As was revealed yesterday, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina is planning attacks on President Obama's health care plan, just a week after their national leaders stood next to Obama and promised to work for reform.

They are attacking Obama's plan, particularly the public health insurance option, as rationed care, the predictable right-wing line. But, as Media Matters Action Network has thouroughly documented, they're hypocrites.

In their planned ads, Blue Cross says the public health insurance option would deny care to those with pre-existing conditions. Blue Cross in North Carolina was found guilty of doing exactly that, and forced to pay $1 million in damages.

They then attack the public health insurance option by saying it will lower payments to doctors. But they themselves lowered payments to doctors, losing a $128 million lawsuit for fraudulently underpaying their providers.

They claim the public health insurance option will drive up premiums, but their premiums have gone up 119% in the last ten years.

Blue Cross claims the public health insurance option would do all the awful things it is doing right now!

And that's the key here. Rationed care? We've got it now, with insurance industry bureaucrats getting in between you and your doctor. Expensive premiums? We've got it now; the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is medical expenses. Everything the insurance industry can throw at a public health insurance option is happening right now.

The public health insurance option, first and foremost, provides choice. Nobody will ever force you into the public health insurance option, guaranteed. And so, the insurance industry's attacks ring false:

But ironically, by attacking the new public option the industry is showing it’s hand. They oppose the public plan not because it will do what they claim — force patients to “wait moths for appointments” and not allow them to “choose their own doctors.” If that were the case, who’d sign up for such a thing? If the public health care plan really rationed care, then most Americans would stay with their private insurers.

They fear a public option because it may actually provide comprehensive benefits at a lower price and attract new beneficiaries. They fear it, because it would force them to compete with it. And for most Americans that would be a good thing.

We need a choice so we don't have to live with the rationed care and skyrocketing premiums we are forced to deal with now. And that means we need a public health insurance option, an alternative from the double-crossing insurance industry.