostly Blue Dog Democrats and Republicans in key committees.

The final stage of real reform would dwell within the realm of a public option. This would ensure coverage of 97% of Americans, ensure they could keep their current doctor and plan if they chose to, but finally provide some competition to the consolidated health insurance industry that has destroyed competition and drove prices through the roof while raking in record profits.

With 50 million uninsured Americans, spiraling costs, dramatic increases in the number of uninsured folks, and medical emergencies resulting in record numbers of bankruptcies and home foreclosures, there is no doubt reform is needed. The public option would solve all of these critical issues.

Anything less than this, like co-ops or allowing the status quo with a few more regulations is not real change, it is the illusion of change and simply allows insurance giants to continue to exploit the American people. Anything less than the public option is admitting that money means more to power than people. Anything less than the public option is unacceptable. The public option is the bare minimum.

There was a good article on the Washington Post recently that outlined how Obama is taking a completely different approach than Bill Clinton during the attempt to fix the system in 1993. This includes taking a more hands off approach to the actual legislation, allowing congress to craft it. The inherent danger to this situation is that the campaign contributions and $1.4 million per day spent on high-powered lobbyists will be able to water down legislation until it is either meaningless or actually had hidden clauses that actually make the situation worse. This is not the Democrats vs. the Republicans, it’s a matter of the health insurance companies against the American people.

This is why Obama needs to exercise a veto if he is handed anything short of a public option. Failure to reject illusory change would be a demoralizing blow for every progressive group and individual who worked so hard for real change over the last few years. Failure to reject non-change, should it land on his desk would signal an end to the support network the president has enjoyed. Failure to veto anything that falls short of the public option could spell the end of the movement for change, and by consequence the Obama presidency.

This has more broad applications that health care reform however. There are at least a dozen incredibly important issues that need to be dealt with in the coming years. Next on the list is likely to be getting the Employee Free Choice Act and Immigration Reform passed. The former is likely to bring about a corporate lobbying effort even beyond what the health care debate demonstrated, and Immigration Reform is sure to waken xenophobic and ethnocentric sentiments from conservative groups.

Following this, other issues include green energy, improving education, decriminalizing marijuana, separating church and state, stopping climate change, LGBT civil rights, protecting our environment, etc. What chance will any of these have if the progressive support network has been de-energized? Who will fight for change then except the isolated groups that are most interested in those issues in the first place?

The health care debate is critical to delivering real change, as promised. Failure to be strong and lead the country to a brighter future on this issue could spell disaster for the Democrats, Obama, and the rare chance at reform that only rises once in a generation. To those congressmen in the trenches, to progressive activists everywhere, and most importantly, to our president, remember that leadership requires bravery in dark times.

“Fortune favors the bold”
-ancient Latin proverb