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Reforming health care in this country is an urgent matter. For decades, we have endured a broken system that restricts and denies coverage when individuals need it most, leaving many of us one illness away from bankruptcy.
I am open to bipartisanship on legislation when it yields action and solutions. However, I am not in favor of bipartisanship when the other side's principal intention is to delay progress and undermine a bill.
Let's call it like it is. Most of what the Republicans want in the health care reform bill represents a victory for well-financed, private-interest greed. It's a gift to corporations, not consumers.
Moreover, introducing ideas that do not improve health care for the American people holds up the reform process. This, too, is an underhanded tactic. Delaying the process is not about making a better bill; it is about killing health care reform.
The basic principle of any bipartisan deal must be to ensure that health care is about the individual, not the corporation. We can achieve this through a public option.
Thus far, Republicans have refused to look at the public option through a bipartisan lens. Instead of giving it a solid evaluation, they have waged a war of words in an attempt to discredit something they do not seem to fully understand.
For example, this month the Republican attacks on the public option have been rife with doublespeak. In one breath, we hear that "the government can't do anything right" while, in the next breath, we hear that "the government would run a public option so well and so inexpensively that it would knock out competition." Which is it?
The public option that so many of my colleagues and I support is not the downfall of health care, as Republicans would have you believe. Rather, it is what will end the insurance companies' monopoly and control over our individual health.
The public option is one of the choices that individuals would have as consumers of health insurance. Furthermore, studies have found it to be cost effective for all taxpayers, as it would lower the cost of subsidies while preserving private coverage for most people.
The Republican agenda is to stop health care reform and, specifically, the public option; the Trojan horse of malpractice and frivolous litigation is part of that strategy.
Rep. Raul M. Grijalva, D-Ariz., is co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Posted at 12:21 AM/ET, August 25, 2009 in USA TODAY editorial
