Jason Benell lives in Des Moines with his wife and two children. He is a combat veteran, former city council candidate, and president of Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers.

I find myself extremely frustrated with the media coverage and Democratic response to the government shutdown and the attitudes surrounding health care costs. With the ongoing health care crisis—and yes, it’s a crisis—it seems ridiculous to me that Democrats would focus their efforts on bringing down premiums and backing subsidies for health care costs.

Every year around this time, I get angry because our system makes me sign up for health insurance benefits through my employer. That is absolute garbage and one of the primary drivers of unhappiness and economic security for so many Americans.

I will lead with this hot take: Democrats shouldn’t be advocating for lower health care costs through subsidies and making access to the Affordable Care Act marketplace more affordable. That should not be their stated goal, nor their party position when it comes to negotiating on this point.

They should be advocating for the abolition of health care premiums in total.

Before you get all salty about this supposedly “extreme position,” let’s rewind the script back to 2009.

You may not remember this because we get so much news so fast, but when Congress was drafting the health care reform bill that became the Affordable Care Act, the original plan was to include some kind of public option for health insurance. It was the centerpiece of discussion surrounding the bill, often called Obamacare after its passage.

Members of Congress floated different versions of a public option, from a government-run plan that Americans could choose instead of private insurance, to health insurance cooperatives or letting Americans buy into one of the insurance plans available to public employees. Some saw the public option as a fallback: as the Affordable Care Act created new standards and regulations for health care, those who either opted not to or were unable to get into one of the subsidized private insurance plans would be swept into a public option that was funded by the government. 

The easiest way to understand this: imagine if everyone under a certain income threshold had access to Medicare. As more and more folks used the public option, it would become cheaper and cheaper until it made private plans obsolete.

There would have still been some problems with this plan—namely that privately subsidized health insurance would have continued to exist. Make no mistake, a public option was a middle ground idea, which would not have eliminated the problems of private health care. But it was workable and would have been a welcome change.

Conservative Democrats in the U.S. Senate torpedoed the public option, which Republicans hated to begin with. By late 2009, it was clear no Republicans would support the Affordable Care Act, so the public option was sacrificed to keep all Democrats on board.

Spoiler: Even after Democrats gutted the best and one of the most popular parts of the health care reform, only one U.S. House Republican voted for it. All other Republicans in the House and Senate voted “nay.”

So why are Democrats now acting like the defending this system is the only place to plant a flag of moral superiority or political opposition? Why are they fighting for the right to pay private insurance companies more through Affordable Care Act exchanges?

Why do we need health insurance premiums at all?

The entire system is a sham designed to protect private interests. The Democrats are right back to defending the American people’s right to pay a private company for something that can be, has been, and in other places is already cheaper and better than what we get now.  It is no secret that the U.S. has higher health care costs for not-so-great outcomes. Yet the best Democrats can do is limply fight for the honor of paying a little bit less.  What an absolute embarrassment for the party that purports to “stand up for the working people.”

Where is their spine? Its clear they have one; when there is a chance to defend corporate interests and private health care companies, they will vociferously fight to make sure you can pay the private company of your choosing!

Where are the politicians willing to fight for a better system and negotiate from a position of principle and better results, not for concessions as they remain trapped in the well of private health care? They don’t seem to oversee the Democratic Party. For all this talk of lowering costs and making things more accessible, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of talk for actually doing so. For some reason the idea of going to a public health care plan, whether as a public option attachment to some kind of regulatory policy like ACA or a full-on universal health care, or simply an expansion of Medicare for All, is a non-starter for the supposedly “liberal” party.

I’m going to let you in on a secret about: This has always been the plan, even since 2009. Too many Democrats are captured, just as Republicans are, by private insurance interests and this spurious notion that privatization always means a better system. You can read here from my own first hand accounts or look at the worldwide data. The American system of health care is simply not as good for what we pay for. 

We have the technology, we have the means, and we have the expertise. What we don’t have is the political system (hello ranked choice voting, anyone?) nor the political will from either party to make health care better for Americans. Instead, we have two parties vying for corporate overlords in just how much profit they will allow them to extract and with what kinds of oversight.

They weren’t standing against a government shutdown for better health care outcomes. They aren’t introducing bills to reduce the reliance on private health companies. They aren’t stopping and saying, “You know, maybe people shouldn’t have to pay higher private premiums instead of lower taxes for health care.”

Granted, Democrats don’t control Congress, and they don’t control the legislature in many states. But that doesn’t mean their position should one of concession. The people who aren’t voting for you now aren’t suddenly going to turn on their heel to clap excitedly for lower subsidies in a system that is slowly killing them. If they were interested in attracting those voters, they would be talking about reform and expanding programs that work, like Medicaid, Medicare, and the VA system.

They are rather more interested in maintaining the privatized status quo because a better future isn’t what they are after. They are after a soundbite. They are after performative action.

They are after profit. And people see it. They don’t expect anything decent in this way from Republicans, voters know they have an overt dislike of access to health care for working people. But democrats? They should do better. They should know better. They should be better.

I encourage anyone reading this to look around at how health care is screwing every one of us. The problem isn’t lack of subsidy, or lack of demand, or even the total cost of care. We’d actually save money if we got rid of finding ways to deny coverage and instead expanded the means to provide it. 

The problem is the existence of private insurance in the first place and our leaders’ complicity in making it necessary.