Not everyone on the left is complacent. First, take a look at this web-only Times article that notes that the Obama administration is using the idea of a public health care plan only as means to get more minor concessions out of insurance companies, instead of that being the real end goal. (And ask yourself why that, the only item of real substance to come out of the Max Baucus interview, wound up on the cutting room floor of the print edition). Then see Howard Dean's response. Go and sign his petition.

On the argument that insurance companies shouldn't have to compete against the government, allow me to channel Dean Baker. We constantly hear about how private industry is so much more efficient than the government. If that's the case, shouldn't the private insurance companies have absolutely no problem dealing with the inefficient bureaucracies in a government-run insurance company? What are they in such a panic about?