Stop The Game Playing, Pass Real Health Insurance Reform WITH A Public Option!

It's a crime that 47 million folks in the United States have no health insurance.
Republicans in Congress and their Democratic allies can throw canard and canard at how expensive a national health insurance endeavor can be, but if these folks could spend even a little time at the emergency room of the taxpayer-supported Parkland Hospital in Dallas, they may think twice about the current system they seem to want to preserve.
If they were to go to that hospital, they may see folks who are forced to wait as long as five hours (if not more) for treatment. And if the emergency room closes down for even a few hours with folks still waiting for care, those folks are forced to find a nearby non-taxpayer-supported hospital to wait even more hours just to see if they're going to get the care they need.
Many of those folks don't have any kind of health insurance, and when they can't pay the bill for their treatment at Parkland, taxpayers like myself have to share the load.
So much for taxpayers not having to support the current health care system. No wonder Republicans and their "Blue Dog" Democratic allies fail to mention this when they try to con the American people into thinking that the current system is fine while that proposed by President Obama will cost tons while bringing untold hardships to patients.
I heard one Republican congressman throw a chart during one speech in which he decried the Obama proposal, saying that it would "bureaucrats" in the middle between patients and their doctors. What the congressman didn't mention is that there are already bureaucrats making decisions between patients and their doctors-- namely representatives of for-profit insurance companies with the power to deny coverage of patients either because of pre-existing conditions or simply because the insurance company doesn't want to cover it even in the face of medical necessity (that's the power of "recission" that we've been hearing about a lot).
Contrary to the misinformation Republicans, their Democratic allies, and their mouthpieces in the mainstream media, the Obama proposal DOESN'T impose an overbearing public plan down our throats, nor does it put bureaucrats between patients and their doctors.
Instead, the Obama plan emphasizes some simple principles-- if you like your current health insurance plan and your current doctor, you can keep it. The only difference is with the Obama plan, you will wind up paying less in premiums in part because of competition from a public plan that will keep private insurers honest.
And if you don't like your plan, you will be given a choice of other plans, including a public one. This is not socialized medicine, and this is not a plan that puts bureaucrats in betwen patients and their doctors.
It's time the false and misleading campaign being waged by Republcans and their allies in the media and elsewhere come to an end. It's time they stopped throwing up smokescreens about how much the Obama plan could cost and face the reality of how much we, as taxpayers, are already paying because of the millions of Americans still uninsured.
Congressional footdragging must end and real healthcare reform with a robust public option must pass. It's that simple.