'Bipartisan': Democratic cowardice, Republican obstructionist

    Anyone who thinks that
Democrats in the U. S. Senate are honorably seeking a bipartisan solution to
the nation's health care crisis needs to have his or her head examined.

Senate Democrats are simply hiding behind the word
"bipartisan" to mask their own cowardice.

They do that knowing full well that Republicans use
"bipartisan" as a tool to obstruct the will of the American people.

When asked by Norah O'Donnell of MSNBC on June 25 "what needs to be
in" a health care bill "for it to be bipartisan," Sen. Charles
Grassley (R-Iowa) responded, "We need to make sure that there is no public
option."

Last week a CBS-Wall Street Journal poll showed that some 72 percent of
all Americans want a strong public option. That is a consensus if I ever saw
one.

A majority of the American public wants a single-payer system.

Democrats need to realize that this single-payer/public-option issue is
not like most other issues. This issue simply will not recede from public
discourse.

No army in history (nor health insurance company nor pharmaceutical
company) can defeat an idea whose time has come. (My apologies to Victor Hugo.)

Throwing away a trillion dollars can be forgotten and politically
obfuscated, but legitimate, affordable health care that affects every citizen
and every voter cannot.

Let's face it, private health insurance companies have failed miserably
at providing anything close to quality health care.

Not only are there millions more people uninsured than were uninsured
just a few years ago, but more and more people who have health insurance are finding
that insurance does not cover what they were led to believe.

Virtually no private insurance companies will cover what they call
pre-existing conditions, which more than likely throws those consumers into the
pool of the uninsured.

Employers (through whom most people get health insurance) are finding
that insurance costs are rising some 20 percent a year and passing the
increases along to the employees in the form of higher premiums, higher
deductibles and higher co-payments for prescriptions, doctor visits and
hospitalizations.

It is time for private-sector health care insurance companies to show
that they can deliver appropriate health care at all. The burden of proof is on the private sector. Those companies need to prove they can provide an acceptable
quality of health care at a fair price.

We know a single-payer system can work in America. We already have
Medicare and Medicaid, which each could work well if only they weren't screwed
up by politicians doing the bidding of private health insurance and
pharmaceutical companies. We also have the best health care provider in the
country––the Department of Veterans Affairs––as a model.

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