Congressman Grijalva (D-Arizona) continues fight for a strong public option "I am not rolling over"

[Better Believe It]

Pelosi accepts defeat on robust public option
Rick Ungar
The Policy Page
October 28, 2009

In what had already been shaping up as a bad week for the public insurance option, things just got decidedly worse.

The Hill is reporting that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi will announce tomorrow that she does not have the votes to pass a health care bill with a robust public option and will go with the version proposed by the Congressional Blue Dog conservatives.

The public option proposed by House conservative Democrats – and agreed to in the compromise bill presented by the Energy & Commerce Committee – requires the administrators of a government health insurer to negotiate rates individually with hospitals and doctors rather than presetting payments at Medicare rates (the ‘robust’ option) or Medicare rates plus 5%.

While many Congressional progressives, who had previously threatened to vote against any bill that did not include the public option based on Medicare rates, were staying silent, the co-Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), commented -

"I am not rolling over. I will insist on a Medicare-plus-5 amendment on the floor so that the full caucus can vote on it. We are hopeful that the Rules Committee will allow this amendment, which has tremendous public support, to be voted on for the record."


http://trueslant.com/rickungar/2009/10/28/pelosi-accepts-defeat-on-robust-public-option/

[Laelth]

1. k&r for the Honorable Raul Grijalva. n/t

:patriot:

:dem:

-Laelth

[saracat]

11. K+ R as well.

[Thrill]

2. Well he'll have his chance to talk to the President tomorrow

I saw this on the schedule.

President Obama meets with representatives of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Congressional Black Caucus, Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus in the Roosevelt Room

[Better Believe It]

3. Obama will be doing some arm twisting and selling following Rahm's lead.

Let's hope some of these representatives are not intimidated, show some backbone and lean on Obama for a change .... twist his arm .... just like the insurance companies, big Pharma and the medical industry do with such great success.

Tell President Obama that they will not provide the votes to pass anything that contains less than a strong, robust public option. They will vote against a weak, ineffectual bill that's been gutted by conservatives.

See if that gets his attention.

[Laelth]

31. Gijalva and the Progressive Caucus caved.

This is depressing.

:dem:

-Laelth

[ProSense]

4. So Pelosi is going with the plan that doesn't have progressive votes? Makes sense

Not! Any bill Pelosi introduces tomorrrow has the votes to pass.

[saracat]

7. And if so we can celebrate a crap piece of legislation.We could have had a real plan

[saracat]

5. Good for Raul who appears to be the only Dem worth anything at the moment

( there are a very few others). Grijalva for President 2012!

[ProSense]

6. Grijalva for President 2012!

:rofl:

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ProSense]

14. No, I find the idiotic suggestion that any Democrat is going to run against Obama in 2012

beyond hilarious.

[saracat]

15. Who knows? I find the fact that folks think these"'Public Options" will cover them in any way

hilarious! They are neither public, or options for most! I direct you to the article referenced in post #10, or perhaps the Rachel Maddow video explaining the health care plans may work for you? It is quite simple.

[ProSense]

16. Run for the hills. We're

doomed

People should spend less time salivating over doom, and more time trying to understand the dynamics.

Health care reform will pass, and it will pass with Congressman Grijalva's vote. He and other will keep fighting, but they are not stupid.

[saracat]

17. Ah, but it isn't health care reform. whether is passes or not it is actually nothing.

Unfortunately, it is nothing that we will be called to account for when it doesn't work. And many members of the Senate and congress know it. As for it passing? Dunno. Many don't want it to because they know it is worthless.Some just want to say, "we tried" but they don't really want anything to pass. We will see.Soon

[rockymountaindem]

20. Bigotry? The idea he would run for Pres. in 2012 is laughable for one other big reason

You're really stretching, and nobody's buying it.

[Name removed]

28. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[slipslidingaway]

10. The “chicken and egg” problem: Can the “public option” succeed where Prudential failed?

Just posted this in another thread, but it is something we need to be thinking about if a PO is expected to grow as oppose to linger or even die.


http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/09/05/the-chicken-and-egg-problem-can-the-public-option-succeed-where-prudential-failed/

By Kip Sullivan, JD

"In a previous paper I described the transformation of the “public option” from an enormous program that would insure 130 million people to a tiny program in the Democrats’ health “reform” legislation that will insure somewhere between zero and 10 million people. I predicted that the “options” in the Democrats’ bills would be unable to succeed in all or most markets in the country. I characterized the main barrier facing the Democrats’ shrunken “options” as a “chicken and egg” problem: A person or group trying to create a new insurance company can’t tell prospective customers what the premium will be until they have determined how much they will pay providers; but the person or group can’t know how much it will pay providers until it knows how many people it will insure.

