This is in response to the Sept. 20 editorial, “Where we stand.”

As an uninsured young person, it is essential to me that a public option remains a central component of real health care reform.

Health insurance companies have profited hugely from denying coverage. Why should everyday Americans, such as myself, object to a proposed public option if it harms the profits of these companies? Like most Americans, I care about receiving quality health care, both preventive and reactive, at an affordable cost. To eliminate the public option as a cornerstone of reform demonstrates concern for big business and their bottom line over the needs of the people. Denying a public option is simply denying reform.

The majority of Americans and Mainers support a public option (55 percent, according to a recent poll by Health Care for People Now and the Maine People’s Alliance). As Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winner in economics, wrote, “The right way to create competition is to offer a public option.” Without it, health care will continue to rise and remain unaffordable to the majority of uninsured Americans.

Sen. Max Baucus’ bill, which has no public option, is a gift to private insurance companies. Mandating that everyone become insured while not having a public option is, in essence, a government-enforced monopoly for big insurance that will only increase costs for the uninsured.

There must be a public option. Without it there is no real reform, just another big business bailout.

Todd Stoner, Lewiston