Americans Want a Public Option on Health Care -- Here's How We Can Make it Happen

By Byard Duncan, AlterNet. Posted June 24, 2009.

Health Care for America Now also offers a platform for readers to get involved in activities that promote health care for everyone. Its "Take Action" section is loaded with useful information, dates and causes. Check it out here.

Stand With Dr. Dean

Howard Dean, former Vermont governor and a physician, has created an organization designed to pressure policymakers to pass public option legislation. "Any legislation without the choice of a public option," he writes, "is only insurance reform and not the health care reform America needs."

"We support health care reform that allows individual Americans to choose either a universally available public health care option like Medicare or for-profit private insurance," Dean's statement reads. "A public option is the only way to guarantee health care for all Americans, and its inclusion is non-negotiable."

You can join Dean and nearly 400,000 others who have thrown their support behind Obama's public plan. Sign up here.

Campaign for America's Future

Did you know that a lack of health insurance coverage causes 22,000 deaths each year in the U.S? Did you know that among the uninsured, 80 percent are employed? What about the fact that people without health insurance are more likely to delay medical care, or to get less care and to die when they get sick?

Campaign for America's Future is a valuable resource for understanding nuances of America's splintered health care system like these. Providing readers with a wealth of well-organized information to get the care we all need, CFAF is ammunition against the smothering oppression of corporate interests.

We can't afford to sit on the sidelines of this issue. Become part of Campaign for America's Future right now.

MoveOn.org

At the forefront of activism for public option health care is MoveOn.org. As the fight for real reform heats up, it's absolutely necessary that we throw our support behind an organization with as much organizing power and repute as MoveOn.

Join thousands of others who "strongly believe that Americans should have the choice of a public health insurance option operating alongside private plans." You can do it here.

Credo Action

Just months after being picked as Obama's Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Daschle was discovered to have over $100,000 in unpaid taxes. He went back to his old job at the Bipartisan Policy Center, an institution that has pervasive funding ties with the pharmaceuticals lobby.

Daschle, who many initially believed would be a valuable member of Obama's health care reform team, soon did something disappointing: He proposed a "solution" to the health care crisis that included giving states the sole right to administer public insurance pools -- not the federal government. This would only increase the deficit and further hurt the millions already being ripped off by the insurance companies.

Now's not the time for Daschle to be making counterproductive policy proposals. Join Credo Action in telling Daschle to stop undermining meaningful change by saying public option shouldn't be on the table.

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