The Watercooler for 10/25/09 1:00 AM

And my line's been out for hours.  If I disappear. . . .

By John Byrne
Saturday, October 24th, 2009 -- 7:31 am


A little-noticed tidbit in Saturday's Washington Post is sure to raise eyebrows among liberal supporters of a gorvernment-run healthcare plan: the plan is likely to be administered by a private insurance company, the very companies that progressive activists are trying to unseat.

The public-option debate is frustrating some Democrats, who have come to believe that a government-run plan is neither as radical as its conservative critics have portrayed, nor as important as its liberal supporters contend. Any public plan is likely to have a relatively narrow scope, as it would be offered only to people who don't have access to coverage through an employer.

The public option would effectively be just another insurance plan offered on the open market. It would likely be administered by a private insurance provider, charging premiums and copayments like any other policy. In an early estimate of the House bill, the Congressional Budget Office forecast that fewer than 12 million people would buy insurance through the government plan.

...

http://rawstory.com/2009/10/public-option-... /

Obama's speech in which he said only a small % of people would be eligible/wanting the PO.

“Public option” bait-and-switch campaign fools pollsters
Posted by Andrew Coates MD on Monday, Oct 19, 2009
By Kip Sullivan, JD

The New York Times reported on Saturday, October 17, that Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) is warning his constituents that the “public option” is not going to be available to the great majority of Americans. No one who has actually read the Senate health committee’s “reform” bill or the House “reform” bill (HR 3200) disputes this. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the “option” will be available only to about 30 million people, or about one American in ten. As the Times put it (slightly inaccurately), the “option” in the Democrats’ legislation “would be out of bounds to the approximately 160 million people already covered through employers.”

Does the public understand this? According to Wyden, they don’t. Wyden says his constituents are shocked when they are told the “option” will not be available to the vast majority of Americans. When he began informing his constituents about this truth last summer, “They nearly fell out of the bleachers,” he said (“And the public option is….,” New York Times, October 17, 2009, A10).

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Orwellian_Ghost/551

Democrats and “option” advocates should pay attention to Wyden’s observation. Wyden is saying, in so many words, that “option” advocates, with help from the media and the blogosphere, have fooled the public into thinking everyone will be eligible to buy insurance from the “option,” and when the public finds out this isn’t true, they’re not going to be happy.

I was not surprised by Wyden’s observation. I have written several papers warning the public that they have been the object of a “bait and switch” campaign by the leadership of the “option” movement. The “bait” in this campaign was the original version of the “option” promoted by Jacob Hacker. This version would have created an enormous public program that would have insured half the non-elderly population. Among several provisions of this first version of the “option” that would have ensured large size was one that said the “option” had to be available to all non-elderly Americans. The “switch” occurred when Democrats on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee and three chairmen of House committees drafted legislation that would create a very small and weak “option.” One of the provisions in the Democrats’ legislation that ensured their version of the “option” would be weak was a provision limiting subsidies and eligibility for the “option” to a small fraction of the population, namely, the uninsured and employees of small firms.

We haven't even been told what "robust" means.  I don't think anything of real value is gonna come outta this mess, which I'm now thinking was messy on purpose, to fool the public.  Actually, I've thought that for some time.

Forget the PO.  We need to frame it as medicare for all, and then Obama has to weigh in using that phrase.  Will he?  My guess is no.  It looks like this really is a *Snowe Job.*

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/10/the...

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Imagine Reid puts Schumer's pulibc option proposal -- the national plan that states can opt-out of -- into the bill. The bill comes to the floor, and it loses Snowe and one or two centrist moderates. Byrd is sick and unable to vote. The sticking point is the Schumer plan, so it needs to come out of the bill.

But even though the bill can't get 60 votes to proceed, Reid's office also can't find 60 votes to strip the public option out of the bill. The liberals won't go for it. The left is organized against it. There's no reason, they say, that 55 Democrats should bow to the wishes of five centrists and a Republican on a popular provision. Reid and the White House should stop dithering and put their back into this, they argue. Indeed, maybe some mischievous Republicans even join the liberals in defeating the motion to strip Schumer's proposal. The bill is just stuck in limbo: It doesn't have the votes to move forward or backward.

There are reasons to think this isn't likely. Namely, it probably requires Republicans to engage in the sort of shenanigans that would persuade Democrats to vote as a bloc. If the Republicans play it straight and deliver 40 votes against the public option, you probably can find 20 or so Democrats willing to suck it up and water down the bill in order to ensure it eventual passage. Hell, 10 of those Democrats would do it happily.

http://hannah.smith-family.com/?p=3449#more-3449

In the Obama/Biden health care plan it states...

http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/issues/HealthCareFullPla...

