As the battle over healthcare reform rages on, from town halls all the way to the houses of Congress, some self-proclaimed supporters of reform – including the president himself – have suggested that they are willing to abandon the pursuit of a government-run public option in an effort to compromise with those who are either opposed to or wary of reform.
Should the formation of a public option be eliminated from reform plans, it would be a grave injustice to the American people. A public option is a necessity in any meaningful healthcare reform. It is comparable to the engine that starts a car, the ink that fills a pen, or the bulb that lights a lamp. Without it, there might as well be no reform at all.
Opponents of the public option have assailed the idea from many different angles. They have denounced it as “socialist”; they have dismissed it as being too costly; they have claimed it will prevent patients from seeing the doctors of their choice and relegate them to lengthy waiting lists for essential treatments; they have suggested it will be misused to provide insurance to illegal immigrants; and soon.
However, those who criticize the public option do so for one reason and one reason only: they are afraid it will work.
A public option has the potential to provide viable healthcare access to all American citizens, even the very poorest of them. Whatever downsides or shortcomings such an institution might have, they surely will pale in comparison to the notoriously high costs and labyrinthine red tape that customers of private insurance companies have long had to contend with. At the very least, the existence of a public option will force those companies to lower their rates and provide better service in order to compete with the government-run alternative; at most, it will drive those companies out of business. Of course, the average, honest, hard-working American justifiably couldn’t care less about the greedy, heartless pigs that held the insurance industry in their cold, vice-like grip for far too long. Unfortunately, many of our Congressmen do: they have long been taking bribes – or should I say, “donations” – from those very companies. As a result, they are firmly entrenched in the pockets of insurance executives.
In addition, those politicians that have long been lobbying against the expansion of government as part of their political platform fear that a working public option will spell the end of their ideology – and with it their careers. Sadly, they would rather sacrifice the best interests of the American people – the very thing they were elected to preserve – than confess to their own misapprehensions.
Opponents of the public option will propose an “alternative” plan, one that provides no real threat to insurance companies – but simultaneously, no real services to American citizens. If the government elects to pursue such a plan, it will likely result in millions, if not billions of dollars wasted on a merry-go-round charade intended to appease supporters of healthcare reform but without actually satisfying them.
Americans have waited far too long to see genuine healthcare reform in their country. Supporters of reform must remain steadfastly focused on their goal and what is absolutely necessary to achieve it. There is a time to compromise and a time to fight: this is not a time for the former.
There can be no healthcare reform without a public option.
For all intents and purposes, a public option IS healthcare reform. |
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