President Obama's Health Care Reform is at its heart a patriotic plan to provide health care for all Americans, including the working poor, the unemployed and the nearly 46 million Americans without health insurance. Americans are dying because of the failure of the insurance companies for-profit health care system. The current system offers no incentive to provide affordable care or preventive care. The emergency room is the only option for those without insurance — 'crisis care' that is bankrupting our hospital system and urgently needs reform.

The screamers and ranters interrupting congressional town hall meetings who have declared the proposed health care reform a government takeover and a socialist or Nazi conspiracy are living in a fact-free zone. There is no plan to eliminate private health insurance. The proposed plan will simply provide a choice between a private plan and/or a public option.

We already have Sarah Palin's "death panel." It's called no insurance coverage for those with pre-existing conditions. The insurance company bureaucracy already makes life and death decisions for us and they already ration our care. They are accountable only to profits, not our personal health. How can the health insurance industry focus on affordable health care needs while paying huge CEO salaries as a reward for the healthy bottom lines of their corporations?

America must act now to end the suffering and death by providing the opportunity for a single-payer plan. Can not the richest country in the history of the planet do something as simple as providing universal health care? If we can create a $2 trillion ill-advised war in Iraq surely we can take care of an American's health needs. Our country is in a state of emergency and Americans need relief with a doctor-patient plan. A single-payer health care plan will put health care back in the hands of doctors who care about their patients and not insurance company bureaucrats who make corporate profits by denying health care. HMSA's president and chief executive officer compensation was $1,305,152 in 2008. The executive vice president and chief operating officer earned $965,219, and the executive vice president and chief financial officer earned $633,660 in 2008. Why aren't the anti-health care reformers addressing this disparity? Do we have special interests involved in lobbying the anti-reform position?

The single-payer public option provides an alternative to the failed insurance company policy of insurance for profit. Americans care about people. We have empathy, compassion, ethics and values of freedom and fairness for all, not just the rich and powerful. Government's role as a regulator/steward is to protect its citizens, protect our water purity, our air, our environment, make quality education available to all, advance social justice and have honest courts based upon laws that govern rich and poor equally. As a citizen, when you pay your taxes, this is what you are investing in: a free, fair and just America.

Don't believe those who cry socialism, death panels and government takeover. They want Americans to be fearful and suspicious. Their goal is to create fear with lies and threats, while they further their right wing ideology and build their bank accounts, at Americans' expense.

Is not an ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure? Health care is a moral issue, it's American at its most basic premise. Health care of the people, by the people and for the people. It's our constitutional prerogative.

How do we pay for this plan? We will hold those responsible for America's health problems, its obesity, and its diabetes, heart disease, strokes and cancer. Let's have a health care tax on junk food, tobacco, alcohol and the purveyors of industrial pollution because they are ultimately responsible for America's health problems. Call your congressional representative and support the public option. Demand fair and equitable doctor-patient health care reform incorporating wellness education with preventive medical choices.

Lance Holter is chairman of the Democratic Party of Maui County. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.