A recent editorial (Nov. 10) touted employer mandates as “the way” and denounced the public option as “a dangerous idea.” A bit of history first:

Our employer-based insurance system came about during World War II, when wage-price controls were instituted as a means for businesses to attract talented employees. In 1948, Harry Truman tried to institute a government-sponsored single-payer health system but was defeated by Southern legislators who feared integration, and by the American Medical Association which feared so-called socialized medicine, an epithet that has helped doom all substantive reforms.

Every subsequent attempt died quietly in committee until Clinton, whose bill died not so quietly, in the Senate. It has taken 16 years to get serious once again about reforming this system.

If there is one thing this recession should have taught us, it is that employer-mandated health insurance plans are not stable enough to carry this responsibility. Not only are premiums, co-pays and deductibles rising exponentially, but recessions do seem to come cyclically, every eight to 10 years. And when you lose your job, you lose your health insurance (unless you happen to be wealthy enough to pick up the premiums).

As for the Massachusetts plan of 2006, so enthusiastically endorsed by the Sun Journal editors, it has, indeed, covered a bit more than half the uninsured (not all, as hoped), at a significantly more than anticipated cost. Since 2007, the cost has risen from $670 million to an estimated $1.3 billion. The cost overruns have forced diversion of money from safety net clinics and providers so that free care in many areas has been curtailed. At this point there are still more than 200,000 uninsured Massachusetts residents. And again, as previously stated, when you lose your job, you lose your health insurance. This model has not provided “the leverage necessary to bend the proverbial cost curve.”

But the editors are certainly correct about the Maine plan. It has also flopped. The percentage of uninsured here has flatlined at 10.4 percent. All other state plans, Tennessee, Vermont, Minnesota and Washington, have had the same experience — all have failed despite being hailed as panaceas and examples for the rest of us to emulate.

What does this tell us? If we have the courage to take our collective head out of the sand, we will recognize that we need a vigorous public option or, better yet, a single-payer plan similar to Medicare. Not the emasculated versions in the House and Senate bills.

There. I said it.

Now come cries of “socialized medicine,” “rationing” and “death panels,” either from those who have a vested interest in the status quo, or from the uninformed and frightened who are being manipulated by sophisticated, misleading advertisements featuring paid actors prophesying about the oncoming health care apocalypse.

The simple fact is, it is rational medicine — not rationing — that exists in other developed countries, unlike the United States, where rationing has been fully implemented by our benevolent insurance behemoths.

We need this reform now. Not in 2013 or 2014, as Congress plans. That delay will only ensure that more Americans will die needlessly as they could not obtain appropriate care (at the current rate, that number will be more than 200,000). Remember that after Medicare was enacted, it was implemented in only nine months and that, in 1965, there were no rows of computers whirring endlessly.

What about the “trigger,” as proposed by Sen. Olympia Snowe? It goes like this: If the insurance companies do not reform in five years, then a public option will kick in. With Snowe’s trigger, we are now up to 10 years before there is even a chance of meaningful change.

And let’s not forget that the insurance companies are as clever about maintaining their profit margins as the pharmaceutical companies. Since the start of this year, health insurance premiums have gone up by eight to 10 percent, and drug prices have risen by 8.9 percent, despite the fact that the Consumer Price Index has contracted by 1.3 percent. The pharmaceutical firms appear to be gearing up for the pact they made with the administration that they would cut prices by $8 billion yearly for the next decade. Like going to the store for the end of year sale and getting 10 percent off the 25 percent markup.

In this season of joy and gratitude, as we reflect on our health care chaos, we must realize that all too many of our fellow citizens and immigrants that we invited here, have no regular means of getting help when they are ill.

We must change this. Then this season will have a real meaning.

Dr. Stephen Sokol is an assistant professor of geriatric medicine at the University of New England and a volunteer with Doctors Without Borders and the International Rescue Committee. He lives in Lewiston.