The Public Option Is Alive and Well
Pres. Obama gave a rousing, campaign-style speech in Philadelphia today in which he spoke up strongly for the public option.
Robert Creamer at The Huffington Post challenges the conventional wisdom that the public option is either dead or dying. He gives several reasons, among them the fact that the GOP chose to use crappy tactics in service to a foolish strategy (emphasis mine):
From day one, the Republicans were never going to support a public health insurance option for everyday Americans. The Republican party staunchly opposed Medicare forty years ago. Despite former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s hope that it would “wither on the vine,” Medicare is now an unassailably popular public health insurance option for seniors. The Republicans and private insurance industry will do everything they can to prevent the American people from having access to another — undeniably superior — public health insurance plan.
The insurance industry desperately wants to protect its “right” to raise prices and take home huge profits — to skim off as large a portion as they can of every dollar spent on health care.
So the insurance industry and Republicans were never going to agree to a public option. What has changed is that the Republican decision to try to block health insurance reform has completely eliminated their leverage over what will be in the final bill.
Meanwhile, Sen. Susan Collins, moderate Republican from Maine, told CNN today that she flatly opposes a triggered public option — apparently because she feels it’s just delaying the inevitable dreaded public option:
Asked on CNN’s State of the Union if the use of the trigger would make inclusion of the public option more acceptable, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, unequivocally replied “no.”
“The problem with trigger is it just delays the public option,” Collins told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King, “because the people who are going to be making the determination about whether the market is competitive enough, want the public option.”
Sen. Olympia Snowe, the other senator from Maine, has declared that Pres. Obama should drop the public option entirely — although before this, she had said she could support the trigger idea:
Key senators said Sunday the “public option” favored by House Democrats for healthcare is all but dead, but a pivotal Republican said it’s not dead enough.
President Barack Obama “should take it off the table,” said Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “It would give real momentum to building consensus.”
Snowe, who has been courted by the White House to be the crucial 60th vote for a possible bipartisan healthcare plan, said Obama’s continued support “leaves it open and therefore unpredictable.”
But top presidential adviser David Axelrod said on the same program that the White House isn’t willing to completely drop the idea.
“I’m not willing to accept that it won’t be in the final bill,” Axelrod said. “But this is not the whole of health insurance reform.”
Yes, it’s an essential part, and it makes no sense to take it out, because Republicans aren’t going to vote for any health care reform bill (see above).
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28 Responses to “The Public Option Is Alive and Well”
Sorry but short of reconciliation its dead, and likely even with that. Too many democrats oppose it.
I don't know how much pull Dean has in the party these days, but on MTP he basically implied that Dems were willing to use reconciliation to pass a public option.
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Some of them certainly are, Shannon. But wily Mr. Obama is burying the public option even as he praises it. He's playing up the contradictions of “cheaper” and also “self-supporting”, leaving it to someone else to be the bad guy and point out you can't have both of those. He's drawn a much firmer line on the cost side, so it's clear how he expects the issue to break.
True, my impression is that the final bill will not have a public option, but will include certain triggers that could later cause the creation of a public option if the health care insurance industry cannot control costs.
I think this is something both sides can support. Conservatives believe that the private industry is better suited for this sort of business. They believe that if anyone can control costs, it is private industry. So lets put them to the test. If they can control costs and we can cover almost everyone, then everyone wins. If not, the public option kicks in and people can choose to move there.
Yes, a competitive market is the only tool we have that has a track record of lowering costs. But insurers are a small part of the industry (and properly should be much smaller). Unless we reform the market as a whole, they're certainly not in a position to change it much. Honestly, what do expect them to do that they're not already doing?
Oh my yes, they'll regulate themselves like a white-knuckling alcoholic who just moved next to a bar..lol..
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I'm thinking co-ops might have a chance for conservative support. I doubt triggers will, maybe 1 or 2 might go along with that, but triggers just open the door to legislation that change the trigger-point and would be suspect as trojan horse tactics.
