The following is reprinted with the kind permission of its author. It expresses far better than I could my own outrage and disappointment…not least of all with Congressional Democrats.

Harry Reid, and What Happened to the Public Option

by Robert Reich

First there was Medicare for all 300 million of us. But that was a non-starter because private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn’t hear of it, and Republicans and “centrists” thought it was too much like what they have up in Canada — which, by the way, cost Canadians only 10 percent of their GDP and covers every Canadian. (Our current system of private for-profit insurers costs 16 percent of GDP and leaves out 45 million people.)

So the compromise was to give all Americans the option of buying into a “Medicare-like plan” that competed with private insurers. Who could be against freedom of choice? Fully 70 percent of Americans polled supported the idea. Open to all Americans, such a plan would have the scale and authority to negotiate low prices with drug companies and other providers, and force private insurers to provide better service at lower costs. But private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn’t hear of it, and Republicans and “centrists” thought it would end up too much like what they have up in Canada.

So the compromise was to give the public option only to Americans who wouldn’t be covered either by their employers or by Medicaid. And give them coverage pegged to Medicare rates. But private insurers and … you know the rest.

So the compromise that ended up in the House bill is to have a mere public option, open only to the 6 million Americans not otherwise covered. The Congressional Budget Office warns this shrunken public option will have no real bargaining leverage and would attract mainly people who need lots of medical care to begin with. So it will actually cost more than it saves.

But even the House’s shrunken and costly little public option is too much for private insurers, Big Pharma, Republicans, and “centrists” in the Senate. So Harry Reid has proposed an even tinier public option, which states can decide not to offer their citizens. According to the CBO, it would attract no more than 4 million Americans.

It’s a token public option, an ersatz public option, a fleeting gesture toward the idea of a public option, so small and desiccated as to be barely worth mentioning except for the fact that it still (gasp) contains the word “public.”

And yet Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson mumble darkly that they may not even vote to allow debate on the floor of the Senate about the bill if it contains this paltry public option. And Republicans predict a “holy war.”

But what more can possibly be compromised? Take away the word “public?” Make it available to only twelve people?

Our private, for-profit health insurance system, designed to fatten the profits of private health insurers and Big Pharma, is about to be turned over to … our private, for-profit health care system. Except that now private health insurers and Big Pharma will be getting some 30 million additional customers, paid for by the rest of us.

Upbeat policy wonks and political spinners who tend to see only portions of cups that are full will point out some good things: no pre-existing conditions, insurance exchanges, 30 million more Americans covered. But in reality, the cup is 90 percent empty. Most of us will remain stuck with little or no choice — dependent on private insurers who care only about the bottom line, who deny our claims, who charge us more and more for co-payments and deductibles, who bury us in forms, who don’t take our calls.

I’m still not giving up. I want every Senator who’s not in the pocket of the private insurers or Big Pharma to introduce and vote for a “Ted Kennedy Medicare for All” amendment to whatever bill Reid takes to the floor. And if this fails, a “Ted Kennedy Real Public Option for All” amendment. Let every Senate Democratic who doesn’t have the guts to vote for either of them be known and counted.

Most writers start their careers working at home. Besides being cheap, a home office has a lot to recommend it. You’re never far from the refrigerator, the cookie jar, or the television set. You can hide your writer’s block behind distracting little household chores and you can shlump about all day in slippers and ‘scrubs’. If you’ve spent too many days moving from the refrigerator to the cookie jar that’s about all that fits anyway.

The major disadvantage of working at home is that you are never out of the office. Twenty-four hours a day you could be working. You can’t say, “By golly, if I were at the office I’d re-write that character sketch,” because you are at the office, it’s just down the hall from you. Hence, your worry pendulum swings relentlessly back and forth between work, guilt at not working, and anxiety about unfinished assignments. This is not relaxing. Rats.

