The public option

The latest, twisted argument from establishmentarians - conservative and liberal - against socialized medicine is that setting such a public option up against the private option would ruin the private option.

This is further proof our capitalists are capitalists in name only and have betrayed their spiritual godmother, Ayn Rand. They are in reality orphans wanting government to protect their meal-ticket at any cost. An historical argument suggests that this is the very purpose of government: to protect commerce and enterprise. They do not want a free marketplace of anything but a monopoly of power and to be the deciders of who lives and who dies, who gets benefits and who does not. They themselves and they alone want to right to ration health care.

That this argument has been floated in the public airwaves and debated with any credibility is alarming, as alarming as George Bush's chat with Jesus to be reborn to drop bombs on innocent men, women, and children; as alarming as a serious, cogent debate about Santa Claus's circumnavigation.

I fear another set up. I do not want to wake and hear another sober, serious estalishmentarian lament the failure to set up universal health care because it unfairly threatens other options.

Other options being private for-profit health care corporations.

I am a socialist. Putting something so critical as health care in the hands of any private interest is short-sighted at best. Basing something so critical on the ability to pay approximates a human rights violation.

But I accept that we do not live in a socialist utopia. I accept the private option will not be eliminated any time soon. But this persistent argument, given so much weight, that a public option will undermine the private is wrong on its face.

Countless times, I have mentioned the US Postal Service. This is a public option. For a very small price you can mail a letter any place in the country, no matter how rural and sparse or metropolitan and dense. This is has not undermined the United Parcel Service, DHL, or Federal Express.

I have mentioned the nation's public school system. This too is a public option. A cost assumed by the public for the public good does not undermine private schools no more than the nation's public universities undermine private universities. Stanford or Harvard Universities do not attack Univ of Massachusetts or California State Univ. Long Beach for undermining their existence.

So public options in and of themselves do not undermine private options. What these Chicken Littles are betraying is the knowledge how little public support they enjoy. It is not a question of lesser of two evils: the private health care option for those under 65 is the only evil option. The public is in a prison, and what the private health care profiteers do not want is for the prison doors to be opened. The profiteers know we will flee, and they know we will not shed a tear for their demise.

I do believe not only that the private option will fail due to lack of popular support but also that it should fail. They have only themselves to blame. Regardless, what will happen is the surviving private companies will merge like the baby bells phone companies to serve the privileged few, while the many will enroll in the public option, which should be modelled after the French, British, or Canadian systems. Purely tax funded.