With the fate of health care legislation now in the Senate's hands, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman's threatened support of a filibuster could kill off much-needed reform.

We urge Sen. Lieberman to rethink his intransigent pledge that if a government plan were part of the overhaul, "as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote."

This sort of shameful short-sightedness has for decades driven the present health care system, with all its inefficiencies, inadequacies and unfairness, into critical condition, and it illustrates how out of touch Sen. Lieberman is with his constituents, many of whom cannot afford coverage.

"For Joe to start laying down markers, to me is just an abuse of power," an angry Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, said this week.

Rep. Courtney concedes that the legislation he and other congressmen narrowly approved late Saturday night is far from perfect, but he said the public should have access to the same kind of coverage available to government employees, with no waiting period or restrictions for pre-existing conditions.

Considering the myriad competing interests, it's safe to say no one bill could possibly satisfy every lawmaker. But denying a vote on such a critical policy issue because of one component would be an outrageous and unjustified power play by Sen. Lieberman.

The senator argues that the public option would set the government up in unfair competition with private insurers, leading to a costly federal entitlement program. At the same time, the senator argues private insurers can provide better service at lower cost. If that's the case, they have nothing to fear from the competition a public option would provide, except perhaps loss of excessive profits.

Yet it's easy to see how Sen. Lieberman would be reluctant to offend an industry based in a state where the seat of government is called the insurance capital of the world. As a self-styled "independent," Sen. Lieberman said he answers only to the needs of the citizens of Connecticut. We shall see.

If Sen. Lieberman and his GOP cohorts mounted a successful filibuster, public plan supporters might have to abandon that aspect and agree to a "trigger" option, in which low-cost government insurance would be available only after several years of escalating premiums charged by private insurers.

In other words, patients would pay, the insurance industry would profit.

Not surprisingly, the bottom line is the bottom line. The House bill, which would require employers to provide coverage and raise taxes on upper-income earners, would cost $1.2 trillion over 10 years. It would impose a 5.4 percent income tax on individuals making more than $500,000 and joint filers earning more than $1 million.

The Senate Finance Committee version would cost $829 billion, paid for by a variety of taxes and fees, including a levy on high-cost insurance plans. It would impose a 40 percent tax on the portion of insurance premiums exceeding $8,000 a year for individuals and $21,000 a year for family plans.

But doing nothing has higher, hidden costs. Uninsured citizens would continue to turn to emergency rooms for expensive care when they get too sick to ignore their symptoms. And by any measure preventive care, available only to those with the insurance to pay for it, is far cheaper than treating the medical problems that arise in the absence of prevention and early detection.

Both plans would require most everybody to carry health insurance, just as drivers must carry car insurance.

Politics is the art of compromise. House Democrats compromised when they voted for a bill that would restrict abortion funding, and their Senate counterparts also may have to hold their noses and swallow a bitter pill in accepting the watered-down public option plan.

At this point it's better to pass an imperfect bill and amend it later, because the alternative is worse: doing nothing and allowing the existing system to continue with its out-of-control costs and ever-increasing numbers of uninsured.

But the greatest travesty would be not even allowing a vote. Please, Sen. Lieberman, reconsider.