Intractable critics of health care reform legislation are overlooking a fact as cold as their hearts and hard as their heads: Killing health care reform will kill Americans.

The legislation that Democrats are racing to finalize while they still retain their 60-vote majority in the Senate is worthy of passage because it will save lives. That's the whole point of health care. Saving lives.

Forget the Public Option. It won't happen for years now--not until some far-flung time when Democrats have an even more comfortable majority in the two chambers of Congress. But right now, they have days to deliver and pass a final bill--just three days before the late Sen. Edward Kennedy's dream of universal health care becomes a nightmare conjured by stupidity in his own back yard of Massachusetts, where polls show Republican Scott Brown likely to win Teddy's old Senate seat in Tuesday's special election. A win by Brown would spell doom for the bill in the Senate, where he could be sworn in by Wednesday as the Republican torpedo that allows Republicans to filibuster health care to death.

Meanwhile, from the far Left come cries of "Kill the bill!" just as earnest and tragically mispent as any Tea Partier's wet dream.

I have long supported a Single Payer system. I had to come to grips with the fact that it was not to be in this politically polarized year.

I then supported a robust Public Option. It was outmaneuvered by conservatives and killed by the far Right.

What remains in the bill is far from satisfying, let alone perfect. So much seemed within our grasp in those heady first days of this administration. And so much since then has been squandered or driven into the wilderness of confusion and public disapproval.

I hate passing a health care bill that leaves out so many critical programs and includes so many provisions that bolster the very industries that have long blocked universal health care for the sake of their profits. The only thing I hate more is the idea of not passing this bill at all.

I am disabled because I underwent surgery 10 years too late due to lack of health insurance when I needed it most. I know exactly how the 37 million Americans currently unable to access health care are feeling: sick. Until I was enrolled in Medicaid two years ago, I was one of them.

So I am unmoved by the short-sighted critics from the Right and Left who wish to kill this bill. The Right's coldness of heart is illustrated by Rush Limbaugh's comments opposing Haiti disaster relief. The Left's hardness of head is folly approaching complicity in genocide.

Let's be very clear here: People will continue to die without access to quality, affordable health care.

And let's put those deaths in perspective: The number of Americans who die each year for lack of health insurance (approx. 45,000) is equal to the number of Haitian lives snuffed out in the massive earthquake that just laid waste to that impoverished nation.

The pending legislation that has been kicked for its imperfection will make it illegal to keep health insurance beyond the reach of Americans with pre-existing conditions. It will ban the practice of recission that insurance companies use to pull the safety net of health care policies out from under those who've paid their premiums. It will subsidize insurance for most of the uninsured millions who most fear its mandate for coverage. It will be deficit-neutral if not, in fact, reduce the budget deficit.

Mostly, it will save lives. And so, this bill must be saved and passed.

Change will come as people insist on it over the long haul. How impatient today's youth are to think they can transform the world in one year. I, too, was young and impatient once.

I have seen momentous change in my life. Incremental wins are not losses. They are stepping stones to the future we desire, not a betrayal of that future.

Call your senators and congressmen today and tell them to pass this bill now. Whatever it takes. In three day's time, if Martha Coakley loses to Scott Brown in Massachusetts, then another 45,000 will dies this year alone. Millions more will grow sicker, as I did, and some, like me, will lose their careers and homes and marriages in the process. All that they have--those hundreds of thousands of Americans each year who declare bankruptcy due to medical bills--will be as devastated as the citizens of Port Au Prince.

Pass this imperfect bill. Act now before the last hope is gone. Citizens of Massachusetts, do not let your countrymen down. Do not be swayed by anger. Be swayed by your love of country and of life itself.