Many would say that hope for meaningful health care reform ended this week with the apparent demise of President Obama's "public" option.

In reality, meaningful reform died many months ago when Obama took single payer reform "off the table" and along with it the American people lost their chance to learn about the only system that could maintain high quality care at an affordable price for everyone.

Instead, President Obama gave the American people mandated insurance and a "public" option.

Mandated insurance was a "bone" that he threw to the insurance industry in hopes it would allow his "public" option to survive. In this Mr. Obama greatly underestimated the influence that the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyists have over Congress and not surprisingly the public option, if it survives, will be in a form so emasculated that its impact on reform will be minimal at best. President Obama needed to take his case for reform directly to the American people as most members of Congress, dependent as they are on powerful lobbyists for their political survival, are incapable of promoting real change.

By promoting halfway measures and policies of appeasement President Obama was incapable of capturing the hearts and minds of the American people who could have provided the backbone allowing members of Congress to stand up to the powerful interests vested in the status quo.

Not unexpectedly, when the forces of greed and avarice unleashed their vigilantes at town hall meetings the average American had no solid ground of reform to stand on and were incapable of mounting a counterattack.

Obama once advocated for single payer reform, but presumably, he believes it cannot be won politically. In this he vastly underestimates the American people and the beauty of the single payer system.

The forces aligned against single payer totally rely on fear mongering and deception. They are easily countered by the reality that our own Medicare, a single payer system for the elderly, has been highly successful and universally appreciated. Why not expand its services to include all basic health care needs and include everyone?

The logic is simple and compelling and when it is revealed that it is less expensive than our present system, there is really no logical rebuttal. The cries against "socialized" medicine would have been easily squelched by our veterans whose needs have been met admirably by our government-run Veterans Affairs.

It would be interesting to see how far an anti-reformist would get in explaining to VFW members that we should dissemble their VA health care system because it might lead to communism. The hope for real reform has been for the moment lost at the federal level.

Perhaps that hope can be rekindled at the state level where Pennsylvania HB 1660 and SB 300 await the embrace of legislators who care more for their constituents' well-being than political advancement and cold ideology.

Bankruptcy and denial of care for pre-existing conditions don't make the national news, but they are realities that many of our fellow citizens endure because our health care system cares more about profits than public welfare.

This needs to change, and a single payer publicly financed, privately delivered system is the only reform we can truly believe in.



Dr. William R. Davidson Jr. is a partner in Lebanon Cardiology Associates.

