Hi, Canadian here. You may remember me from such diary entries as Iran in the 1970s, Iran in 2009 and comments such as Yes, it's complete BS, and pretty much all my blogging time since June has been consumed with Iran.
At the same time though I feel I should give a bit of extra incentive (as if you needed any) for this fight for the public option. That's because...
...once a public option becomes available it always becomes indispensable as those that didn't have insurance before now have it, and eventually their children start to grow up in a world where not having access to health insurance sounds as absurd as not having access to clean water or phoning 911. After that it becomes political suicide to even think of removing it. Everyone and their dog will still have an opinion on how to improve it (and that's a good thing), but they won't dare suggest removing it.
The person who best symbolizes this would be the man known as Stockwell Day. He was the Conservative (at the time called the Canadian Alliance) candidate who replaced Preston Manning as the leader, which was a huge mistake on their part. Preston Manning was more of an intellectual conservative who did quite a bit to bring attention to the country's lack of balanced budgets at the time and the unelected Senate and the work they didn't do (one senator went to work only twelve times in seven years in Ottawa and spent the rest of his time in Mexico, and Manning's party eventually got enough attention paid to him to embarrass the Senate into suspending him and eventually he quit), and he was a good and honest man. Well, still is. He lives in Calgary now still.
But then the party had the idea that they would replace him with a flashier new alternative, Stockwell Day, who really was Canada's Sarah Palin. A soon as I saw her as John McCain's nominee all I could think of was that this person was just like our own Stockwell Day back in 2000, and the results were the same: lots of attention at the beginning, then a ton of blunders, then a huge defeat and tons of embarrassment. The difference now is that Stockwell Day is now in just a mid-level cabinet position and tries to avoid the spotlight.
So, what does this have to do with healthcare? Well, Stockwell Day is about as socially conservative as you can get, including not believing in evolution which is quite rare up north. During the 2000 election the CA's platform mentioned something about experimenting with privatization in the health care system, but he was very, very adamant about making sure people knew that he did not intend to do a complete overhaul. In fact, during the debate he even made up a sign (against the rules, which is what caused some controversy) that said that there would absolutely be no "2-tier health care" (one for the rich, one for the poor) were he to win the election. You can see the image here.
This is getting a bit long so I'll sum up the point that I wanted to make: when a country has a public option then having access to health care regardless of income becomes a part of the public consciousness, and even the most conservative of conservative candidates (like Stockwell Day) don't dare touch it. In fact, even though during the election a lot of people claimed that he wanted to dismantle public health care, I'm not sure if even Stockwell Day would have been willing to try or even wanted to. It's like suggesting that the military be disbanded.
Anyway, keep up the good work. It's a tough slog now but when it's over victory will be all the sweeter.