The Public Option Is The Health Care Compromise

It’s important to get this through to congress: The public option is the compromise when it comes to health care. On one side you have business as usual (our current dysfunctional corrupt private health insurance industry) and on the other hand you have single payer national health insurance (like the system used in England – and it’s overwhelmingly popular there and far more effective than our system.)

The public option is the compromise between these two positions. It allows people to keep their private health insurance if they want to but it also allows for people to choose the “public option” which would basically be like expanded Medicare coverage.

Why would people want to choose the public option? It would most likely have the following features:

1. Far less expensive than private health insurance.
2. No concerns about pre-existing conditions.
3. No concerns about your health insurance getting taken away when you get sick. (This happens all the time with private health insurance. It’s their policy to try to find any reason they can to deny coverage once you actually need it.)

If you have private health insurance now that you think you are happy with please read reason #3 again. You need to know that when you get sick your insurance company is not on your side. You will have to battle them for every bit of what they promised you.

They don’t cover you to keep you healthy. They cover you to make money. And you getting sick loses them money. By cutting sick people loose, they make more money.

But you may be saying: What?! The entire point of health insurance is that you have it when you get sick. Yes, precisely.

The Republicans’ Arguments Against The Public Option

There are two major arguments that are being made against the public option and what’s most interesting about them is how they directly contradict each other.

The first argument is the one where they say the public option will be awful and that people will have to wait in long lines and that “the government will be between you and your doctor” and a bunch of other nonsense (and yes, this argument is entirely nonsensical. They are worried about the government being between you and your doctor but not a for profit private health insurance industry? Give me a break!)

The second argument is that the public option will cost less and provide more coverage than private health insurance coverage and thus everyone will want to choose the public option which will destroy the private health insurance industry.

Do you see the contradiction there? On one hand they are talking about how awful it will be but on the other they talk about how it’ll be so good and inexpensive that everyone will want to choose it.

Furthermore, why should we care whether the private health insurance industry gets destroyed or not? Shouldn’t the priority be the health of the people of our nation – not whether or not some fat cats keep getting fatter?

It’s time for real health care reform. Anything less than a true public option is completely unacceptable. Contact your congressman and your senators and let them know you want a public option and that you will actively campaign against them next election unless they support one.

Click Here to write your congressman about health care.

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