I want "public option" for health insurance

When I changed employment a couple of years ago, I turned a company over to some very deserving people. We had just a couple employees when we started, about 10 when I left 25 years later. But one of the hallmarks of this small business over those years was that we provided health insurance.

I never wanted to face a situation where one of "my" people got sick and could not afford a doctor.

Leaving the company meant leaving the company health plan. Which also meant, in Oregon, that private insurance was perfectly free to deny me coverage if they didn't want me. And that is what PacificSource said.

Since I had high cholesterol, they didn't want me.

Which meant that I could not get "private insurance." I enrolled instead in the Oregon Medical Insurance Plan, the plan of last resort for people denied coverage for health or financial reasons.

Fortunately I can afford the $500 per month I pay to get the medical care I need. That's before I go to the doctor, by the way. Last year I doubled my cost, and paid more than $12,000, because I had a kidney stone difficult to diagnose.

Now, what is the difference between OMIP, the Veterans Administration, Medicare and Medicaid, and the so-called and much hated "public option" that the Republicans are frothing at the mouth about?

Not that much. Except that it might be able to offer some lower costs, because it would insure more people, not just the sick and older and poorer.

It might actually be an "insurance," which by spreading risk among a general population instead of cherry picking the healthy people to insure, could provide lower cost care to many more people.

I did not like being told that since I might get sick in the future, that I was uninsurable. I don't think it is right. But you know, I am glad Oregon had a "public option" for people the insurance companies don't want to take a risk on.

But I don't want my neighbors or their children to have to either suffer without a doctor's care, I don't want them to have to decide whether to buy milk or pay rent or go to the doctor. This is a natiional issue and it is time for a national solution. We are wasting billions of dollars under the lack of system we have now, under the illusion of free choice and "market" economics. That is just a canard.

This is a great country and we have a great many very smart people. We also have a Republican Party that is trying to scare people on behalf of drug companies and insurance companies that make billions of dollars at the public trough, all the while they gouge the people at the margins.

We need health care reform. We need it now.