Senator Ted Kennedy's death got me thinking about acceptable deals on health care reform. Kennedy famously regretted not reaching a health care compromise with President Richard Nixon in the early 70s. (Nixon was prepared to require employers to provide health insurance, while Kennedy wanted a single-payer type system.) While that compromise wouldn't have helped everyone, we would have a lot fewer than 47 million uninsured Americans today if it had passed.

Even if Congress approves a bill close to HR 3200, which cleared the House Energy and Commerce Committee, it will fall short of the universal coverage Kennedy advocated for most of his career. I still think that bill would be better than the status quo, unlike various proposals floating around the Senate Finance Committee.

The Congressional Democrats fighting for a strong health care reform bill need as much help as they can get, with the insurance industry increasingly confident that they will get the bill of their dreams: a mandate for all Americans to buy health insurance, with no public option to compete with private insurers that dominate most markets.

We should all agree on how stupid it would be to let insurance companies "reap a financial windfall" from reform, when so many of our current problems stem from those companies' high overhead costs and bad-faith business practices. If cost containment is an important goal of health care reform, we're not going to get there by requiring people to buy overpriced private insurance.

The political fallout would be just as disastrous. Like David Waldman says,

If I'm uninsured or poorly insured, and the answer coming out of Congress is that I now have to buy crappy insurance from some private company that has no plan to actually help me pay for my health care without raking me over the coals, then I've gone into this fight an ardent supporter of strong reform, and come out a teabagger.

Digby warned in this excellent post that selling out the Democratic base on health care could fuel a movement comparable to the one that delivered nearly 3 million votes for Ralph Nader in 2000. Glenn Greenwald added more thoughts on the political calculations here.

The alternative to this scenario is not complicated:

if Progressives in the House can keep any bill without a public option from passing that chamber, and if 50 Senators are on record supporting a public option, then the easiest path for the leadership to pass health care reform is to force a strong public option through reconciliation.

The person best positioned to make this happen is President Barack Obama. He could strengthen the negotiating position of progressives in Congress immensely by stating clearly that he will not sign any bill containing a health insurance mandate but lacking a public option. The president's failure to take this simple step is alienating even some hard-core advocates like icebergslim and Bob Johnson.

But White House strategy is outside our control. The best we can do for now is keep up the pressure on Democrats who could be the swing votes in Congress. If you want to help, please do at least one of the following:

1. Thank the Democrats who have pledged to insist on a public health insurance option.

2. Give money to Blue America's fundraising drive for Democrats who stand strong for a public option. They've raised more than $400,000 as of Tuesday evening.

3. Encourage more House Democrats to join them (not just Populist Caucus members, though I think they are mostly good targets).

4. Keep contacting the Democratic senators who can get us to 50 votes, enough to pass health care reform using the budget reconciliation process. (See also here.)

5. Get your local Democratic group (county Democrats, Drinking Liberally or Democracy for America chapter) to "adopt the Public Option Resolution demanding inclusion of a strong public health insurance option in any health care bill passed this year."

Feel free to add other ideas in this thread.