I favor Obama. It’s been years since I’ve really felt that any president was working as hard as I’d like them to, plus displaying the ability to be articulate about what he’s doing at the same time. These are the best of times for me, with a communicator in office better than anybody since perhaps Regan, and I like THIS guy’s politics OH-so-much-more, so what could make the day even brighter?

Well, since you asked, he COULD be just a little more definite about this health-care mess, which concerns me personally, since Irene and I haven’t had GOOD health care insurance since perhaps last September or so. I was the happiest of the faithful when he uncovered, re-adopted and started to prosletize the public option…..an idea that’s been around since Jimmy Carter at least and has been brought up and discarded under fire at least four times that I can think of.

I’m somewhat LESS happy now that he is re-defining it as “only one of the slivers of the program” and not mandatory. Oh, of course, I understand why he’s saying what he’s saying….he’s truly a compromiser, he’s trying to work both sides of the aisle even though the haters are clear they want to sink his administration on this program and won’t compromise on anything, and…and this surprises me…even though, if you count the “blue dogs”, he’s already got the votes to jam through reform if he wants to.

But my impatience is ill-founded, and even I know that. Why? Because, simply stated, no worthwhile national program has been enacted without the eventual cooperation of a wide variety of highly unlikely bed-partners. For instance, bot Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security required the active involvement of both the Republican party AND the ultra-conservative deep-south Democrats who really are more Republican for the most part than most Repubs short of Newt Gingrich. It’s startlingly clear, if you go back and read up on it a bit, that compromise is ALWAYS necessary to get this legislation enacted and to have it last. ALWAYS.

So…do I think that O’s program, which so obviously consists of NOT insisting on specific planks in favor of making the HofR and the Senate take some ownership, will eventually result in the enactment of legislation that will enable Irene and I to then go out and buy meaningful health care insurance? Yes, I do. I wish I could also say that the Public Option will be right there as the plank of gold in the platform, but I can’t go that far. That, I don’t know about. It could get negotiated out, when all is said and done, and I think it’s a crying shame. There was a report today that one of the Chairmen of one of the major health insurance company is earning, right now, $106,000….per hour. I think this is outrageous greed, especially in the face of every other challenge in our economy, and speaks reams for why we CANNOT trust the insurance companies to keep their rates down no matter how much they say that, yessiree-bob, we’re sittin’ at the negotiating table with you. They are, but they aren’t worried about the same things that you and I care about.

Finally, and this is a point made clearly by the excellent and beautifully-researched book just published entitled The Healing of America by T. R. Reid, (albeit a point that Obama seems to have only recently discovered), we have a moral responsibility here to provide health insurance to EVERYONE…..yes, illegal aliens, or if you draw the line there, at LEAST all of our citizens, irrespective of pre-existing conditions or ability to pay. WHY? Very simple. We’re a wealthy nation. One of the wealthiest. All wealthy nations have an obligation to provide health care. And you know what? ALL THE REST OF THEM DO! We are the ONLY so-called wealthy nation that does NOT provide health care to everybody. You don’t believe it? Hey…back to my new phrase…do the work! Start with Reid’s book. And, if you want to make it fiscally responsible to provide this at the same time, drive health-care costs down and make the CEO of that insurance company take a little bit of a cut to, say, $1,000 an hour. I could live on that, couldn’t you?