Here is one blogger’s take on the effectiveness of local or regional nonprofit insurance cooperatives, which is the alternative the Gang of Six are touting to a full-throated public option:
What’s going on? I think it’s pretty clear what’s going on: The White House is laying the groundwork for dumping the public plan option in order to win a few Republican votes for healthcare.
If so, it’s a total betrayal of what the president’s been talking about. Regional, nonprofit insurance co-ops may be a good idea, and they have worked in some rural parts of the country, but they’re no substitute for a national, Medicare-like, affordable public plan option that would make health insurance instantly available to all who can’t afford it.
Which helps explain why, yes, the demographics of the Gang of Six’s home states do matter.
Here is news about another constituency that is very happy about a health care “reform” bill with no public option:
News that Senator Max Baucus’ Finance Committee deal on health care financing excluded a public option sent health insurance stocks soaring Tuesday.
[…]
Health insurance executives who have poured money into the campaign coffers of Blue Dogs, Max Baucus, Chuck Grassley, Kent Conrad, Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins (as well as their political action committees) likely made all their money back in the one day rise in stock prices. The companies themselves, which hold huge amounts of their own stock, surely recouped all of their PAC investments on Tuesday alone.
You don’t have to wonder whether Wall Street thinks Max Baucus’ deal is great news for the health insurance industry’s status quo: numbers like these don’t lie.
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