What Leonidas said: “Molon Labe.” And when Olympia Snow who originated the 'trigger”option now rejects her own tentative trial balloon, she is leaving the “public option” an orphan politically. It appears that huge crowds on the Mall when they are part of a Million Man March are meaningful, especially since young BHusseinO was in attendance and because Farrakhan was spouting hatred of certain religious groups. But today's million doesn't mean anything to KK, whose blissful delusions are undisturbed by political considerations.
Under your current health plan:
$1000 for a procedure in your doctor's office. $300 to clinical overhead, $400 to the doctor's pay, and $300 to the doctor's overhead to deal with your insurance companies onerous requirements. Yes, it is now estimated that it takes each doctor 3 wks/yr, a half year's nursing time, and a full year's office staff just to deal with the insurance companies. Now, the insurance company adds another $400 for their administrative costs (about 30% of the total). Guess whose premiums just went up $1400?
Under the public option: $700 paid to the doctor for the procedure, $300 to clinical overhead and $400 to the doctor (no change in those). 4% goes to the administration of the plan (like Medicare or Canada's plan) for a total of $28. Now the premium is $728.
In addition, the insurance company now has competition, so guess who is going to find ways of not increasing the doctor's overhead and their own administrative costs anymore?
The only reason any sane person would be opposed to the public option is because they're profiting from the current system.
Graying Ed, yeah, and that's why I should pay tax dollars, to pay for competition. Of course, in the real world, ask any NHS dox in the UK who do both public and private and they will tell you, as they admitted on several US news backgrounders [worldvision.org, e.g.] that they have to deal with “four or five levels of management” under NHS guidelines that the private side doesn't have to deal with. And the doc quoted there said, with magnificent Brit understatement, that the layers of “management” do take up a lot of the doc's time. GrayingE, just move north to Canada and pay taxes up there for other peoples' health. And since you have a lot of time on your hands, evidently, you won't mind waiting weeks and months up there for procedures you can get done in two-three days down here in the warm and sunny USA.
The insurance companies don't have to be sensible – because their customers don't have a choice. What the anti-public option fools desire is to perpetuate a situation where market forces only put pressure on customers.
The protesters must be ignored, reform must happen and it must be in accordance with common sense rather than pathetic ideological dreams. This is Reagan-nostalgia vs. the future, and the former must be crushed and humiliated.
The only reason any sane person would be opposed to the public option is because they're profiting from the current system.
Well, that, or there's the fact that some of us can see your numbers are all wrong. The oft quoted 30% figure is the total amount of overhead cost in our whole system- not a surcharge that insurance companies add to the total costs.
The admin costs that can actually potentially be saved even by a single payer option are much smaller than the 30%-4% that you are claiming. The main way that costs will be reduced there would be by having one set of rules and paperwork for all. Unfortunately public option doesn't even get us to that point though- in fact it adds a whole new set of regulations to navigate.
And that is why I would like for Obama's self-funding public option to go into effect. All this jawboning for the last 6 months is useless. Let's see, in reality, whether the government can provide all the liberals healthcare for less premium with expanded benefits without shifting the costs out of the plan or making other innocent bystanders pay for their folly.
The numbers I've read/heard show a 30% overhead (including profit) for private insurance. That needs to be knocked down considerably.
I don't have a good feel yet for where co-ops are going in this debate. I don't get the feeling that anyone is really pushing it. It is like an alternative for the sake of having an alternative.
As far as changing the trigger point is concerned, legislation can always be changed. If we didn't pass legislation because it could be changes, we'd never pass anything.
“especially since young BHusseinO was in attendance and because Farrakhan was spouting hatred of certain religious groups”
I didn't know they had the Klan in Boca.
You're cherry picking bad examples. I know many canadian doctors…european doctors…I've lived with public health care. I know the truth because I have lived it.
If only it actually worked that way, though, CO. In actuality, past experience shows that a program is created and legislation passed over objections about potential fiscal responsibility, by claiming that the program will cease to exist if it isn't self sustaining or cost neutral. Then, down the pike when the liabilities add up, it's politically impossible to end the program.
