Ohio Senator Acknowledges Any Health Reform Bill Will Lead to Public Option

When President Obama hit the campaign trail in an attempt to sway Dennis Kucinich (yes, he’s reaching so low in the barrel, he’s trying to convince Dennis Kucinich), the administration began its full-court press on its allies.

As has been said here and elsewhere a zillion times: the American people don’t want what the Democrats are offering. But an acknowledgement by Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown on the Rachel Maddow Show gives an even better reason to oppose the legislation: it’s simply a wedge in the door to a “public option.” From a Monday appearance:

MADDOW: Should we not expect the public option anytime soon?

BROWN: No. Just–Rachel, you know history. I’ve seen your show enough to know that you understand sort of how progressive–the progressive movements worked. When we passed, what, Social Security was passed in the ’30s. It wasn’t all that great at the time. When Medicare was passed, it was good, but not great.

… That’s what happens here. This–you can bet that a lot of us are going to introduce a public option bill.

As soon the president signs this, we’ll start working towards it. It may take a year. It may take five years. There are a lot of things we’re going to do to continue to improve this system.

We obviously don’t give up on it. We don’t get everything we want. But we work–we look how this bill works, we look how this new law works, and we continue to try to improve it.

So Sen. Brown makes it clear: progressives in Congress don’t need to get everything now. This is simply the starter home, as Sen. Tom Harkin said. Improvements and additions can be added later.

This admission should steel the resolve of those who understand the government’s massive intervention into 1/6 of the economy will be bad and will be a major marker in the road to a fundamental transformation of America.

It has come to the point now that any type of compromise is not what progressive Democrats want, for this bill is not the final product. It’s simply a foot in the door to a public option and a full-blown government take-over of health care.