HR 5808, introduced with 128 co-sponsors, would require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to begin offering affordable health benefits as a public option as part of health care exchanges beginning in 2014. Co-sponsors include, among others, California Representatives Anna Eshoo, George Miller, Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, and Henry Waxman, as well as Barney Frank of Massachusetts, and Alan Grayson of Florida.

The bill calls for offering at least three tiers of plans, “including a low-cost plan without compromising quality.”

The bill has been referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

It’s about time.

Read the full HR 5808. It’s short.

Many of us who after 30 “got serious,” raised our children, bought a house, and worked at jobs we may not always have loved to try to hang onto it, get another chance. Those of us who at 18 or 20 roamed the world but later stopped because we were busy being  “grown up,” get another chance at roving. Those of us who wrote plays or poetry,  get another chance at creating. Those of us who sat in, or perhaps campaigned for women’s rights or peace,  get another chance at seeking justice.

People are living longer now. We made history as kids, and we still have a dream or two. So it’s time to make some new life’s resolutions. Right now. Here are some suggested ones:

Finish that book. If some corporate New York publisher won’t run with it, publish  independently, using the nifty new online tools.

Share. We are about to get a break on medical bills. Insist that our younger sisters and brothers, our neighbors, and our children get one too.

Travel, but stay in a village. Do something about what you learn there.

Add to the list. Make some resolutions of your own.

We are not used up; we are pent up. And we’re back!

The cookie is delicious, as I expected, but that is not the point. I hesitated. I could have skipped it entirely. Once more, in my willingness to be agreeable, I have nibbled away at my own resolve to protect my health.

We read a lot about corporate efforts to exploit our hungers with nutrition-poor fast foods. We read a lot about diets and self-discipline. But less is written about the conflicted nexus of holiday tradition and eating. My hostess does not see herself as tempting or controlling me; her hospitality is on the line. She works hard to provide an ambiance of comfort in which food ranks paramount. If I reject the food, I reject her culture, her labor, and her striving for a perfect Christmas in spite of bad times. Acknowledging these efforts, accepting the spirit of nurturing and comfort, accepting her wish to see me eat, I give in. Later, I wish I hadn’t.

Although she never urged food on me, my mother might have urged me to be gracious. That is, she might have done so back before her own cholesterol count shot up and her resolve toughened. Before the stroke devoured chunks of her vocabulary like chocolate chips, leaving her to signal her word retrieval failures with a finger motion across
her throat.

No longer young myself, I think of my mother as I stand facing the Christmas platter. I squirm. I wish the economy were better. I wish my friend had found a grander arena for showcasing her culinary excellence–as chef in a fine restaurant, perhaps. But few cooks are launching restaurants these days.

“Delicious,” I tell her honestly. “Perfect texture”–all the while wishing that the wagons of tradition had not circled, in these hard times, around a cookie platter. Wondering if I am dying to be sociable, I take another bite.

Firefighters, you did great. California’s Lockheed Fire, which extended over more than 12 square miles,  is 100% contained.  It took the labor of thousands of you to battle back the blaze before it spread to homes, injured people, and destroyed farms. Although outbuildings and some seasonal cabins burned, nobody lost a home.

I was nearly in tears when I saw small trucks from tiny fire districts as far away as Ebbetts Pass and Murphys, which had come to join our local and state firefighters. I heard the big planes pass overhead bearing retardant to drop on the blaze. I watched the fire perimeters grow and stabilize on a private company’s fire viewer based on data from federal satellites operated by NASA and the Department of the Interior.

I was nearly in tears days later from the smoke drifting into our neighborhood. How much tougher it must have been for all of you who fought it yard by yard, road by road, tree by tree.

And nobody, as you doused nearly 8,000 burning acres at the Lockheed Fire, called you socialists. They called you heroes.

Yet you are the public option.

You did not ask any resident for a means test before dropping water or fire retardant, picking up a shovel, or lighting a backfire. Without you, our neighbors-and possibly ourselves next time-might be injured, homeless, deprived of a livelihood. We are grateful.

Now let’s think a little more about health care. We need a public option there, too. Guaranteeing health is also a big job. We know how to do it. And it’s about time.

For her part, buckdata is wondering why money isn’t getting to the people most hard hit by this depression, such as those on the verge of losing their homes, those who have already lost them, and those for whom a tarp is not a government program but a literal roofing strategy in tent cities around the country.

To aid the President—on this issue at least– the following modest solution is hereby submitted:

Let’s all be bankers! Maybe it’s time for the poor and dispossessed and the rest of us to found some banks. Buckdata has a few in mind: First Foreclosure Bank in Stockton, Credit Default Swappers Bank in the New Orleans Ninth Ward, Toxic Assets Bank in Flint, Bonus Plus Bank with a nice Manhattan address, the Bank of Kaput in New Shock, Pennsylvania, and, of course, the online Bank of Buckdata.

Consider the possibilities: Laid off attorneys can volunteer time to help with the charters and incorporations. Laid off Wall Street employees can help us set up the books. Laid off web designers can devote their graphics talents to creating suitable online presence and branding. Impoverished retirees can exhume their mothballed suits and ties to lend us all gravitas at the headquarters front office.

Once the banks are set up, perhaps the homeless, the foreclosed, the evicted, and the about-to-be dispossessed will be able to approach Washington politely, hats (if we still have them) in hand, in search of generous bailouts. After all, a democracy, too, involves a contractual obligation, doesn’t it?

The proposal has a further benefit: If the sheriff’s deputies should arrive to evict us before the bucks start rolling in, we can always live in the vault. –buckdata

Note to readers: This is a satire. The above banks do not now exist. There is no Bank of Kaput in New Shock, Pennsylvania. There is no New Shock, Pennsylvania. No intention to single out particular existing institutions should be inferred from this blog post. This caution is necessary because of an unusual initiative reported in the New York Times on April 8. The article by Graham Bowley and Michael J. de la Merced details a scenario in which ordinary citizens may  be cajoled to invest in private mutual funds which are to be set up with government support to purchase other private institutions’ soured assets. The writers suggest such citizen investments may be envisioned as similar to the patriotic purchases of “Liberty Bonds” during the World War I. In such an audacious climate, formal disclaimers truly become necessary. Without such disclaimers, even well-informed readers may find themselves unable to distinguish pastiche from reality.