I will feel really sorry for people living in states that opt out of a public insurance option

[Tom Rinaldo]

I mean that, it is my honest sentiment. However it won't help them one bit if people in NO states are given the choice of a public option instead. Understand that I write this as someone who strongly supports establishing a Single Payer, or Medicare for All, public health insurance system in America; NOW. Sure I support that, but I also know that there isn't a prayer of a chance of making that happen, not now.

Call the system unfair, call the game rigged, unless someone has the power to change that system or nullify that game it will be go on being played under the rules in effect. I am not a defeatist, I am a fighter, and mine has been one small voice among many pushing the fight forward in the current session of Congress. I have witnessed our ability to move a mountain, against all seeming insider odds, to keep some form of a public option alive, to expose and reject the false promise of a "trigger to nowhere" being offered us as a sleeping pill instead. Our power is real. And so is the mountain. Our ability to move it slightly helped crack the aura of it's permanent invincibility. But that mountain is still there, pushed a few yards further down the road.

We weren't going to get Single Payer out of the players currently residing in Washington, and we weren't going to get a public option available to all in all 50 States either. We were going to get a mere fig leaf of a nod in our direction, a promise to look again at setting up some type of Public Option somewhere much further down the road, but we made the mountain move instead. And I'm proud of that, because though I may be an idealist I'm a realist also. I know how hard we pushed, and I felt the resistance to our movement. We pushed hard and they had to give, a little.

Some think what we just accomplished is insignificant, but I know that's not true. I know because if what we just won truly was insignificant, they would gladly would have thrown it to us early in the game, to confuse, distract, and divide us if nothing else. But the vast gray Center Right that holds power in America today instead chose not to do that. We made them do it anyway. The entire Republican Party united against the Public Option, and a quarter of our elected Democrats were always with them in spirit, looking for some way to protect the private insurance monopoly in America. If the plan Harry Reid now plans to introduce in the Senate bore no threat to that monopoly, it would not have been so fiercely resisted.

Our adversaries are terrified of a camel's nose, because the walls of the tent that they occupy are very thin, and the inequities that it defends are so grievous. Not all tents that camels get their noses under collapse, but many of them do. So they did all they could do to keep it out, but we are shoving it under there anyway. The liberation of Europe in World War II began with the liberation of a beachhead in Normandy. The war goes on and people still do and will continue to suffer, but we just won an important battle, you can read that in our enemy's eyes.

[Skink]

1. No you won't.

[Tom Rinaldo]

3. Won't what, feel sorry?

If that is what you mean, how the hell do you know? How do you feel now about keeping the status quo intact? I suspect you are sorry for all of us about what we are now forced to accept. You can say that saying "I'm sorry" won't ease the pain, but you have a lot of nerve to assert that I don't care what happens to other's (if of course that is what you meant). When was the last time we sat anywhere and talked about our beliefs. Do you know me?

[Skink]

9. Cause if I said take off your shoes and I'll take you back you would.

[sandnsea]

2. They must provide equivalent coverage

or they can't opt out.

Every state must be part of the public option for a year, allow people to find out what it is, and then the state can only opt out if there is equivalent coverage and premium price available.

[Lasher]

6. That's easy.

Their state insurance oligopoly will lower rates so they can opt out. After that they'll have a captive market that has to buy their wares at whaever prices they decide to charge.

[pnwmom]

10. You don't think the red-staters will scream if their insurance turns out to cost

more than everybody else's? They'll catch on eventually.

[Lasher]

20. That could be.

Then again health insurance is free in some other countries and people here haven't caught on.

I was just saying that it doesn't look like it would be hard to opt out if that's what a state really wants to do.

[pnwmom]

7. Right. And that would probably even be harder to do!

I doubt that very many will opt out, when it comes to the choice. Because if they opt out of this plan, they'll have to find SOME way to cover their uninsured.

[Raine1967]

23. Really? That is good to read.

I have been looking for an article that explains this opt out. could you direct me that way?

Thanks!

[sandnsea]

24. Here's several

at this link.

http://www.news-medical.net/news/20091027/Reids-end-gam...

I'm seeing it described two ways, one as they can start opting out right away, and another as they can start opting out in 2014. Still looking for the article that said the state has to provide an equal option before they can copt out.

[Raine1967]

25. Thanks -- I have been looking for that info too.

can't find anything as of yet.

[Lasher]

4. We might have gotten single payer if we hadn't given up on it before we started.

The very first thing that should have been done was to have the CBO compare all alternatives. It would have shown single payer is the cheapest, most efficient choice. The CBO was to have produced a single payer analysis a month or so ago but I haven't seen it.

Here is a single payer analysis they produced in 1993. You probably didn't know it exists because nobody in the administration and few in Congress want to talk about it.

[Tom Rinaldo]

5. I agree that Single Payer should have been taken seriously from the start

If it had been we would be in a stronger posiion today and I suspect we would not have had to fall back on an "opt out" compromise now, and the public option we ended up with would likely have been stronger than what we probably will get. But I honestly don't think we could have won Single Payer from this Congress.

[Lasher]

11. Unfortunately we'll never know.

But one thing's for damn sure: Since we didn't try we had zero chance of getting single payer. And like you say, compromising before we ever got started left us in a weak bargaining position.

[pnwmom]

8. You think the majority of people are that rational? It is funny that

the single payer advocates here are so certain that the public option is a poor alternative that will never lead to anything better -- while the freepers are equally certain that the public option is putting us on the fast track to single -payer.

For once, I hope the freepers are right.

