The public option: how many of us remember when and why it died?

[mike_c]

82. thin sauce....

The 800 pound gorilla in the room that no one wants to mention, amidst all the discussion about why we can't have nice things, something is better than nothing, politics is the art of the possible, and the need to make progress in baby steps is that every other major industrial democracy on Earth simply did it, in one form or another. With regard to health care for our citizens, American exceptionalism seems to mean "we're the only ones who can't find a way to do this."

There are, of course, two gorilla's in the room. The other one is the vast and parasitic health insurance industry which produces nothing of value, adds nothing to health care delivery, and exists primarily to suck profit out of sick people. They're vampire middle-men who fuck up our health care system beyond belief in order to enrich themselves and their share holders. We not only let them do this, we expect it and facilitate it. Our political leadership serves their interests before they serve the broader needs of their constituency. The ACA contains no public option because its primary purpose is to preserve the profits of the parasite class if we're going to require them to be just a little more egalitarian about providing services to poor folk, at least until they figure out new and better ways to deny those services or to suck the economic life from recipients a little harder.

The rest of the world either laughs at us, or shakes their heads in wonder. Why does the population of the most powerful and wealthiest democracy on Earth allow their parasite class to ruin the health and welfare of a significant proportion of the population, when most similar nations simply solved that problem with some form of socialized health care delivery? All of our circular arguing ignores this simple truth-- most other countries with the means to do so have just done it. It isn't hard. It certainly isn't impossible.