The state opt out for public option is wrong. Dean is dead wrong to support it.

[madfloridian]

For goodness sake think about the people in states like mine with right wing ideologues running it, and with no Democrats strong enough to speak up.

It will do more harm than good, and they should pass nothing rather than an opt out version.

I saw Chuck Schumer on TV this morning discussing it, and he looked sheepish as well he should. It could harm so many states under Republican ideological rule...like Florida.

Then I read that Howard Dean said he could live with it, and would vote for it. It sounds like a sell-out to me.

Have all of our Democrats forgotten why we sent them to DC? Have they gotten to Dean's more conservative nature already?

This angers me. From Huff Post:

Dean: If I Were A Senator I'd Vote For Opt-Out Public Option

One of the most respected progressive voices on health care reform said on Thursday that he could live with and even support a compromise to the public plan that would grant states the right to reject the option entirely.

Former DNC Chair Howard Dean told the Huffington Post that the "opt-out" compromise that is being discussed by Senate Democrats was not his ideal conception of what a health care overhaul should be. But he granted that the proposal would produce "real reform" and said that, if there were no other vehicle for getting a bill through the Senate, he would support it.

"If I were a member of the U.S Senate I wouldn't vote for the bill but I would vote for this," Dean said, "not because it is necessarily the right thing to do but because it gets us to a better conversation about what we need to do."

In a brief telephone interview, Dean stressed repeatedly that his preference remained, far and away, a national public option that was available to anyone -- regardless of state -- from the day of its conception. But in a wholly political context, he acknowledged, adding the opt-out option to the bill might be the best and only way to get something through the Senate.

Did he just give up fighting for real reform? Does he realize that with all our efforts we have lost even though we have a big majority? Is he trying to stay viable within the party for the future?

Just remember Florida and other states like it if our party goes down that road for state opt-out of the public option. Our health care conditions could worsen here.

Dean has no vote, but shame on him for caving.