In this comment I elaborate on this chicken-egg barrier by presenting an illustration of the barrier at work – the departure of the Prudential Insurance Company from the Minnesota managed care health insurance market in 1994. Although Prudential was (and still is) a huge Fortune 500 company, it was unable to survive Minnesota’s highly concentrated group health insurance market and was forced to withdraw. If a company as large and as experienced as Prudential could not crack the Minnesota market, why should we hold out any hope for the little “options” proposed by the Democrats? ..."

[Better Believe It]

12. Thanks. I found this part of the article especially informative.

A recap of the transformation of the “public option”

Jacob Hacker laid out his vision of what is now called “the public option” in papers published in 2001 and 2007. Hacker spelled out five criteria he believed the “option” had to meet:

(1) It had to be pre-populated with tens of millions of people;

(2) Only “option” enrollees could get subsidies (people who chose to buy insurance from insurance companies could not get subsidies);

(3) The “option” and its subsidies had to be available to all non-elderly Americans (not just the uninsured and employees of small employers);

(4) The “option” had to be given authority to use Medicare’s provider reimbursement rates (which are typically 20 percent below the rates paid by insurance companies); and

(5) The insurance industry had to offer the same minimum level of benefits the “option” had to offer.

Although I question some of the assumptions Hacker made in these papers, including his assumption that the “option” will inevitably enjoy Medicare’s low overhead costs, I have little doubt that an “option” which met Hacker’s five criteria would stand an excellent chance of surviving its start-up phase in most markets in the U.S. (I am ignoring here the question of whether an “option” as strong as Hacker’s original has a better chance of being enacted than a single-payer system does. Events of the last few months should disabuse the entire world of that myth.)

But when the Democrats drafted legislation early in 2009 that included provisions creating an “option,” they abandoned the first four of Hacker’s criteria and kept only the last one (the one requiring insurance companies and the “option” to cover the same benefits).

[slipslidingaway]

18. It's amazing to read what was being touted to various groups and campaigns...

to get them on board with the idea and then what was proposed. I guess people thought they could continue to chip away at the original idea, but they may have made too many cuts.

:(

[saracat]

13. How dare you post an intelligent debate on Heath Care? Great article

and unimpeachable sources!

[slipslidingaway]

19. Some on DU have tried to attack this organization. :( n/t

[saracat]

21. They don't like facts.

[slipslidingaway]

25. Many facts from this organization have been used by others, but their ideas for ...

solving the HC crisis have been silenced...funny how that works.

[saracat]

26. Un Hmm. I hear ya. Funny.

[slipslidingaway]

30. Reminds me of how the authors of The Lancet report were quoted on other ...

studies they did, but obviously when it came to Iraq they got it all wrong.

[thatsrightimirish]

22. glad someone isn't rolling over

the public option needs to work

[saracat]

23. Indeed it does.

[slipslidingaway]

24. Some examples of health care reform from various states ...

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/october/meet_the_new_health_.php

Meet the New Health Care Reform, Same as the Old Health Care Reform

By Aaron E. Carroll
Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Indiana University School of Medicine
The Huffington Post
October 26, 2009

"...The Maine Legislature today passed a comprehensive health insurance plan that will make low-cost coverage available to all state residents by 2009. The legislation will create a semiprivate agency that provides private coverage to the state’s 180,000 uninsured residents, businesses and municipalities with fewer than 50 employees and the self-employed. Employers would pay up to 60 percent of an employee’s premium.

That looks like it could have come right out of HR 3200. You’d never know if was from 2003. How did that pledge to achieve universal coverage by 2009 go? Maine’s rate of uninsurance was 10.4% in 2003 and 10.4% in 2008.

We pretend these problems are new; we pretend that these solutions are new. Subsidies have been done. Community ratings are old news. “Public plans” have been around for a while. Mandates, both individual and employer, weren’t invented this year.

In 1988, before the first of these plans went into effect, 13.4% of Americans were uninsured. In 2008, it was 15.4% of Americans. They don’t work. Not in the long run.

We need comprehensive reform. This plan will pass; it won’t be enough. President Obama will not be the last President to deal with this problem.

We keep doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome. What does that signify?"

[saracat]

27. Indeed. but for some everything is "new". The world began in 2009

[slipslidingaway]

29. Yup, we continue to try and build on a system that has failed many in our country...

and costs significantly more...maybe someday we'll learn that the old foundation is no longer adequate.