Palliative Care, Part 2

The Sunday shows were filled with people who did not come to praise the public health care option, but to bury it.

It's doubtful that President Barack Obama can garner enough votes to pass sweeping health care reform through Congress, a leading Senate Democrat says -- this despite a new poll that shows nearly three-quarters of Americans would support some form of government-run health care program.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) told CNN's State of the Union on Sunday that cost was the primary problem with the plan. An initial estimate had pegged the Democrats' health-care reform packages at $1.6 trillion over 10 years; a watered-down version of the proposal, unveiled last week, would run about $1 trillion over 10 years.

Feinstein appears to be following a meme that has broken out among Washington insiders over the weekend. Sen . Lindsey Graham (R-SC) made similar remarks earlier Sunday on ABC's This Week, telling George Stephanopoulos that the cost of the health care package was "a death blow to a government-run health plan."

"The last thing in the world I think Democrats and Republicans are going to do at the end of the day is create a government-run healthcare system where you've got a bureaucrat standing in between the patient and the doctor," Graham said.

The same group of Senators that gave Bush a blank check for trillions over 7 years to fight an endless war of choice in Iraq are the same ones now worried about the cost of providing health insurance to 50 million Americans.

Which is more important, Iraq or covering the uninsured? Which one will save more American lives? We're told that the defense of freedom and democracy in the Middle East is a cost we all must bear...but not for helping the one out of six Americans who lack health insurance.

Those American lives aren't worth the cost.