The Watercooler for 10/25/09 9:00 AM

as a journalist it would be Bill Moyers in that spot

on what is the public option, from his address to the Concord Festival of Authors on October 21, 2009 (taken from Patrick Ball's Concord Journal article):

The best way to describe the public option is as “Medicare for people under 65,” Dean said, because it would be a government-run, single-payer system, rather than socialized medicine. 

. . . .

“The question that we have to ask the American people,” he said, “Is: If people over 65 have it, if the people who served valiantly to defend our country have it, and if the people we pay to make laws in Congress have it, how come we can’t have the same choice they have? And that is a public option.”

. . . . 

“What we’re asking [lawmakers] to do is let us reform the healthcare system,” Dean said, “and that is why without a public option, this is not healthcare reform of any kind. It is not and it ought not to pass.”

. . . . 

“There are really big substantial changes that could be made by the American people if only we’re given the choice about which kind of insurance we might have,” Dean said. “There is nothing new here. This is not reform. This is simply taking what we already have and allowing everybody to make the same choices that some groups of people already have. And that alone will begin the bandwagon towards reform, and then we will bring in some of these other changes that will have to happen as we go down this reform route.”

That is why he is always first here.

Thanks for the info Tom, good tube viewing for a quiet Sunday afternoon.