Dear President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, Senator Baucus, and All the Democrats in Congress:

I am writing to you to express my urgent and passionate support of a Public Option in the current health insurance debate. 

I personally need such a Public Option, as a fully employed worker without any benefits from my employer.

I have worked at a large film studio in Los Angeles for well over five years. This is a multi-billion dollar corporate conglomerate, but despite working for them full-time I have no benefits. I have been laid off and laid off, then brought back to work as a "casual employee" (no benefits), an independent contractor (no benefits) and now a temp (no benefits). In my industry along with many others, it is both possible and likely to be a full-time worker without benefits. In this economy I'm happy to be working at all.

That leaves private health insurance as my only option, and it's a bad one. Do us all a favor and do a little research. Go out there to the individual health insurance market and try to get yourself an policy that matches the generous benefits you currently enjoy in your own publicly-funded health insurance plan, and see if you 1) can get anybody to cover you and 2) if you could afford decent coverage for yourself and your family on a typical temp worker's $13/hr. I dare you. 

I am here to tell you that the private for-profit health insurance companies are the problem, not the answer. They sell a whole lot of nothing for a whole lot of money. Their core product is profit, not health. They exist to profit off the illness and misery of the American public. They do this by charging big premiums and then denying their customers the coverage they've paid for. That's their business plan. These corporations have had thirty years to be the solution, and instead they chose to perfect such techniques as recision, denial of claims and cherry-picking only the healthiest population. Rationing and death panels already exist -- private insurance does it every day! Just ask the family of Nataline Sarkisyan. Private health insurers chose to be the problem, to put profit above health. Nobody should be allowed to profiteer from someone else's illness. 

I expect you to remember that all those well-funded corporate lobbyists you invited to the debate are only looking out for their own profits, while I and the rest of the uninsured public are fighting for our actual lives. 

I expect you to understand that health is not a commodity, it's not a corporate profit center, it's a human right. For all  humans. Market forces simply do not apply to necessary core community services (see fire and police departments) and health care is one of those.

I expect you to place the public good over the incessant demands of your corporate overlords in the health industry.

I expect a robust Public Option to be a part of any legislation you pass. 

I expect it to be a non-profit operation with low overhead administrative costs, similar to Medicare. 

I expect it to have a generous benefits package with fair compensation to my doctors and other health care providers, whom I will get to choose. 

I expect to pay a fair premium for it, either directly or through taxes, with my money going to actual health care rather than to inflated executive salaries and corporate profits. 

I expect there to be a price break for seniors, the disabled, the impoverished and veterans, partially subsidized by my own premiums. 

I expect it to be an opt-in program available to any who want to participate, and I expect it should not displace anyone who wants to keep their existing coverage. 

I expect it will not exclude pre-existing conditions, nor charge more or cancel coverage for anyone who gets sick.

We already have a working model for such a program. It's called Medicare. Extend it to the rest of us and let us opt in if we wish. Or perhaps we could extend to everyone the publicly-funded health plan you now enjoy on the public's dime.

I expect you to learn from the examples of other nations who have successfully implemented health care coverage for all their citizens. 

I expect you to understand that simply forcing uninsured people to purchase an individual policy from a private insurer is unacceptable and does not constitute reform. That option boils down to using public money to subsidize private profit, a habit Congress has indulged in to a ridiculous extreme (see Goldman Sachs and the auto industry bailouts) and which I simply will not stand for in health reform.

I expect there to be no fooling around with "health care cooperatives," an unproven and uncertain option, expecially in a country with no tradition of not-for-profit health cooperatives. It's not a good option for a national plan.

I expect there to be no pandering to imaginary bipartisanship. The Republicans have firmly positioned themselves as the Party of No, and though they are the minority party they feel somehow justified to hold the entire country hostage to their own affiliation with Big Health. Republicans in Congress are firmly aligned with the private profiteers, but Republican constituents need this Public Option just like I do.  

You have the votes to pass this reform with a Public Option, and I expect you to get out there and use them. You don't need 80 or 70 or 65 votes. A majority will do it and you have the majority. So do it. 

I expect you to respond far better than you have to the lies and misinformation put out by opponents and industry, and to clearly explain to the public exactly what your plan contains. Give us the real information.

I expect you, Speaker Pelosi, along with President Obama, Senator Baucus, my Senators Boxer and Feinstein, my Representative Watson, all those Blue Dogs whose constituents need this Public Option just as desperately as I do, and any Republicans who still have some shred of public service left in them to vigorously champion the needs of We The People in this debate, and to finally do the decent and moral thing with health care in this country. The thing that all other civilized industrial Western nations have already done. The thing that private insurance corporations have abjectly failed to do: bring affordable, accessible health coverage to every single person in this country.

We all know the White House has already thoughtlessly given away concessions in the government's price bargaining power to Big Pharma. We have all seen the picture of the hundreds of lobbyists who have a seat at the table in this debate, and we all know they spend millions of dollars every day to convince you to let their profiteering continue unabated. Big Business has this all sewn up in their own favor, apparently.

But I don't have a million dollars to buy your attention and I can't see anybody representing me. Who has my interests at heart? Who will fight for me when I lose my job and can't afford the hideously overpriced COBRA coverage that sends my insurance costs up by %500 the minute my income is down to zero? 

That would be your job, Mr. Obama and Ms. Pelosi. Your job, Ms. Feinstein and Ms. Boxer and Ms. Watson. Your job to represent me. Will you do it? Please do it! I hope to God in Heaven that you are not so deep in bed with your own corporate health industry PAC money campaign donations that you cannot stand up straight and strong for the public good, which is your flippin' J-O-B.

If this Public Option does not go through when there is a Democratic President, a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate, then I'll know the answer and I'll vote your butts out of office so fast your heads will spin.

Thank you for your consideration.