I just don't get it. Why are people more interested in the IDEA of a public option--

[eridani]

--than the actual facts about it? Probably this is an automatic reflex response against the Repubs and insurance companies who don't like the idea, but please consider that they are taking this approach because it enables them to win no matter what happens. This is already a close replay of 1993, when Clinton's bill, written in secret by big insurance companies at Jackson Hole, was attacked by Republicans and small insurers. Of course the big insurers didn't defend her and the legislation they had written--they preferred no reform at all, and the Clinton legislation was just a fallback in case it was forced on them. This is exactly what is going on here.

Of course the public likes the public option idea. This is the same public that overwhelmingly wants government involvement in health care one way or another, whether a comprehensive single payer plan or just taking care of all the people who don't have access to health care in some other way.

Buthe facts on the ground are this. The public is going to absolutely hate any of the bills being considered if they are enacted. For one thing, we have two election cycles to go through before anyone sees anything at all happen in 2013, during which the victims of a jobless recovery are going to see health care in this country go further and further down the drain. Yes, I know that forbidding discrimination on the grounds of pre-existing conditions comes into effect immediately, but that has no practical significance as long as insurers are allowed to charge whatever they want for such policies.

For another thing, the public option is sort of like the Holy Roman Empire. It's neither public nor an option if 95% of the public is not allowed to take advantage of it. Our Dem representatives have figured out by now that their base likes it whenever they act tough advocating a public option. Few of those people understand that the public option will most likely never be for them. When they find out, I predict big political trouble.

And for another, what people will experience instead is being forced to spend 10-12% of their incomes to buy private insurance which at the basic level will only cover 70% of medical expenses. They will still have insurance companies choosing their doctors and denying claims at will. Those worried about deficit spending will be asking "We've gotten another trillino into national debt for THIS?"

Older people are going to hate the mandated age discrimination. Younger people are going to hate having to pay anything when most aren't going to see any benefits.

How to get around this while being stuck with incremental reform? Very simple--just make the Medicare program that exists right now open to anyone. If there is concern about a big rush to the door, open the door in increments, starting with early retirees over 65 and the unemployed of any age. No set-up time necessary. The result will be a visible and good-sized minority who will counter any Republican lies about reform with a really big fact on the ground.


Edit--oops! over 55!

[gateley]

1. KO just showed a clip of Pelosi with Andrea Mitchell saying that it SOUNDS good,

even though she acknowledged it wasn't what a lot of people thought it was.

[eridani]

3. Bingo

We could still save this by allowing people voluntary access to Medicare

[Kermitt Gribble]

2. Super-Excellent Post of the Day!!! K&R!!!

It's sickening how many DUers are cheering for the latest scam of the cheesy public option being renamed as Medicare.

[inna]

4. i wish i could recommend this thread more than once.

[inna]

5. here's what i tend towards to at this point:

http://www.correntewire.com/health_care_deform_abort_re...

[eridani]

6. A Igree. Nothing at all will give us a chance either at single payer--

--or an incremental approach of gradually expanding and modifying Medicare.

[G_j]

7. make the Medicare program that exists right now open to anyone

too simple, and not murky and convoluted enough. Where's the smoke and mirrors?

[G_j]

8. AND Americans would welcome and understand this nt

[eridani]

9. Wouldn't it be nice if the Dems realized they have the popular will on this?

Likely enough of it to overcome the incurance company money. I mean Jeebus H Keerist!!! Even elderly teabaggers don't want Congress messing with their Medicare!

[many a good man]

10. Because the idea is that a Public Option should lower costs

Otherwise WTF good is it? People want lower costs, more coverage. We might get a little of that but nothing like what is needed. A foot in the door? Depends how it gets played over the next 5-10 years. Will that foot get the door slammed on it? Quite possibly. If played right the truth will get out: we need to get serious about cost controls over insurers and providers. The only way to achieve that is to come down hard on the lobbyists who are watering down reform once and for all. In the meantime we die or go bankrupt.

[eridani]

13. Lower costs TO WHOM?

I'd have to pay $450/month to a private insurer under HR 3200, but $125 under single payer. It is precisely disconnecting the whole "exchange" from Medicare that takes the foot OUT of the door. Opening up Medicare as is, even partially, keeps the foot in.

[slipslidingaway]

11. knr - but what about the insurance companies, this might cut ...

into their profits.

[Lautremont]

12. I can't answer that question, because as a Canadian, I still don't understand

why EVERY SINGLE AMERICAN of any political persuasion isn't marching on Washington and demanding universal health care. It seems crazy to me.

[eridani]

14. Seinding this off to my Rep Jim McDermott

Although a sponsor of single payer bills and even an author of one, he has backed off from actually advocating it.

[slipslidingaway]

15. Several have backed away because they are now following ...

Obama's plan of working with the employer based system, same thing they did with Clinton.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/slipslidingaw...

"...Now, on the other hand, the universal single-payer health care bill is not just a few people that have come up with something to involve themselves in the discussion with health care reform. As a matter of fact, the single-payer concept is one of the oldest serious major notions that has been around. That is to say, for those of us who were here when the President was Bill Clinton and he assigned his wife the task of taking on the reform of health care, we were summoned, we who were supporting single-payer, were summoned to the White House collectively.

I remember very well that Jerry Nadler of New York was there, a distinguished member of the Judiciary Committee. And what happened was that we were urged to step back from our initiative which had been going on for years before the Clintons assumed their responsibilities on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and after some brief discussion, we agreed that that was the appropriate thing to do. We did it. We did step back..."

