Here are the only two health care numbers you need to know:

Premiums have gone up over the past six years by more than 87 percent, on average, while profits at ten of the largest publicly traded health insurance companies rose 428 percent from 2000 to 2007.

That's Zachary Roth at TPMuckraker citing data from a Health Care for America Now! report on the anti-capitalist nature of the health insurance industry. Premiums: nearly doubled. Profits: quintupled. And that's just in this decade.

As Roth points out, the corporations making such massive profits are going to use the threat of campaign contributions to bring senators into line, but any senator with a modicum of sense should understand that power relationship is bass-ackwards: The public option, which the Congress can easily institute, should serve as a cudgel to get the corporations to institute their own new policies; namely, competition. You know: like they do in capitalist markets.

Sadly, as we know all too well from the evidence presented by the actions of members of Congress, "modicum of sense" is as absent from most members as is "courage" and "responsibility to constituents". We are fully likely to see the wishes of the corporations granted — ie, the public option trashed — and the wishes of the vast majority of Americans — to have a public option made available, as per the demand of the person they elected President — shat upon.

Anyone who wants to now how most of the Congress works just needs to watch the last 5 minutes of "The Magic Christian". An accurate, if heavy-handed allegory.