There has been a lot of dithering when it comes to health care reform. It's been 16 years since the first proposal was introduced by Hillary Clinton. Since then, it's been discussed, but never really addressed, until the current Congress decided (at the request of the President) to move forward again. It's been met with opposition by Republicans who seem to just wish to be contrary. Meanwhile, their fellow Americans (some of them children) are dying every day because they can't afford health care.

A recent study by Johns-Hopkins Children's Center claims that over the past 2 decades (most of that being the time period since the original health care reform plan was floated), 17,000 U.S. children have died because of lack of adequate health care:

Doing the math, that indicates that 850 children die every year due to inadequate health care or more than 2 every day. These children are a part of the 45,000 Americans who die every year due to lack of insurance. While that is a much bigger number, children are dependent on adults to provide for their needs, and those needs have not been provided.

With so many of their countrymen dying every day due to lack of health insurance, you would think this issue would be treated with the utmost gravity and haste. Sadly, that is not the case, which should be obvious to anyone paying attention.

The latest tactic from the Republicans is to brand the House bill as "the Pelosi bill". Why? They know that their buddies over at FOX News will pick that up and repeat it ad nauseum. They've already shown they want to kill health care reform so that Obama will be "broken" at his "Waterloo".

Killing health care reform kills Americans. It can't be said any plainer than that. If the Democrats were smarter, they'd name the bill "The Saving American Lives Health Care Plan". But of course, the Democrats suck at that sort of thing, so they'll probably call it the Pelosi Bill too so that when they fumble through another embarrassing appearance on a "news" talk show, the other talking heads will know which bill they're referring to.

It's time to stop playing nice. Compromise kills Americans. Inaction equals death. THAT should be the talking point.