Poor Leonidas,

Just doesn't seem to get the fundamental idea that we're all in this together. Some of us are young and healthy. Some of us are old and sick. Eventually, it's quite likely that all of us will get sick or be hurt in an accident. That's the idea. You pay when you're healthy, you pay when you're sick. You pay one way or another. If we pool our assets, we're all better off. And, there's no reason in the world why those who can afford it can't buy all the extra insurance they want.

Everyone gets health care. If we continue the most expensive and least effective health care system in the industrial world, those without insurance, 75% of whom are working people, will get the most expensive form of health care, the Emergency Room. The alternative is something most people with a basic sense of morality loathe; letting them die.

Those health care systems which insure everyone, whether private or public systems, are the most effective, efficient and moral. Unless everyone's in, anything else fails. Every reasonable statistic I've seen, from cost per person to infant mortality, demonstrates that the “system” in this country is an abject failure.

But, why let facts get in the way?

Kathy wrote: “one excuse a month, each one different” –

Well, Kathy, [grin] how many insurers are in Hartford?

Also, I am in favor of the public option — but just barely and am worried as hell about it.

Having said that (and let the flames fly!), any and all Democrats are free to support or reject the public option in representing their constituents and following their own conscience. Else Democrats are the same narrow ideologues they accuse the right wing Republicans of being. Mandatory support for government run health insurance is not the Democratic party I support, Ms. Kattenburg. The public option does not have any where near unanimous support in our party and may not even have the super majority support needed to end debate in the Senate. If not, so be it. The liberal wing is unwisely using the public option as a purity litmus test. Joe Lieberman is an opportunist — not a moderate. But moderates are clearly the swing voters on this issue… and liberals alienate them at their own peril.

As for lists, I'd like a list of reasons why Progressives haven't formed their own private insurance companies with THEIR OWN money and run them as they would like insurance companies to be run. No one is stopping them but their own tight-fistedness. The excuses should be amusing.