Reply #98: I would prefere it too.

[John Q. Citizen]

Public option is a major strategic mistake.

Not because we might not end up with a public option eventually, but because it started out setting the bar so low that there's little to bargain with.

Also, there is really no constituency for a public option.

There is a large constituency for single payer and there is also a constituency for doing nothing. I see paid professional organizers trying to get people excited about a public option and it isn't working. Nobody wants it - but they have this strategy. And they can't admit it's failing. It's like the Hillary campaign transformed into an issues campaign.

We know that the Obama transition and the key senstors, and the health care industrial complex including some unions decided at some meeting late last Fall to throw single payer under the bus. And we, the grassroots, don't much like that.

The paid political organizers keep telling us why we should like it but it isn't working.

No body really cares if they get to keep their current private insurance, because most people have already been shuffled around to lots of different policies as costs rise. In fact it ssems like every week the rules are changing about what's covered, what isn't and what the deductable and co-pays are. Most people can't even understand much of what their private insurance covers.

So who is in the streets? People demanding to keep their private insurance, or people demanding single payer?

And they aren't being organized by the Dems or the Obama people, they are self organizing.