All the Cool Kids into Public Option

Those teenagers and their trends. The latest obsession that's sweeping the nation is government healthcare. "It just makes sense to me," says 16-year-old Dylan Weinstein. "Unlike private health insurance, government-run healthcare doesn't have to run a profit to please shareholders by denying care and doesn't have to waste money on profits to shareholders, marketing, and unnecessary overhead and billing."

Rihanna Sawyer, a 17-year-old from Chupacabra, California agrees. "We're not locked into the old ways of doing things. When my mom was little, she had posters in her room of insurance company CEOs. My dad would trade cards that listed insurance company earnings per share. That's so lame. I'm not letting some corporation control my health."

Although many parents are for the public option as well, some conservative parents aren't too happy about the teens' latest fad. "You have to keep an eye on them every minute," lamented Diane Andrews, a 47-year-old mother of three. "But mostly, you have to be careful of who they choose as friends. That's how my son started getting into pushing for a plan that would provide Medicare for all, like HR 676. He has a friend with asthma who has a pre-existing condition, so he can't get private coverage like us decent folk. So he hopes with a public option, he'll finally be able to get all the drugs he wants, all those asthma drugs. It's just peer pressure."

No household is immune from teen angst. Just ask insurance industry executive Michael Blanchett, "I tried to explain to my son...our huge house, our SUVs, his jet ski, all these things have been paid for by denying claims to sick people. It's the Unmerican way. We wouldn't have the land for this country if we didn't screw over the native peoples who lived here first. Someone always gets screwed over. If everybody had access to health care, how could you show everybody you're better than them?"

MTV, never the laggard in following teen trends, just launched a show about government-run healthcare called "The Hill." This reality show tracks several young people helping shape government-run healthcare legislation on Capitol Hill.