Rig, I think your opposition to a public health option based on the idea that illegal immigrants will use it to the point of bankrupting it is a bit like looking at a hamster and yelling, "It's a rhinocerous!!"

Civilized countries like Great Britain, Japan, Taiwan, and Switzerland, the three countries T. R. Reid visited and analyzed in the Frontline documentary I mention in an above post, consider good health care to be a basic human right, which applies not only to their own citizens, but to someone who just blew in from Patagonia as well, and they have no problem with large numbers of tourists (some who come to their country specifically for that purpose) making use of their government-funded health care systems.

And their citizens spend a mere fraction of what Americans do for health care, whether it be through taxes or compulsory insurance coverage (which the government pays for if the individual can't afford it).

So be of good cheer. Your concern about illegal aliens bankrupting an American public health care system is baseless.

I cannot fault illegal aliens for coming here to try to eke out a better life for themselves and their families than they can manage in their own countries. If there is a fault, it is with the employers who hire them for a fraction of what they would have to pay an American worker—even though what the alien is being paid is often far more than what he or she could possible make at home.

Another consideration is that illegal aliens are often willing to do jobs that Americans, no matter how strapped, simply refuse to do. This I know for a fact!

I think Woody Guthrie wrote a few songs about that.

Don Firth