"Two reasonable reactions to the cesspool.

"One, run away screaming in fear.

"Two, stay and fight back and bring to justice those who have corrupted our democracy.

"Unfortunately, many choose a third way - stay and be transformed.

"Instead of seeing a cesspool, they begin seeing a hot tub.

"The result - profits and wealth for the corporate elite - death, disease and destruction for the American people.

"Nowhere does this corrupt, calculating transformation do more damage than in the area of health care.

"Outside the beltway cesspool/hot tub, the majority of doctors, nurses, small businesses, health economists, and the majority of the American people - according to recent polls - want a Canadian-style, single payer, everybody in, nobody out, free choice of doctor and hospital, national health insurance system.

"Inside the beltway cesspool/hot tub, the corrupt elite will have none of it."

Monica Sanchez at Campaign for America's Future writes that experience tells us that government will not favor a public health care plan.

"It's quite amusing to hear insurance company supporters assert that private health plans will go out of business if they have to compete against a public health insurance plan option. The same people who have always claimed government cannot do anything right and private enterprise is always more efficient and innovative, are now turning their ideology on its head and bemoaning how private insurance companies will not be able to compete with a public health insurance plan.

"They claim that the government will set the rules to favor the public health insurance plan, creating an unlevel playing field that will eventually eliminate private health plans.

"Is it a realistic fear? Let's look at real world experience.

"Medicare—the federal health insurance program for people over the age of 65 and those with severe disabilities—contracts with private health insurance plans that compete with the public Medicare program for membership.

"In Medicare, the government has bent over backwards to favor the private plans.

"As the Medicare Rights Center put it:

"Private plans came into the Medicare program with the claim that they could save taxpayers money. Instead, they cost between 12 percent and 19 percent more per person than the public Medicare program, amounting to $5 billion per year in unnecessary cost to taxpayers."

"So should we worry about government setting rules that favor the public health insurance plan option over private plans? I'm much more worried that it will set rules that favor private insurance industry profits over the needs of its citizens.

"What is not amusing is that industry lobbyists and supporters are storming the gates of Congress with their donations and their demands and usually win."

Wonk Room reveals that Obama's health care czar leaves the door open to dropping a public health care plan option

"Today, during a roundtable at the Kaiser Family Foundation, Health Care Czar NancyAnn DeParle remained optimistic that health care reform would include a public health plan option, but suggested that the President would be open to exploring other ways of controlling health care costs:  

'It could operate by the same rules that all the other plans do. It could have payment rates that are very similar. Or it could have payment rates that are the same as Medicare — that’s one idea that has been used. So there are various ways of looking at it…[Obama] wanted to make sure that he could keep costs low — the public plan is one way of doing that — and he wanted to make sure that there was competition and choice for consumers, and that you have a way of keeping the private plans honest. But as he said, if there are others ways of doing that, he’d be open to talking about it.'

"DeParle stressed that the public health care plan remains ill-defined and suggested that policy disagreements (like how much a public plan pays providers) could be bridged during negotiations. DeParle echoed Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ suggestion that the new plan could be modeled on publicly-owned health insurance plans for state employees, but did not address critics who claim that these plans have not successfully controlled health care spending."