The Education Center recently released a report titled Drowning in Debt: The Emerging Student Loan Crisis. The study found what students already know all too well: college costs are skyrocketing. With tuition rates soaring and financial aid funding not keeping pace, more students are having to take out loans to pay for college.

In fact, about half of all students at four-year public universities are borrowing money for school, even with many colleges receiving government subsidies to control tuition hikes. This at a time when students’ “unmet needs” (which is the difference between the total cost of college and the sum of the expected family contribution) has increased well beyond the maximum amount of money available from subsidized federal loan programs.

To…

Without a public option, the other parties that comprise America’s non-system of health care — private insurers, doctors, hospitals, drug companies, and medical suppliers — have little or no incentive to supply high-quality care at a lower cost than they do now.

Which is precisely why the public option has become such a lightening rod. The American Medical Association is dead-set against it, Big Pharma rejects it out of hand, and the biggest insurance companies won’t consider it. No other issue in the current health-care debate is as fiercely opposed by the medical establishment and their lobbies now swarming over Capitol Hill. Of course, they don’t want it. A public option would squeeze their profits and force them to undertake major…