Health care is one of the most important issues of the 21st century.

If we don’t get costs under control, health care will bankrupt the federal government – it’s already putting unbelievable strain on state budgets.

If we don’t change the way we approach health care, salaries for our workers will continue to be depressed, and it will be difficult to achieve healthy economic growth for the middle class.

From a human perspective, it is absolutely immoral that we treat the well-being of our fellow Americans, our fellow humans, as a commodity. Is human life not worth more than that?

There are an estimated 50 million Americans without health insurance. From a cold financial view, they pass along a hidden $1,000 tax to insured Americans, raising costs for everyone. From a moral perspective, it is totally unacceptable that so many Americans should have to decide between seeing the doctor and putting food on the table.

I will not try to claim that the current reform proposals floating around Washington are perfect. They’re not. They have flaws, and they won’t create a perfect solution to health care. No single bill can.

Health care is one of the most complicated and convoluted systems known to man. There are so many different aspects and problems that it would be nearly impossible to address them all in a single piece of legislation – the uninsured, skyrocketing premiums, the scarcity of primary care doctors, fee for service reimbursement, technology costs, tort reform, medical errors, the list goes on.

The current reform proposals take a few general steps toward solving some of these problems – namely lowering premium costs and reducing the high number of uninsured Americans.

These solutions are achieved through tighter regulation of the health insurance industry, the introduction of either a “public option” insurance plan run by the federal government or several non-profit cooperatives, and subsidies for low-income Americans to either purchase private health insurance or purchase public health insurance.

Let me say this: the argument between public option and non-profit cooperatives is nonexistent. The better choice, and the more powerful tool to lower costs and expand coverage, is a public option.

Such an option creates a non-profit insurance company that can negotiate lower prices through the leverage of the federal government. It would have lower premiums and deductibles, which forces private companies to compete against lower costs.

Naturally, there are plenty of people who don’t support such an option.

“Do you want a bureaucrat between you and your doctor?” Well that bureaucrat already exists, my friends. It’s called your insurance company.

“When’s the last time you went to the DMV? Do you want to have to wait hours to see your doctor?” When’s the last time you went to a doctor’s office? A wait of at least an hour is pretty common.

People argue that a public option would force government insurance on people who don’t want it, and that government is notoriously inefficient and cannot be trusted to run anything. They also claim it would bring about the end of the health insurance industry as we know it.

To the first point, that it would “force” people to choose government care. It’s called public “option” for a reason: you can keep you current insurance if you want.

As for government being unable to efficiently run health insurance? According to studies by the Congressional Budget Office and RAND Corporation, the two health care plans in the United States with the highest rated quality of care and customer satisfaction are Medicare and VA hospitals – two government run health care operations.

But, to the point about a public option bringing about the end of the health insurance industry as we know it: I won’t deny that this is a possibility – the end of the health insurance industry as we know it.

The current health insurance industry is profit-driven, greedy, inefficient, and opaque. Health insurance companies make billions of dollars off of denying care. Private insurance companies make their profits by charging healthy people premiums and finding ways to deny care to the people who need it.

So yes, it might destroy the health insurance industry as we know it today. But my question to you is this: why do we want to save the health insurance industry as we know it today? Why should we try to protect an industry that finds its profits in human suffering? As Americans, we deserve better.

- Bobby Andres is a senior political science major from Marietta and the president of Young Democrats of UGA/ACC.