Congress: Grow A Pair and Reform Health Care

I don't know how much more bluntly to put it: We need health care reform.

I know I get tired of this country always regressing to the mean for industrialized nations in terms of quality of life issues like health care, child care and the like -- for goodness' sake, Cuba has better access to health care AND a higher literacy rate than the U.S. For all the money that this economic engine of a nation generates, you'd think we'd do better than tiny Scandinavian countries in taking care of our own. But we don't.

Like Dennis Kucinich, I, too, was disappointed that the current health care bill doesn't do more. I wanted single payer, was willing to settle for a public option, but at this point, I'm not willing to let the perfect get in the way of the good, especially in a nation that ties access to health care to employment during a time of high unemployment. At this point in history, I'll take what I can get.

I know that many people think that the unemployed are taken care of in terms of access to health care -- that they can get Medicaid or some other form of public health care for the indigent. Assuming that's true, what about the underemployed? What about those Americans who would rather take any job they can get -- even if it pays far less and doesn't provide health care benefits -- than be unemployed? The Americans who work numerous part-time jobs in an effort to cobble together a full-time salary, and still without benefits? What about them?

I know my nation can do better than just doing nothing.

So, to put it bluntly, Congress, grow a pair -- balls, ovaries, whatever it takes -- and reform health care.