In any health care proposal, how important do you feel it is to give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance–extremely important, quite important, not that important, or not at all important?

Extremely important – 58%, Quite important – 19%, Not that important – 7%, Not at all important – 15%, Not sure – 1%

Yet the impression is given that the public option is a hard-left position that should be compromised for the sake of the bill. But Obama and the freshmen Dems who swept the election last year all had single-payer in their campaign platform, so the public option IS the compromise, and those who elected the Dems into power last year are not going to let the President and progressive Dems off the hook just because they’re afraid the big donors will take their money and run to the Republicans. This is how the bank and Wall Street bailouts went down. Does anyone think progressives put the Dems in power for this? Democratic voters will no longer stand for elected officials too afraid to accomplish anything for fear of being defeated by Republicans.

No one in either party ever dares to challenge the Goldman Sachs or BlueCrosses of this country, the blue chip companies frame almost every debate in Washington. Obama’s proven by his appointment of Rahm Emanuel that he’s willing to abandon principles for the sake of power alone, so it is now up to those members of Congress who made similar promoises to hold firm and resist the temptaion to cave into the big money’s wishes. With the kind of public support behind REAL healthcare reform right now, the grass roots can absolutely defeat the Big Pharma and its clients. If we pass a public option then they can give their Monopoly money to the GOP till the cows come home and it won’t matter because the public will be soldily behind the new reforms.

Bloggers, Take a $300,000 Victory Lap
By: Jane Hamsher Friday August 21, 2009 5:59 am

We just crossed the $300,000 mark in our effort to thank the progressive members of Congress who signed the August 19 letter, pledging to vote against any health care bill that does not have a public plan.