[Lasher]

12. Enough people would catch on if it were framed simply.

Single payer way cheaper. Single payer good. CBO sez so.

[FrenchieCat]

13. Yes, if the media was fair and not biased....

but it ain't. They do the framing,
no matter if some think that this ain't how it goes....
cause it really does.....

And folks eat what the media shoves in their faces eagerly....
especially if it agrees with their own point of view....
just like we witnessed yesterday here, at DU.

[Hippo_Tron]

22. Most people don't know what the CBO is

[Lasher]

27. I guess that's true.

I dummied it down the best I could. I guess trolling for the moron vote isn't as easy as I thought.

[Tom Rinaldo]

14. "For once, I hope the freepers are right."

Odd, but true. Me too.

[quantass]

15. Just move to another state that DOES provide the option.

[GoCubsGo]

16. Easier said than done...

I have been trying to get out of South Carolina for years. You go where the job is. You think poor people can just pack up and move?

[Tom Rinaldo]

17. What you say is true

Especially in a bad economy, it is very hard to move without a job. Perhaps, and I wish this on no one, in the event of a true life threatening illness some poor people will choose the hardship of moving to a public option state to get coverage as the lesser of two evil choices. But your point is well taken, and true.

I hope that denying affordable health insurance to their citizens through rejection of a public plan becomes a sword that the Right will fall on in some of those "red states". I hope ten years hence more of them are blue and we can look back and say option out was a turning point.

[CTyankee]

26. Sometimes desperate times call for desperate actions. We have seen this in our own history.

People in the eastern US went west for land and faced hardship, even death. My great grandfather's family was forced to leave Georgia for Texas during the Civil War because Sherman's troops had destroyed their little farm. People do what they have to do for a better way to live.

[Armstead]

18. I usually agree with you but....

Here is what frosts me. The time was RIGHT this year do do something meaningful.

The obstructionists are a minority of Democrats. We know who they are and -- unless they get "primaried" at some point -- we do have to deal with them.

But within the whole spectrum of the Democratic Party, including the elected leaders, most want at least a meaningful public option that would be available to everyone.

That is -- as you pointed out --- already a huge compromise from what many know would really solve the problem, which is single payer. Okay maybe single payer is out of reach b ut the sentiment among most Congressional Dems and Obama is at least for a meaningful public option.

However, the Dems who really want a meaningful public option should not have allowed the entire reform debate to get hijacked by that minority. Rather than continuing to further water down a PO to satifsy these few (and their insurance industry backers) Dems should have united behind a strong PO and forced the minority to fall into line. And if Obama also wanted it, he should have put his clout with them.

So we are still going to get mandates shoved down our throats WITHOUT the benefits of having access to an affordable baseline public plan. We have given the insurance industry a huge gift, added financial pressures on many individuals and families and gave the GOP more fodder against democrats.

It illustrates the larger problem withe the democratic party. Even with a majority, we still act like losers who have no power....My God, if Pres Bush and the GOP had thought that way, there never would have been huge tax breaks for the rich, the Iraq War and everything else they shoved down our throats.

And I think this is ity for a long time, in terms of health reform. We have given the oligarchs a gift...Plus we have created a fig leaf of "reform" that will take the oxygen out of future efforts to do anything meaningful.

[Tom Rinaldo]

21. I have been teetering on the edge

You know that from reading my blogs. I was upfront about saying that the Democratic Party could well lose me as an active supporter over how health care reform plays out. I drew my personal line in the sand and the Party washed up against it but then pulled back slightly from it.

There are things about this reform that are important besides whether or not the government offers health care insurance. The entire concept of "pre-existing conditions" is a curse on humanity. People have lived and died with private insurance or the lack of it for generations. But many more people died because of "pre-existing condition" exclusions than otherwise would have had to. Ending that insurance company "opt out" is a worthwhile goal in it's own right. But that alone wasn't enough to keep me on board with this reform effort.

When I wrote above that we won an important battle I am referring mostly to what we have achieved in the last month, not the last year. We were down and we were counted out, but we rose from the mat punching and we did make a comeback from the brink. I'm proud of that. I can and will second guess the entire process by which the Democratic Party fought for health care reform this year. Some aspects of it I was pleased with, many decidedly not. I don't really want to go there now because we are still in the midst of a real fight and I want to concentrate my attention now on the coming weeks ahead rather than the previous months behind.

But my line in the sand involved establishing a real and viable pulic option alternative that tens of millions of Americans can and will directly benefit from. My line in the sand involved the camel's nose, and which side of the tent it ended up on. I needed to see something concrete in the way of government health insurance established and put into action now, not just more talk about that being an option still being held in reserve "if it proves that we still need it". My trigger for opting out of support for the Democratic Party was in fact "the trigger" had we gone there instead.

It was a close call for me but I am backing the Democrats on this now, while still fighting for improvements, if we come out of this with a real public option put in place with enough people participating in it to demonstrate how superior an approach public insurance is for consumers. Often important social programs start with just one state experimenting with a new approach and other states copying that once it is shown to be effective. This is better than that though, most states - probably the vast majority of states, will now be conducting this "experiment" in public health insurance. We will generate concrete results to counter the abstract fears of socialism that the Right has continually thrown up to halt us from even getting this far.

I see this as ultimately a step forward in a long march, perhaps a smaller step than I believe we could have taken had this been approached differently but I don't have a time machine to use to go back and change that. This is where we stand and I think we can build on this going forward.

[Clio the Leo]

19. Exactly..... but there wont be anyone for you to feel sorry for. NT