[context, in case you need it] Obama has proposed including a "public option" which would basically be single-payer health care, but coexist with private for-profit insurance. People or employers could choose the public option, just as they could choose any existing private plan. If it turns out to be better than private insurers, they'll either get better to survive, or they'll get smaller and we'll have national single payer, more or less.

Angry protesters at legislator's town hall meetings have some effect on the legislators, but have a lot more effect on news coverage, by far.



Our mainstream press hasn't gotten used to the expanded power of the new progressive movement, because it's so new. That's why they were so shocked that Obama won the Democratic nomination, for example. In fact the press was so badly caught off guard by that that they didn't even report that Obama had basically won until about three months after everyone who was looking at the numbers already knew it. They just couldn't believe it. If we win on health care, much of the press won't believe it until after it has really happened.



Three committees in the US House, and one committee in the Senate, have already completed health care legislation that includes a public option. Only one committee, the Senate Finance Committee, is still arguing out their version of health care reform, and they're the only ones working on a bill that doesn't have a public option. But because they're the only committee still actively working on it, they're getting all the press coverage.