Sen. Kay Hagan, a member of a crucial committee in the health care reform debate, has a problem. She was elected to the U.S. Senate largely by the massive efforts of progressives in North Carolina, riding into office on Obama’s coattails. Those progressives want serious health care reform that will include a strong public option. Hagan, though, has also received a ton of money from the health care industry, as documented in a report from Durham’s Institute for Southern Studies. According to the report, in 2009 alone — which isn’t even an election year — “health-related companies have contributed $17,000 to Sen. Hagan's leading PAC — all coming during or after March, when the health care reform debate intensified.” In addition, “nearly 60 percent of the corporate contributors to Hagan's Hagan’s Political Action Committee come from the health industry,” and 52 percent of all contributions “have come from health care interests, including associations representing doctors, insurance, pharmacists and pharmaceutical corporations.”

With those two competing groups of supporters, no wonder Hagan has been a political pendulum, one day opposing a “public option” for health care reform and the next day saying she supports it. Guess which side she eventually came down on? (Clue: they have lots of money.) In her op-ed piece in yesterday’s Observer, Hagan tried to come across as Ms. Liberal Populist, a caring politician who is in tune with NC citizens’ health care cost problems. But toward the end of her column, Hagan let the cat — and her true colors — out of the bag by describing the watered down “public option” her committee recommended. Her description of what she calls “a backstop option for people without access to affordable health care” reads, in actuality, like a laundry list of “suggestions” from the health care industry.

The bottom line of Hagan’s double-dealing is that if her committee’s version of health care reform passes, people who currently do not have access to health care will not have an inexpensive path to getting the care they need. Which, of course, was a major part of what health care reform was supposed to do in the first place.