Why we shouldn't give up on the public option

At first when I thought about health care reform I thought of universal health care as a moral issue. But when I took the time to look behind the rhetoric and dig into the numbers I discovered that universal health care, or more explicitly government funded universal health care, is really an economic obligation. When you compare the US to other industrialized nations on the basis of costs, health outcomes, quality and satisfaction there’s only one conclusion you can reach—it’s foolish and wasteful not to move to a government funded health care system. I just wrote a Huff Po post looking at one of the more startling facts about cost. There are lots of angles to look at, and they all seem to point in the same direction. If the current health care legislation does pass, it absolutely can’t be the last word. Without a common sense system similar to other developed countries, the US will be competing with a serious economic handicap.