Would you support setting up the public option on a trial basis

[Tony_FLADEM]

What if the public option was setup in the District of Columbia and perhaps a few other states. We could then see how this effects the private health insurance industry and the costs of health care. Would you support this if it got 60 votes in the Senate?

[RDANGELO]

1. Might be a good idea. n/t

[Warpy]

2. Insurance companies would do their best to sabotage

such limited programs, probably by locking them out of hospitals and refusing to allow any doctors approved by their plans to accept publicly insured patients.

I'm afraid it just would not work, period.

It has to be a national program. Nothing else will give those giants the competition they need and nothing but a national program will have the clout to prevent them from playing games like denying access to hospitals and doctors.

There's just no way around how desperately this country needs the public insurance option.

[Tony_FLADEM]

8. The health insurance companies don't penalize hospitals and doctors that accept

Medicare and Medicaid patients. Why would they do this for people that participate in the public option? There are hundreds of health insurance companies. It would be pretty difficult for them to get together and do this.

[Warpy]

14. They know the stakes are far higher for a pilot public program

that had the potential to be expanded into a national public program that would force them to be honest.

The difference is scale.

Trust me, they'd do whatever they could to sabotage a small program.

[Uben]

3. No, here's why.........

Let's say you have a pre-existing condition and your insurance company is raping you on premiums. You switch to the public option, only to have it nixed a year or two later. Where in the hell are you going to get insurance then? Your old insurance company won't take you back and neither will any other insurance company because of the pre-existing condition. Your screwed. That's why it would not work.

[Tony_FLADEM]

7. The health care reform will ban health insruance companies from excluding people with pre-existing

conditions.

[Uben]

17. I'll believe it when I see it

I see their lips quiver, but I don't believe a word they say. Insurance cos have congress in their pocket and they are not going to give up anything that jeopardizes their seven figure bonuses.

[billyoc]

4. Too easily sabotaged by price fixing.

[DrDan]

5. the R's would NEVER go for it

anything that jeopardizes insurer profits is off the table

[joeycola]

6. Hell NO. The Dems have compromised Enough!!

[drm604]

9. Would it really be a fair test?

It wouldn't have as big a risk pool as a nationwide plan would, so it wouldn't be a good indication of how a national plan would do.

[Tony_FLADEM]

13. The District Of Columbia has a population of over 600,000 people

That's a good enough test sample. If it works out well, it can be replicated. If it turns out to be a disaster, the Democrats won't have a big political problem. You have to start somewhere.

[drm604]

15. I'm not convinced.

I'm not sure that the population of DC is really a good representative sample.

In any case, what happens to all of the uninsured people in the rest of the country while we're busy experimenting in limited areas? This kind of test would take time. There are a lot of people who can't wait.

[Tony_FLADEM]

18. The people without health insurance are receiving subsidies to buy health insurance.

This is a separate issue from the public option idea. You could test the public option in a few other states i.e. Oregon and Wisconsin would be good states to try this. If you gave the governors a little flexibility with Medicaid i.e. requiring some medicaid recipients to participate in the public option, they would be willing.

[closeupready]

10. I'd support single payer on a trial basis.

Public option was the compromise position.

[liberal N proud]

11. That is how Canada got their system

Trial in one area of one province.

A Brief History of Canada's Health Care System
http://www.healthcoalition.ca/History.pdf

[KansDem]

12. Yeah, just like we set up the Iraq war and TARP on a trial basis...

Sorry, but this is an "all or nothing" proposition.

Unlike the Iraq invasion and occupation and the Wall Street/Banksters bailout, public option health care is a necessity.

[Echo In Light]

16. No, the PO is already the compromised position from Single Payer

[Tony_FLADEM]

19. We are not dropping the public option idea.

Just trying it out in a few areas of the country to see how it works.

[Echo In Light]

20. "See how it works" = see how badly it hurts corporate profits

[Cleita]

21. Yes and I think Bernie Sanders has suggested this in the past although

his idea is to try different systems in different states and see how each works. Then the best workable system could be tried nationwide.

[Romulox]

22. If you force people to buy mandatory, for-profit insurance only in those same states, sure. nt

[rhett o rick]

23. Hell no. We have the push now. It's now or never. If we water down the implementation, the

greedy insurance bastards will pick us off one at a time. Do not compromise. Fight, damnit, fight.