Re "Dean: We need public option" (Monitor front page, Oct. 5):

Before I review Howard Dean's book, promise to write to President Obama and insist he lead and sign a bill that includes the public option to ensure affordable medical care for every American, while protecting our jobs. In New Hampshire, our congressmen and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen are on board for a public option - but only the president can ensure passage of real health care reform.

Dean's book, Howard Dean's Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform, is readable, illuminating, concise and compelling, at $12.95. The public option is the key reform among other overdue reforms that will save this economy and its citizens from financial ruin, ensure medical care for all, save our employers from unsustainable health insurance premiums that kill jobs and businesses, and rein in the health insurance companies that have become even more aggressive in jacking up premiums while denying care for "insured" (and not really insured), amassing ever increasing profits - in other words, profit over people.

Dean is passionate and pragmatic as he makes clear how important the stakes are today: that medical rights of all Americans are the next and most important of human rights to advance in almost 50 years (since Medicare for seniors and Medicaid for children). The inexorable extension of human rights in America is the most important achievement in human history. Contact your president while it still matters.

Go to whitehouse.gov/contact or call 202-456-1111.

KEITH HALLORAN

Rindge