That’s the reason many writers are driven to find an office someplace else: anything to get out of the house. That’s what I’ve done, and it seems to me lots of foothills people have done the same thing. Unfortunately they have all chosen my office space, but I try to treat this as just another opportunity to get to know my neighbors.

From my office window I  watch  SUVs  and luxury cars as ponderous as elephants, gingerly swap parking places;  angling in and out of the lot. My motorcycle is there, because I’m working today. Writing this, as a matter of fact.

Friends and intimates criticize me for my office  choice. I am deaf to the criticism, which most often (and annoyingly) takes the form that I spend too much for a cup of coffee. But that’s absurd. I’m not buying coffee at all, I’m renting office space.

Starbucks rents me the space. I get a table, a chair, and an executive washroom. If I beat the guy  writing the novel to the corner table by the electric outlet, I get power for my laptop. Best of all the management throws in a cup of whatever is in the big urn behind the counter to say thanks for the business. Two bucks, change in the tip box. A deal.

The novel writer is not here today, but the distinguished older gentleman is. That’s the way I think of him, The Distinguished Older Gentleman. Always elegantly, if informally, dressed, razor-sharp crease in his slacks, polished shoes, shirt collar open but under a blue blazer with four gold buttons on each sleeve. Bent over papers, making a careful note or two with a pen and clearly thoughtful, he makes a fellow proud to be seen working here.

We do try to be reasonably discreet in our commercial activities so as not to disturb  the folks in the library… the man reading the biography of Churchill, the woman deep in a book of anatomical drawings, or the teacher tutoring a student for her SATs.

One day a young guy my grandpa would have called ‘a traveling man’ set up a complete office. He spread out over a table for four with cell phone, laptop, sample book, PDA, and calling list. Starbucks must have been very glad to see him because they gave him a super sized coffee-flavored beverage, a drink with a name six words long that ended in ‘latte’

Now all I need is a time clock and a place to display my business cards. Need to write a proposal? The writer is in, but his coffee is cold.

Conundrum: a : a question or problem having only a conjectural answer b : an intricate and difficult problem.

Americans from President Obama and members of his administration down to armchair generals and political junkies puzzle over what to do and how to do it in Afghanistan. No one seems quite sure.

This is odd because once, between October 19th, 2001 and the early months of 2002 we got it exactly right.

“In all, about 350 special forces soldiers, 100 CIA officers, and 15,000 Afghan troops succeeded where the British in the nineteenth century, and the Soviets in the 1980’s had failed…..When the Special Forces teams left the country the United States would eventually have spent a mere $70 million.”

The story of the bravery, sacrifice and endurance of a relative handful Special Forces soldiers is the substance of Douglas Stanton’s “Horse Soldiers,” from which I quoted above.

If you are a fan of the sort of military history that vividly recreates the heart of battle (I’m thinking here of Sir John Keegan) then this book is a must-read. If nothing else it is as exciting as one of Alistair Maclean’s action thrillers.

The focus of this book is on two combat teams of thirteen men each. Captain Mitch Nelson’s team rode with the forces Abdul Rashid Dostum. Captain Dean Nosorog’s team rode with Atta Mohammed Noor.

These men were not fighting isolated and alone. The helicopter pilots and crews of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment flew re-supply missions in zero visibility and at altitudes where chopper blades claw for a grip.

Overhead were the circling B-52s with the smart bombs that functioned as the teams’ heavy artillery. Of course in order to be effective the teams’ Air Force combat controllers had to get close enough to their targets to locate the exact location of bunkers that needed to be destroyed.

This meant riding their little Asian horses at night, along narrow mountain tracks where a misstep meant plunging over the edge. On more than one occasion they had to ride until their saddle sores bled.

“To win wars against enemies like the Taliban, which are often stateless in their affiliation, you adapt. You eat what they eat, sleep where they sleep, and think like they think. This was the essence of the Special Forces soldiers’ training and experience.”

…..Doug Stanton.