Health Care Debate Ignores Public Voice

It's disheartening, but not surprising, that those in Congress tasked with passing health care reform are dragging their feet on those items most popular among the citizenry.

After all, it's a tough slog when you're carrying massive satchels of cash provided by the very industry we're asking you to battle.

National Public Radio (NPR) reports that a recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Harvard School of Public Health finds 71% of respondents believe that Congress isn't doing enough to listen to what the publics wants as an outcome.

According to the polling data, who is most trusted when it comes to health care reform? Groups representing nurses, at 79%, followed by patients, doctors and seniors.

Least trusted? No shocker here, with insurance companies, drug makers, and large corporations continually seen in what I would describe in their traditional roles as money-grubbing robber barons, lashing all of us to the railroad tracks as illness and disease comes 'round the bend.

Since we can only seem to be able to make up our minds when voting on American Idol or some other insipid reality show, it's difficult to reconcile the fact that half of those polled believe the federal government is partially responsible for the current health care mess, yet we're expecting that same government to fix the problem for us.

So let's see...the least trusted organizations, who people overwhelmingly view as having caused the crisis in health care in America, spend millions of dollars each year funding the campaigns and interests of the American government that we're hoping will stand up and provide leadership and solutions that are diametrically opposed to their self interests.

Yeah, that could happen. More likely is a scenario being advanced by filmmaker Michael Moore, who said, "To the Democrats in Congress, find your spine. Read the polls. And see us coming."

Moore added:

"We're going to start in the primaries. Any Democrat that gets in the way of true reform, reform that has to include the public option, we are going to campaign against them in the primary. We're going to try to find people to run against them. They are not going to get away with this."

It's put up or shut up time, Dems. The White House cannot count on the continued support of progressives like those polled by Kaiser.

Kudos to MoveOn.org for essentially telling Rahm Emanuel to stop complaining about ad campaigns criticizing Blue Dog democrats and lily-livered Congressional leaders like Harry Reid, Max Baucus, and Ben Nelson. And make no mistake - failure to pass a public option will result in a furious backlash against the ruling party.

Democrats have talked the talk. Now they must walk the walk.