Learning to Live with the Healthcare Compromise
If, like me, you’re not terribly happy about the (no public option) compromise Senate Democrats have worked out, make sure to read Chris Bowers’s post at Open Left on how there has actually been “real success” here:
While it looks like we didn’t get a new public option program, we have received at least:
4 million more people covered by Medicaid, which is a public option, than the July version of the House bill
1-2 million covered by a Medicare buy-in, which is also a public option, and which was entirely absent in the July version of the House bill
An increase, from 85% in the July House bill to 90% now, in the percentage of money companies receive on health insurance premiums that must be spent on health care.
These are all concessions directly made to progressives in return for dropping a Medicare +5% public option that would have covered 10 million people. Not bad.
True, not bad. And, of course, any Senate bill would still have to be reconciled with the House bill, which includes a public option. (And there is still the possibility of reconciliation, which would require not 60 but 50+1 votes in the Senate.)
As I said yesterday, I suspect that the public option is dead, but even the compromise package, if passed as is, could lead to more substantive reform down the road. Here’s how the Times (linked above) explains it:
Under the agreement, people ages 55 to 64 could “buy in” to Medicare. And a federal agency, the Office of Personnel Management, would negotiate with insurance companies to offer national health benefit plans, similar to those offered to federal employees, including members of Congress.
If these private plans did not meet certain goals for making affordable coverage available to all Americans, Senate Democratic aides said, then the government itself would offer a new insurance plan, somewhat like the “public option” in the bill Mr. Reid unveiled three weeks ago.
In other words, no public option now, but maybe, just maybe (probably?), later. That’s not bad either, is it?
Look, I’m just trying to be optimistic.
(Cross-posted from The Reaction.)
8 Responses to “Learning to Live with the Healthcare Compromise”
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Hey, wanna buy a ticket on the SS Titanic (also called Medicare). Nah, so what if it's going broke, why should we waist time and money fixing it up; jump on board. Oh, you are under 55. No problem, our sister ship, the Andrea Doria (also called Medicaid) can take you, the state budgets have plenty of money (snicker). Well of course the insurance companies can give you a policy, but you may have to volunteer to help out with the paperwork, say a day a month, since the insurance companies can't afford to spend too much money shuffling papers, like the government can. Not too worry (unless you are an insurance company worker) since they will probably fold anyway so you can buy the new shiny policy from the Uncle Sam Insurance network.
Oh, you're worried about your friend, who is in excellent health and refuses to buy insurance. Don't he is going get hit with a big $750 fine.
Michael
“In other words, no public option now, but maybe, just maybe (probably?), later. That’s not bad either, is it?
Look, I’m just trying to be optimistic.”
You really have to be kidding. The public option is the one thing the private medical conglomerates feared. So nw it's gone but maybe coming back…. please. this solution even gets the privates a piece of the new medicare members as you know they aren't going to be the middleman for free. This whole process has been about Progressives giving up more and more for narrow little vested interests powered by Big Healthcare.
I don't think the word “optimistic” means what you think it does…
I see this whole evolution as having been a steady caving in and giving the noisy brats what they want. I'd like to be optimistic, but I really get tired of seeing the Dems fizzle out time and time again. Sure, they are better than the republicans, but that's a ridiculously low bar to judge them by. At the rate they're going, they are going to be out of power sooner than later, at which time a dumb and dumber pendulum of an electorate will swing back to an even worse group of “leaders”. But someone please tell me why they should continue to receive support from people who actually have a clue and give a sh*t about the direction of this country? Unless they can start redeeming themselves in the relatively near future, then I'll likely be voting only third party from here on out. Yes, I know it's only been 11 months, and there is still time to come around, but I'd at least like to see more signs of backbone growth. And you know what? I even feel bad about saying these things because I know it's hard enough to remain optimistic after having hopes raised in the wake of the most clueless, backward, and stupid to the point of being numb administration we've had in the last century. Good grief… Maybe I'm posting this partly because it's been such a rotten day. I hope that's the reason…
[chuckle] While some of us said that a more grown-up view of this was needed (and viewing what is an acceptable in exchange for the public option) a long, long time ago, it's amusing that now that the public option may be killed (in exchange for something else that appeals to liberals), now this is being “discovered” by those who needed to be told this before.
“Hey, wanna buy a ticket on the SS Titanic”
Actually, the “reform” proponents are deliberately making the unseaworthy vessel less seaworthy while taking more occupants aboard.
Yo, ho, ho.
(You didn't expect them to be even somewhat intelligent, and make the thing shipshape [as they said needed to be done -- but who believed them, but ...] and ensure not only provisioning but navigation and communication, and running the ship was in order before embarking (pun intended) on reform, did you? Who would have believed that, but the same people who like the weakening of the vessel and hope that even more will be allowed aboard before too much longer?)
The future? Just like Social Security–
http://www.freewebs.com/graham7760/cart11.jpg
Well jumping from the frying pan into the fire, or from the public option (which could have worked, except for the camels nose under the tent problem), into a leaky and now to be overcrowded Medicare/Medicaid lifeboat, is the Dems version of a Trojan Horse. Will the general public spot it, or is it too late? The 2010 elections will tell.
“Well jumping from [...] the public option into [...] Medicare/Medicaid[,] is the Dems version of a Trojan Horse.”
Perhaps. Maybe a small fraction of the Dems have the smarts to seize the opportunity. To me it's tough to give them that much credit, and to fall back on the conventional view that they did this federal expansion (which isn't universal) as a lesser gesture out of desperation. (I'm surprised that they did this rather than keep pushing for a public option, just making changes to it to make it more likely to be passed. There always was the trick they could have chosen, of retaining this “option,” “choice,” or “alternative,” just under a different name. I bet many people would have believed, and some in Congress would have said with a straight face in such a sitution, that “We've removed the public option” from the legislation. (Literally, nominally, I suppose…) They could have done that. To expand Medicare or Medicaid this late seems to me to be a surprisingly desperate act.
“Will the general public spot it, or is it too late? The 2010 elections will tell.”
The same public who in large part seems ignorant or unworried about the failure to reform these programs and make them financially healthy before expanding them? Many don't care about such things and wanted “single-payer” [sic] for everyone, immediately, after all.
Even if they spot it, will they care? To the extent that they spot it and approve or disapprove (of whatever they actually spot, which may not be reality), that indeed will be a form of referendum. Of course, 2010 is going to be a referendum of sorts on the Dems already, anyway. (I heavily discount any GOP vote, simply as a punish-the-Dems vote rather than we-find-the-GOP-fantastic vote. [snicker] Ignore the GOP-bashing as usual by the lefty media and other lefties. Note that the GOP is so bad that the righty talkers are not only not bothering to stump for them, but are often disparaging them, too.)