Public option in health care needed...

Well, I just watched a clip of Sen. Grassley of Iowa responding to people at a health care reform gathering. One woman noted that she'd checked the insurance companies in Iowa and the cheapest cost she could find for insuring herself, her husband, and their three children, without a $10,000 deductible, was $830 (per month) and she said they couldn't afford that. Grassley didn't answer her question. He talked about pre-existing illness discrimination that would be ended and assistance for people below the poverty line. Well, that's no answer to regular middle-class Americans trying to figure out how to afford insurance costs. Grassley, as a Republican, of course avoided the issue of the public option. That's the only chance, by way of government competition, that citizens have for insurance companies keeping costs down. Otherwise, they don't have to, do they?

Then the next guy asking Grassley a question wondered something like, "If government-run programs like Social Security, Medicare, the Post Office are going broke, why should we trust that the government would do better for health care?" Wow, Grassley really dodged that question, telling the guy how more people should come to meetings and that they should write more letters to their Congressional representatives. Like we all know that works!!! NOT!!! One of my responses to the guy would have been, "Well, maybe if we didn't have two endless costly wars, this country would have some money for other programs." Of course, Grassley couldn't say that, because Republicans and Democrats spend like drunken sailors on the military, which, by the way, is a socialized program, too.

If there is no public option to keep insurance companies from continuing to increase monthly costs, while the rest of us chisel our coverage down to nothingness with high deductibles (trying to keeping something in case of catastrophic illness), the health care problems in America won't get solved.