No, shannon, that figure refers to the complete overhead cost in our entire healthcare system (including Medicare and other public programs.) The methodology of the study that arrived at that figure was to look at what the providers were paying that didn't involve direct services. By capturing the amounts in that way (rather than looking at what is on the books of the private insurance companies and Medicare), they are including the hidden costs of all insurance- private and public. A lot of Medicare overhead just isn't accounted for because of the bookkeeping methods (some costs like premium collection and marketing are shown on the books of other govt programs) and because the providers actually end up paying some of the admin costs.
You're cherry picking bad examples. I know many canadian doctors…european doctors…I've lived with public health care. I know the truth because I have lived it.
Your 'truth' also involves cherry picking of only your own experiences.
“Particularly funny is the comparison he makes to public universities.”
I laughed at this during Obama's address. The Post Office-Fed Ex-UPS analogy was abandoned!
Never mind that the public schools have so many issues that merit criticism as well…
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“[Howard Dean] basically implied that Dems were willing to use reconciliation to pass a public option”
He's taking the extremist and ethics-abandonment stance, while the public is offended already by the Dems this year!
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“Pres. Obama gave a rousing, campaign-style speech “
Big deal — he's continuing his decadent ways with the exploitable, low-IQ herd in left field.
What about the mainstream, intelligent public with whom he's compiled a large deficit of various kinds?
“It appears that huge crowds on the Mall when they are part of a Million Man March are meaningful”
Don't forget the childish gun-control Million Moron March.
The media and far-left talk radio are being dishonest to downright ugly toward the current protestors. The crib (infant home) called the Stepanie Miller show today (she has a sub-50 IQ and is at grade level 4-6 at best) was slandering the protestors with glee today, for example. (Meanwhile, a normal person on a local AM station was exposing CNN's mischaracterization of the protestors — and of the public, too, by extension — this weekend.)
It's only going to get worse the more desperate the people get at the votes get near on final health care legislation, and the vile lefties will outdo themselves if the public option fails to be included eventually.
“Obama's self-funding public option”
It “won't add One Dime to the deficit” (that he and the Dems have created, dwarfing anything else, ever).
Sure, it won't.
“Too many democrats oppose it.”
There's a 20s per cent fraction of the public that supports it (the wingy crowd), but it's tainted not only in and of itself, but by association with the increasingly repellent lib Dems or Pelosi-bots in the House (and with the President when he behaves as someone like these people, which has rightly cost him support).
Given the Pelosi-bots in the House, the public option isn't dead but is on the endangered list, depending on how concerned the Senate Dems (and maybe a few House Dems) have become with their re-election prospects (or for their party's prospects) next year. It seems as though the House Dems have enough clout that they may retain the public option (in another name, probably, if not another form) or extract (we could say instead, extort) attractive concessions of other kinds from the Senate Dems as a payoff.
Left aside in this health care disaster-management adventure is what the Senate might do about the crazy climate legislation the silly kids in the House passed, in defiance of the public as well as reason, and what the current fracture among the Dems and failure from overreach means the rest of this year with immigration “reform” (Dem-style, i.e., far from reform as the public understands and wants), labor law “reform” (ditto), and so on.
Related:
(Would federal health care eventually mean decrepit-central-city-labor-union-style foolishness)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240529702…
[...] The Public Option Is Alive and Well (themoderatevoice.com) [...]
Removing the public option from the health care “plan” will gain public support for the plan overall.
Vigorous support for the plan is limited to lib Dems and farther-left groups like the unions. The New England Journal of Medicine (a lefty source) published the results of a study run by a lefty-leaning think tank that states there is majority support for the public option by doctors. That is about the very best kind of support (the only good support of its kind so far!) that could be had for the public option.
http://www.rwjf.org/files/research/48408physici…
It's different with the (especially the learned) public.
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1317/would-american…
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/behind-the-num…