(2) NEW AFFORDABLE, ACCESSIBLE HEALTH INSURANCE OPTIONS. The Obama-Biden plan will create a
National Health Insurance Exchange to help individuals purchase new affordable health care options if they are uninsured or want new health insurance. Through the Exchange, any American will have the opportunity to enroll in the new public plan or an approved private plan, and income-based sliding scale tax credits will be AFFORDABLE, ACCESSIBLE COVERAGE OPTIONS FOR ALL provided for people and families who need it..."

*What is The Exchange?

*Who is The Exchange?

*Why do we need The Exchange?

*How is The Exchange funded?

*Why can't I buy my "government run" Public Option directly from The Government?

The Majority of Americans are going to be very disappointed when they open their NEW Health Care Package and find a HUGE Bill from the For Profit Health Insurance Industry.
They will blame The Democrats, and rightly so.

THAT is WHY The "Democrats" have delayed the implementation of Health Care Reform until just AFTER the 2012 Elections.
You would have to be a complete IDIOT to buy their story that it takes 4 years to get this pathetically small reform Up and Running.

Kabuki Theater.
THEY are laughing at YOU, begging for crumbs like a dog at the dinner table.

 

• The very best "Public Option" on the table (HR 3200) is indeed a "tiny sliver" (Obama) that will affect LESS than 5% of Americans (about 3%, CBO).
• It will NOT be government run "like Medicare" (Obama), but will be administered by a "private" corporation, most probably a consortium of For Profit Health Insurance Corporations masquerading as "The Exchange".
• http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/09/13/sullivan-publicoptionin ... /
• Since the "Public Option" will NOT be "government run", it will have none of the administrative cost savings that Medicare enjoys. It will be able to offer at best about a 10% cost saving.
• Unless protected by legislation, the For Profit Health Insurance Corporations competing on "The Exchange" could use their massive size to undercut the Public Option, and could actually price their cut rate plans below the price of the Public Option, effectively killing it.
• If the "Public Option" is really "Government Run", why won't I be able to buy it directly from the US Government?
• Obama tells us that "The Exchange" will let us "compare prices and plans", but anyone can already "compare prices and plans" on the Internet.
• Its EASY. Just Google "Shop for Health Insurance". (51 Million hits)
• https://www.ehealthinsurance.com/ehi/Alliance?allid=Goo

The Public Option offered by "The Exchange" (NOT by the US Government) will be so unattractive that the CBO projects (and Obama agrees) that 4 out of 5 people FORCED to BUY Health Insurance on "The Exchange" will prefer to buy it from a For Profit Health Insurance Corporation.

The Public Option (as specified in HR 3200) will NOT "open the door to Single Payer" since it only further entrenches the precedent that Americans MUST BUY Health Insurance from a "private" entity (The Exchange) instead of the US Government. (Have you noticed NO ONE, Democrat or Republican talks about "opening the door to Single Payer" anymore?)

No, The Public Option we are being allowed to beg for really isn't worth the effort.

It is a "thin sliver" that will benefit very few (if any) Americans.

After studying what is really in HR 3200, I have quit calling and writing, begging The Democrats for THIS "Public Option". It is a handful of crumbs being thrown to the peasants for diversion while $BILLIONS of Dollars of PUBLIC MONEY is transferred to the For Profit Health Insurance Industry.

 

This one is about the  Brazilian rainforest, the cures for major diseases being destroyed, as we post, by avaricious corps.  As the old *curanderos* die off, so will the natural cures they know about.  Surely the good guys are working hard to find the cures.  One can hope.

Question for the day:

How do *they* know that people over 64 don't need to be immunized?  That's a blanket statement.  Maybe *they* figure if we lived this long, H1N1 won't bother us.

Almost everybody I know is sick or recovering...bad coughs (like I still have)  fevers, chills.

The public option information you posted is what I have been waiting for.  It is the reason that I have not signed on to, nor supported, any of the petitions or actions of support for the public option.  And with the recent revelation that the House will only have the votes for a trigger this legislation when passed could possibly, imo, be one of the weakest forms of sweeping legislative reform in the history of Congress.

I just hope that the supporters of the "robust" public option tactic are correct when they claim that it will be a pathway.  I have my doubts.

there is no reason for a hundreds of billions increase in insurance business without a way to reign in costs through competition

pull the plug if you don't have the votes for what the President has been campaigning for

the information seashell has provided has been available for months though and I'm not sure what you have been calling about if not that fight

no doubt a big and powerful K Street gang is pushing back for all they are worth so one needs to be careful not to be co-opted into carrying their water

what Congress has heard for years is that the public wants health care "like you have" (though I grant many don't know it is an exchange) so Congress thinks they are delivering what the public wants

the two grand goals of covering everyone and holding down costs run counter to each other, making for a difficult pathway, always has been

triggers are unacceptable for the simple moral imperative of enough! on denied coverage caused deaths

the alternative should be draconian regulations forcing insurance coverage to the straight and narrow