[Trillo]

16. It goes back much further than the Clintons.

"Social Insurance" is a keyword much discussed around the turn of the 20th Century, and that often referred to healthcare.

Here's one short history, with a small snippet:

#
In 1913, the American Medical Association (AMA) stated that only about 10% of America’s doctors were making a comfortable living.
#
In the early 20th century, the general opinion of the American people and the AMA was that some form of mandatory health insurance was necessary but for different reasons. The American people needed a way to pay for medical care because the majority of the population couldn’t afford treatment. The AMA wanted to raise physician’s income.

more:
http://richwillett.blogspot.com/2007/11/history-of-heal...

Isn't it curious how often the year 1913 comes up in our history?

http://www.google.com/archivesearch?q=social+insurance+...

[slipslidingaway]

18. True, but the last 2 Dem presidents attempting to reform HC...

silenced the idea of a national, not for profit system, even though support for such a system polled over 50% and 60%.

Members of Congress who backed a SP system were asked to back the President's plan instead.

We're going to run into problems when the boomers push enrollment from 46 million to 79 million beginning in the next few years.

[eridani]

17. Thus reinforcing the meme that we are seeing history repeat

The fact that Clinton tried to control everything and Obama is doing hands off is not subtantively relevant.

[slipslidingaway]

19. Exactly, history is repeating because they both took a national...

system off the table, now we have the added problem with the baby boom generation moving to Medicare in the next couple of years. But somehow ??? we will use savings from Medicare efficiencies to fund this health care reform.

[eridani]

20. A voter we need in 2010, but may not get

I made sure that she was able to vote for Obama. She's white and low income. Her records had inconsistencies, and she had gotten notices that she was not registered. She didn't have a computer, so I got online, found that she was listed, and asked someone from the elections department to get back to her. She said she had not voted since voting for Clinton in 1992, but that this year was really, really important.

What was apparently not very important to her after 1992 was voting in 1994, and I'm sure you all remember what happened that year. Here is Joe Bageant having a chat with someone like her.

http://www.counterpunch.org/bageant09092004.html

The truth is that Dottie would vote for any candidate, black, white, crippled blind or crazy, that she thought would actually help her. I know because I have asked her if she would vote for a president who wanted a nationalized health care program?" "Vote for him? I'd go down on him!" Voter approval doesn't get much stronger than that.

Quite a few of the Dotties of all colors came out for Obama last year. If we don't make some serious improvements in their lives, they'll stay home in 2010.

[inna]

23. I hate to be cynical, but the most plausible explanation why this...

...sad, bad joke of a DEform does not even kick in until 2013 is simply that... Obama won't have to run on it.

It the health care "reform" (or DEform, rather) were to go into effect before the elections, it would be equivalent to a political suicide.


Most people just don't realize right now just how bad ALL current versions of the reform really are.

[eridani]

25. Running on a platform of having accomplished nothing despite legislation will be worse n/t

[galloglas]

21. K # 9 Right on the money

Any dollars expended by the citizenry that goes to profit, marketing, underwriting costs, needless administration, claims review, etc. are dollars unnecessary to the maintenance of any Universal Health Care System.

If all citizens are covered, then the most effective and least expensive method of delivering health care to the citizens is to have one agency pay all claims upon presentation. Any extra costs are extraneous (to be redundant) and are either borne by the citizenry in added costs or paid for by with funds that might otherwise be used to provide different and potentially valuable government services. And this cost would be incurred solely to benefit the corporate health insurance industry and the large mega-corporations who own many of the companies in that industry.

The overhead incurred, ultimately by the citizenry, in supporting this totally unnecessary and ultimately antipathetic bureaucracy is estimated to make up between 30% and 50% of total health costs in this country, depending upon the metric used (how much harm this bloated bureaucracy causes, and in what fashion). IMHO, that is far too high a price to pay to support this band of outdated and morally corrupt gamblers upon the outcomes of human misfortune and misery.

Let's end this moral blot upon our business community. We have the capacity to provide health care to all, we would reap the unnecessary third party "insurance overhead costs" back to the Treasury for the benefit of citizens, and we would end the need for the repugnant practices of denying people health care in order to garner added profits and, when those people are covered, having a corporate structure which wishes the insured to have the "least expensive outcome" in order to enhance corporate profits. Even if that comes from quick deaths to its insureds.

Shocking? It shouldn't be. A corporation may be a "person" under the law, but it is not (by corporate charter, usually) endowed with any other human quality exceed unquenchable greed.

In word, if not always in fact, we prohibit the trafficking in human slaves, of child pornography, of snuff films. We hunt those deemed war criminals until they are dead. Perhaps we try to cleanse ourselves of those basest of all the human evils. If so, why do we let humans hide behind "corporate persons" to evade reckoning with their mistreatment of their fellow humans. And what could be more obscenely decadent than to gamble upon the speed with which the maladies of age befall each of us, cheering when one result or another benefits the corporation without regard to its effect on the patient.

We can end this. The question remains as to whether we have the human decency to do so. Perhaps time will tell.

[eridani]

22. Make that an OP

Your R, BTW, just put the average back to nine.

[slipslidingaway]

24. And the overhead you speak of is why we spend more than any nation...

and still leave so many without any health care coverage and let 100's of thousands file bankruptcy each year.