Whats WRONG with the "Public Option"?

[bvar22]

"The general reason is that the Plan is a DOG. It is a terrible, complex plan that will accomplish almost nothing. Relatively few people will benefit from it, while everyone who has to use health care will continue to experience the mess that is, and will continue to be, the American health care system. And, because of the new requirements built into the Plan, health care finance will become even more complex and confusing.

More specifically:

1. The large majority of people, who receive their insurance from their employer, will see no benefit whatsoever from the Plan. Most will, in fact, find their premiums rising as new requirements imposed by the Plan (e.g., the elimination of lifetime limits) raise the cost of insurance. And, of course, to their undoubted surprise, most of them will not have access to the public option, even if there is one.

2. Most provisions of the Plan will not become effective until 2013. This gives four years for Republicans to criticize the Plan, including (1) its use of cuts in Medicare reimbursements and Medicare Advantage premiums as principal sources of funding, (2) its lack of any real or believable mechanism for containing costs, and (3) its bureaucratic complexity.

3. The taxes on high-cost insurance plans, the other principal source of funding, will cause those who now have good insurance (called, pejoratively, “Cadillac” plans) to find these plans heavily taxed and their employers given a strong incentive to cut back on their benefits. Instead of reducing underinsurance, this part of the Plan will increase it! (And the rest of the plan does little about underinsurance at all.)

<snip>

Is there a way out? Not, in my view, as long as Obama sticks with this worthless and unworkable Plan. Only if we were to adopt a much simpler plan that would benefit everyone — a Medicare for All plan — would he be seen as actually addressing the problem and really offering a workable solution. Short of that, he, and all of us, are in real trouble.

(more)
(Leonard Rodberg, Ph.D. is Professor and Chair, Urban Studies Department, Queens College/CUNY.)

http://pnhp.org/blog/

Whether you support or oppose the mysterious and ill-defined "Public Option" in its current incarnation, this is worth reading.

[sazemisery]

1. Single payer NOW

That's all I have to say about that.

[Oregone]

2. While these are all valid concerns to worry about...

There is no final bill. Wyden's free choice amendment could address a bit of these problems and make it salvageable.

I think it is important to warn people of what might go wrong. I won't fully piss on it until its actually up for a vote. If it ends up firewalled or expensive for the middle-class to buy in, then its not going to do much good.