It's no secret that people who lack health insurance have poorer health outcomes. In his column for the New York Times yesterday, Nicholas Kristof (who has been writing a lot about the need for health reform recently) tells the story of Sue, a 31 year old woman from Oregon:

Sue was a single mom who worked hard -- sometimes two jobs at once -- to ensure that her beloved daughter would enjoy a better life.

Sue's jobs never provided health insurance, and Sue felt she couldn't afford to splurge on herself to get gynecological checkups. For more than a dozen years, she never had a Pap smear, although one is recommended annually. Even when Sue began bleeding and suffering abdominal pain, she was reluctant to see a doctor because she didn't know how she would pay the bills.

Finally, Sue sought help from a hospital emergency room, and then from the low-cost public clinic where Dr. Harris works. Dr. Harris found that Sue had advanced cervical cancer. Three months later, she died. Her daughter was 13.

Cervical cancer can be detected early, and treated easily. Nobody has to die from it. Health reform would ensure that people like Sue would have timely access to appropriate screenings and treatment. And it would also prevent children, like Sue's daughter, from growing up without their mom.

"So," Kristoff questions, "where's the best place to spend $100 billion a year?"

If you're not convinced yet -- in an op-ed last week, Kristoff shared another heartbreaking story, sent by e-mail from one of his readers, Linda:

I will never forget standing outside the chemo treatment room knowing that the medication needed to save my life was only a few feet away, but that because I had private insurance it wasn't available to me. I read a comment from someone saying that they didn't want a faceless government bureaucrat deciding if they would or would not get treatment. Well, a faceless bureaucrat from my private insurance made the decision that I wouldn't get treatment and that I wasn't worth saving.

Now, Kristof declares, is the moment of truth. (And he was not referring to the apology he owed to Slovenia and its acting general consul, Ms. Melita Gabric, for positioning "the country as a seeming synonym for backwardness" in a few of his New York Times columns bemoaning the fact that on many health measures, the United States lags behind Slovenia.) It looks like Senate action might be delayed next week -- both Reid and the CBO are still working.  You know what we think about this issue -- we're still optimistic and hopeful that a bill will be signed by Christmas. And we think Kristoff hopes so too.