Reid Abandons Texas/Southern Poor

Nearly one out of every four Texans does not have any kind of health insurance, and throughout the South the numbers are nearly as bad. It's not surprising, because in this part of the country if your employer doesn't provide health insurance then you probably can't afford to buy it. That's because there are few unions and working-class salaries lag far behind most other parts of the country.

This is a part of America that badly needs the public option for health insurance. It's also a part of the country where Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) and other senate Democrats are in the process of turning their backs on the working-class and the poor.

On Monday, Reid announced that senate health care reform legislation will include a plan for public option health insurance. Normally that would be cause for celebration, but Reid and fellow spineless Democrats are including a provision that will allow states to opt out of the public option.

Texas, along with most other Southern states, are controlled by Republicans. Making matters worse, the few elected Democrats they do have are mostly blue dogs. Both of these groups are far more interested in protecting their buddies in the private insurance companies, than in helping to provide insurance for poor and working-class citizens. It is almost a certainty that they will opt out of the public option and leave millions of their citizens without health insurance coverage.

This is a very disappointing turn of events. How can they claim to have passed health care reform, when they are leaving millions without health insurance coverage? I don't really blame Republicans. We have known from the beginning that they opposed any kind of health care reform. They were long ago bought and paid for by Big Insurance and Big Pharma.

But the Democrats are starting to disgust me. They were put in power because a majority of the American people wanted change -- especially health care reform. But they seem to be too spineless to pass any real change.

I feel like the Democrats have abandoned me and millions of other Texans and Southerners, and I really don't know how much longer I can support them. I can't vote Republican, but I can certainly vote third-party or stay home on election day.