Letter to Obama

Here's the letter I just President Obama:

Dear President Obama,

I am very distressed to read on the Huffington Post that you are a) refusing to step up and support your party's efforts in Congress to include in the health care reform bill a robust public option that would let the states opt out and b) throwing your support behind the alternate plan, supported by Senator Snowe and the insurance industry, of a public option with a "trigger." This is unacceptable. Let me be very clear, Sir, and repeat myself: this is unacceptable.

I voted for you because you promised change, but letting the Republican Party continue to set the terms of debate on every imaginable issue including health care., and letting corporations set the terms and conditions of Federal oversight--whether it's the banking industry or the insurance industry--simply accelerates our national demise. I have watched and waited for you to step up and start enacting real change. I have defended you against friends and acquaintances who have said that your continual capitulations to the wealthy and the powerful have undermined any effectiveness you might have had.

And now I say to you: stop it. Stop pandering, stop capitulating. I say to you, step up, now, for a robust public option. It's the only hope we have of creating a health care system that takes care of people first and profits last. And believe me, Sir, if you think that this kind of capitulation will protect the Democratic Party or your own re-election efforts, you are seriously wrong, because I and every liberal and every progressive in this country will throw our weight behind whatever third party candidate offers him or herself as the candidate of change.

Your fellow citizen, Christina Hauck.