Reply #31: K&R. This is what I had expected to hear. [View All]

I really expected Democrats to begin with the clear failures of the for-profit Pay-to-Play medical system we have and the best option to solve it -- Single Payer. Or at the least, Single Payer as the public option people could choose.

But they started off by removing the best option and talking compromise with people who didn't really care to offer any workable options. Republicans and their active right wing knew they didn't have any workable plans so they stirred up the anti-government storms to dominate the national dialogue with ridiculous but dangerous distractions.

And yes, I almost fell off my chair when I heard some Democrats say they wanted to be sure to make things fair for the insurance companies ! I'm thinking WHY ON EARTH would we want to make things fair for the folks who have robbed us blind? We made things fair for them last time-- they had over ten years to prove their case and failed miserably. We now have millions more uninsured, millions more bankrupt, while insurance industry profits have soared.

One of the reasons I voted for President Obama was his ability to talk to the American people and explain these things. He could have told people how we have tried, again and again, to make things easier for the private health insurance sector to finance healthcare but those attempts have failed. The private health insurance sector just hasn't proven its case.

I didn't expect President Obama to be a wild liberal. I expected him to be more pragmatic-- here is how our system is broken. Here is a plan that is a mixture of public and private strengths that seems best able to fix those problems. It covers everyone at a lower cost than we pay. Medical services are privately delivered, between you and the doctors of your choice; payments and cost controls are publicly administered and accountable to all. That system has high patient satisfaction ratings and covers everyone. In Canada they call it Single Payer. We are using that system for part of our population and call it Medicare. Our public option is to open up Medicare to all.