Kay Hagan, Key Senate Democrat: "I Support" Public Plan

[lindisfarne]

Source: Huffington Post (Sam Stein)

On Thursday, Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) offered her support for the health care overhaul proposal put forth by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, of which she is a member. In the process, she issued a statement that removed any doubt about where she stands on a publicly run insurance option.

"My colleagues and I on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee have been working on a plan to reform the health care system in this country," Hagan's statement read. "We have crafted a plan that will stabilize health care costs and includes a Community Health Insurance Option, which I support. It is a backstop option for people without access to affordable coverage. Health care providers will not be required to participate, payment rates will be set in a competitive fashion, and the community health insurance option will compete on a level playing field with private health insurance plans in the gateway."

The public plan portion of the proposal, known as the Community Health Insurance Option, would be overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services, but follow the rules set forth by the private market. At the same time, it would lower the costs of health care by pooling the purchasing powers of its participants and it would drastically lower the administrative costs customary to private providers. In short, one source on the committee said, it is the robust proposal that progressive wanted. And now Hagan, as her office confirmed to the Huffington Post, supports it.

For days, even weeks, the North Carolina Democrat had been pinpointed as a possible roadblock towards getting a strong public option out of the HELP committee. Progressive groups were running advertisements in her state to compel her to support the provision. Local pressure on the Senator was intense as well as it was widely believed that she was trying to water down the public option during the committee's drafting process.
more

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/02/kay-hagan-key-...

[Thrill]

1. Sounds like Rahm and Obama are doing their work behind the scenes

Whats that Schumer, Cantwell, and Kagan all flipping in the last couple days?

[lindisfarne]

3. If you read the last paragraph of article, a Dem staffer says Hagan was never that far from it to

begin with ... I don't follow her much so don't know.

[mvd]

2. K&R

Good news; maybe Obama's really applying pressure.

[mucifer]

4. Bernie Sanders sounded much more optimistic today when he was interviewed

on Thom Hartmann's radio show than he sounded a few days ago regarding health care. We just gotta keep the pressure on the senate.

[avaistheone1]

17. Absolutely. We can not let up one bit.

[sandyd921]

5. It's good that she's come around, HOWEVER

the proposal that the Senate HELP committee is drafting (the one she supports) appears to have some major drawbacks and is nowhere as strong as the bill the house has drafted. It's all laid out in this Kos diary: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/7/2/115148/5653?deta...

It sounds like our job with Sen Hagan and her colleagues is far from over.

[Triana]

6. 'Bout time. I've called and written to her a few times - glad she's feeling the pressure. n/t

[No Elephants]

19. Good for you. If more people did something like that, we'd be so much better off, IMO>

[Old and In the Way]

7. Slowly, the scared Dems are coming around.

Really, it's not so difficult. Vote to stop the filibuster. Then lets every vote be counted. If Kay wants to betray her constituents on the real vote, that's OK...but don't side with Republicans and stop the vote from happening.

[David Zephyr]

8. A good sign.

No compromise. No "co-op" bullshit. Public Plan.

[Doremus]

9. She's not my senator but I wrote her anyway to tell her where my donation dollars were going

if she doesn't support a STRONG public option ...

to her primary opponent which she will undoubtedly have if she can't stop supporting her corporate benefactors long enough to support people for a change!

[frazzled]

10. The HELP public plan is a very very weak one

I won't explain it, I'll just quote Ezra Klein from an online WaPo chat today:

Austin, Tex.: Is the public option in the HELP draft stronger or weaker than the Tri-Committee House draft and why?

Ezra Klein: No, it's a lot weaker. The Tri-Committee draft uses Medicare bargaining rate and the Medicare provider network and is open to everyone through a robust national health insurance exchange. The HELP plan can't partner with Medicare and is in a much weaker health insurance exchange -- CBO predicts that only 27 million people will have access to it by 2019.

The real problem is that the public plan that Hagen supports is what she calls a "backstop option for people without access to affordable coverage." It won't be open to everyone, and so the limited number who do get access to it will probably be among the less healthy to begin with. That, together with the smaller number of people "eligible," will probably mean it won't be very successful (yay, what the private insurers want--a shitty public plan that fails!) When it can't bargain and can't use the medicare provider network, it's going to be a piece of crap.

The whole point of getting a public plan to compete in the mix is to have a strong, successful one that will lead us eventually toward public-for-all. This Senate plan ain't it.

No wonder she supports it.

[sandyd921]

12. Thanks for explaining this to folks.

I'm concerned that too many supporting the public option won't understand the fine print and will think that their job is done when senators sign on to something resembling a public option (even though what they're proposing actually has huge holes).

[lindisfarne]

13. It's not a done deal. Senate Finance Committee is working on their own (still talking about co-ops)

and House has to come up with one too.
This is a good step forward but there is lots of work to be done.
Senate finance committee members should be contacted next week after they're back to work.

[No Elephants]

20. OMG, it would be illegal for HELP to partner with Medicare to bargain for better prices.

Put a fork in America.

[liberalpragmatist]

21. We should push for a strong public plan in the House and force it through conference

The Senate needs just a public plan in the draft that passes it. If it gets out of the Senate and can get into conference, then they can get something more similar to the House bill - a national exchange, a public plan that's open to everybody and uses Medicare bargaining rates. Bills coming out of conference can't be filibustered and could pass with 50 votes.

[littlebit]

11. Good.

We have sent several letters to her and made several phone calls. I'm glad she is finally listening.

[PSPS]

14. Hagan's "Community Health Insurance Option" is a sham, a trojan horse

For one thing, it's designed to reduce its own pool of risk. So it will fail. Only with a large pool can it mitigate its own cost. This alone will doom it to failure.

Second, note the descriptive phrase "compete on a level playing field with private health insurance plans in the gateway." This is code for making sure it never undercuts the market for the private insurance companies.

In fact, the press release is littered with clues as to how they've crafted this trojan horse:

"backstop option for people without access to affordable coverage"
- Will only accept those who are too old/sick/unemployed to get private insurance. Creates bad risk pool. FAIL.

"Health care providers will not be required to participate"
- They'll intentionally make it undesirable for providers to participate. FAIL.

"payment rates will be set in a competitive fashion"
- They'll exclude the same legitimate treatments the insurance companies do. FAIL.

"will compete on a level playing field with private health insurance plans in the gateway."
- Besides what I wrote above, this means it will conform to current private insurance practices
when, in fact, it should be the other way around. A good "public option" would end up changing
the behavior (and, hopefully, the very existence) of the private insurance racket. But this is
backwards. FAIL.

[earcandle]

15. We don't want a public insurance option. we want public health care

Private doctors paid by our taxes through the government. 
They already have the money for that, we are already paid. 
Look at the budget and decide where we want to cut the fat
and then barrage the capitol and white house with those
answers.
Then we will be a real participatory citizenry with some
leadership in our democracy, yes? 

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

16. I didn't vote for her in primary - and I don't trust her any further than I can throw her

she probably has her fracking fingers crossed under the table.

She was for allowing telecom to spy on citizens.

[Dumak]

18. Any public plan should be available to anyone who wants it.

It should *require* all companies to offer it as an alternative to their private plans, and it should require companies to put the same amount of money into the public plans ̣as they put into the private plans (per employee).

Watch for Republican gamesmanship to go into high gear as they attach the "public plan" tag to many variations that ensure that public insurance can never serve more than a small percentage of the population.

[nightrain]

22. before going all ga-ga over Hagan and Specter, take a look

at the actual provisions of the Senate's HELP bill and see if this is the kind of heathcare change you really want--

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/nightrain/1

[Vidar]

23. Good for her.