Lessons from State Health Reform Efforts

HGM MA writing at the DailyKos website has some thoughts about what Massachusetts and its health care public option might teach America as the public option is debated.  The author writes,

 I am surprised to see the abundance of support in this community for a specific Public Option when the debate should be focused in a much larger context within Health Care reform. The tremendous opportunity at hand presents long time universal access advocates with an opening to engrave into the debate once and for all that health care is a human right and not a privilege for only those who are working and not only for those who are citizens. Also to focus energy on a public option within a paradigm where the profit motive still dictates the delivery of health care services does nothing to forward the goal to universal access.  In my view supporting a public option as merely a mode of paying for private services is akin to being satisfied with table scraps.  We must expand the debate to include the complete trifecta of a not only a public payer, but public points of access and a stringent public regulatory framework that ensures patients are treated fairly. . . .