Senators Durbin, Leahy and Schumer sent me an email celebrating the Saturday vote to begin debate. It had this paragraph:

But despite this good news, the fight for meaningful health care reform is not over. As we debate amendments to this legislation in the coming weeks, we will work with our colleagues to ensure it continues to address the "Three C’s" of meaningful reform: competition, choice, and cost reduction. And we will firmly oppose any effort to eliminate the public option.

Here is my email to Durbin my Senator, to which I have added some links:

Dear Senator Durbin,

I received an email from you after the successful Saturday vote to begin debate on the health care bill in the Senate that mentioned "the Three C’s." One of them, cost, especially interests me. And no, I am not talking about adding to the deficit or similar Republican/Blue Dog talking points.

I am talking about that according to the 2007 OECD health care data we pay $7,290 per person, while the average of the other OECD countries is $2,941. We are actually more than 3 standard deviations away from the OECD mean. This combined with the fact that our health care system was ranked 37 in the WHO 2000 rankings of world health care systems, between Slovenia and Costa Rica, indicates that we in America are being systematically looted, to use Bob Somerby’s word for it.

Why is no one in the press or Congress or the White House pointing out these two simple facts in the same sentence? "We pay 2 and a half times the average of other industrialized countries but get care that is worse or no better than average." Is it "unpatriotic" to point out these appalling facts? On the contrary, it is unpatriotic not to. This sentence should be repeated every time a Democrat gets in front of a microphone.

And while I am giving advice, the next sentence should be about the moral failure of having tens of millions of uninsured in the country, compared with universal coverage in virtually all other developed countries. Beat the Republicans over the head with Matthew 25:34-46 I say.

The third sentence should be about the Harvard study by Himmelstein, Woodhandler, Warren and Thorne(Ohio Univ.), that showed "62% of all personal bankruptcies in the U.S. in 2007 were caused by health problems —- and 78% of those filers had insurance."

To me the fact that we are having to fight tooth and nail for a bill which only hopes to contain the rate of growth in costs — that apparently will not change significantly the 2.5 ratio of OECD health care costs to ours — means that we probably aren’t really addressing costs. Even with the proposed reforms, will we still be looted with a 150% markup over OECD prices?

A few months ago, you mentioned that "the banks own the place" — the place being Congress. My guess is whoever is pocketing that 150% markup apparently owns the place too. How about if you tell us straight who that is?