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HEALTH CARE SELLOUT
The table is set for the Senate to cut the heart out of health care reform, with an ailing Ted Kennedy pitted against Max Baucus, recipient of $3 million from the industry over five years with a platoon of former staff members working as lobbyists for them.
Unless the White House rallies constituents to rise up, the Senate sellout will come from lawmakers hiding behind surgical masks–so-called compromises that will effectively kill what the President has called a public plan “to keep the insurance companies honest.”
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich lists some of them:
“One of their proposals is to break up the public option into small pieces under multiple regional third-party administrators that would have little or no bargaining leverage. A second is to give the public option to the states where Big Pharma and Big Insurance can easily buy off legislators and officials, as they’ve been doing for years. A third is bind the public plan to the same rules private insurers have already wangled, thereby making it impossible for the public plan to put competitive pressure on the insurers.”
All these ploys, plus others to give lip service to a public option but keep it on ice indefinitely, are being lined up to placate voters but serve the interests of the health insurers’ and medical providers’ lobbies.
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5 Responses to “HEALTH CARE SELLOUT”
A third is bind the public plan to the same rules private insurers have already wangled, thereby making it impossible for the public plan to put competitive pressure on the insurers.
Could you expand on this? Why would you not want public insurance to play by the same rules as private?
HEALTH CARE SELLOUT | The Moderate Voice…
The table is set for the Senate to cut the heart out of health care reform, with an ailing Ted Kennedy pitted against Max Baucus, recipient of $3 million from….
[...] an ailing Ted Kennedy pitted against Max Baucus, recipient of $3 million from. See original here: HEALTH CARE SELLOUT | The Moderate Voice Share and [...]
Those people for whom healthcare is THE issue, will not be very forgiving if there turns out to be a backbone deficit in the “reform” area. Caving on the public option is not an option imo.
The “public option” stunt (similar to that with S-CHIP) is just that, a stunt, with the intention of a massive switch by people from private insurance to this “option.” I can't believe idiots like Tom Harkin debase themselves with what they pretend to be arguments in support of the option rather than just saying it's one incrementalist measure they can take because for whatever reasons they're reluctant simply to extend Medicare to more people. But then, these Dems like Harkin are ever ready to reach down to all new depths and lows.
The economy should be let to recover before attempting any vast new health care scheme and expense (and new taxes). That's the intelligent, mature position to hold, at least. But for whatever reasons (exploiting the exploitable while they remain as exploitable as can be, presumably), the Obama crowd has their campaign people out visiting groups and drumming up support for health care sooner rather than later. The Dems in Congress if anything are just getting in the way.
“… a public plan 'to keep the insurance companies honest.' …”
In so many words, similar to what I heard Harkin say — Obama _and_ the Congressional Dems are doing their best to exploit the exploitable people in this country. [sigh]