"New Dem Health Plan Has Public Option, Lower Cost"

by: Clark

Thu Jul 02, 2009 at 09:56:09 AM CDT

That's the way this article left me after an initial giddiness about the CBO score of $600 billion over 10 years to cover 97% of Americans, including a government-run public health insurance plan. Sure, I'm glad to find out that leading Democrats on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee included a public option, glad that they had the CBO score the health care plan with the public option this time, and I'm elated that the CBO scored the bill as much cheaper than the incomplete plan submitted back in May. But I still feel like the reporter just "did" the public option.

From the article, all I know is that there's potentially going to be a $60 billion a year government-run health insurance plan. I have no idea from the article whether a trigger will be put in place, a threshhold that will need to be crossed in order to activate the public option. I don't know if the plan will be offered nationally or state-by-state. I don't know if it will be accountable to Congress. I don't know if it will be available to all Americans, or just those who can't currently get coverage. All of these points would make a big difference in whether I would support such a bill or oppose it.

So I'm begging reporters to ask about what a public option would entail when you write about its inclusion in a health care reform bill. And fortunately, dear reader, we don't need a reporter to help us find out where our Senators, at least, stand on these very important questions. Please ask Senators McCaskill and Bond for specific responses.

Do you support a public healthcare option as part of healthcare reform?

If so, do you support a public healthcare option that is available on day one?

Do you support a public healthcare option that is national, available everywhere, and accountable to Congress?

Do you support a public healthcare option that can bargain for rates from providers and big drug companies?

Still haven't heard back from either Bond or McCaskill after two weeks of asking the question.  

"Get your programs here:" a rundown on where the health care debate will go

by: hotflash

Mon Jun 22, 2009 at 10:54:55 AM CDT

Unified House Democrats unveiled a draft health care overhaul bill jointly endorsed by three powerful committee chairmen.

Henry Waxman, Charlie Rangel and George Miller, chairs of the Energy & Commerce, Ways & Means and Education & Labor Committees, announced the result of six months of negotiations. The sight of three united committee chairmen in the turf-conscious House is a historically rare one.

...[T]he House version includes a robust public plan that would operate nationally and compete with private insurers on a level playing field to keep them honest.

The public plan would be self-sustaining and not subsidized by the federal government, although an upfront infusion of capital would be needed. It would initially be tied to Medicare reimbursement rates, to capitalize on the existing infrastructure, but would evolve into a separate plan that paid higher rates. Participation by doctors would be voluntary.

Rangel described the public plan as "the best of Medicaid, best of Medicare, then kick it up a notch." The chairmen estimated the plan would cover 95 percent of Americans.

That's in the House. Then there's the Senate.

The Senate is where you'll find the Democratic turncoats that might have the power to stop this. At the other end of the Democratic spectrum from Conyers, Waxman, Rangel, and Miller--it's painful even to call them Democrats--we've got senators Max Baucus, MT; Evan Bayh, IN; Ben Nelson, NE; Kent Conrad, N.D.; Blanche Lincoln, AR; and Mary Landrieu LA. They're all busy trying not to appear to be dragging their feet on a public option--while their heels are dug in an inch.

Take Bayh, for example, who this winter formed a Blue Dog caucus. His wife, Susan, sits on corporate boards for a living--fourteen at last count--and one of them is Wellpoint, the biggest health insurer in the country. But he says her activities are no reason for concern: "'The reality is, we don't talk about stuff that she's involved with.'" Oh, thank goodness. Imagine how reassured I was to hear it.

It does us little good to have 59 Democrats, 60 if Franken gets seated by this fall, if six of them might vote the wrong way on a public option. In fact, one of those six is even in charge of a committee considering a health care bill. There are two committees creating such bills.

The Senate Finance Committee, chaired by Max Baucus will almost surely produce the one with the weaker public option. Baucus wavers on that issue depending on whether he's just visited his home state and been flayed by constituents for keeping single-payer advocates out of committee meetings or whether he's been in D.C. listening to insiders again for a few days.

Of scorpions and health care

by: hotflash

Wed Jun 17, 2009 at 12:47:17 PM CDT

Since that notion didn't fly, the distraction du jour is health co-ops. As with rural electric co-ops, people in each state would be members and control their own health insurance organization. It reminds one of the days when Blue Cross/Blue Shield was a non-profit. Is returning to the eighties really going to solve our problem?

This brain child of Senator Conrad, D-N.D., attempts to create a public option of sorts, while avoiding an actual public option. Why bother? Using co-ops to spare people from private insurers is like dicing vegetables with nail clippers instead of a paring knife. Don't do it the hard way.

Co-ops would still require federal money to get them started; we're not talking savings on the cost of the plan. In fact, when you have to invent fifty new bureaucracies instead of one, you're wasting time and money. But most of all, co-ops with, say, half a million members, would have nowhere near the bargaining power to pull down prices at hospitals and pharmaceutical companies that a nationwide group of a hundred million people would have.

Supposedly, Conrad proposed this co-op nonsense to placate Republicans, who are adamantly opposed to a public option--which is the bottom line on them: "adamantly opposed." They are the party of No ... ideas. Listen to Roy Blunt, the man the Republican leadership designated to come up with a GOP plan, talk about health care:

Uh, the health care is an importance, obligation, for a society to have a health care system that works. Uh, I, I don't know that it's the id- I don't believe that it's the obligation of government, necessarily to do that. I do think the government here has a chance to step in and create a health care system that's more patient, doctor-patient driven. A health care system that has more choices for people. (...) Uh, sixty-one percent of the American people under, who aren't on Medicare, get their, their health insurance at work. But you don't have many choices even at work. So I, I have a view that if you like what you have in health care you should be able to keep it. But even if you like what you have and, and we've, we work hard to be sure you keep it, and employer provided health care or your other options, we should be working toward more of a, uh, marketplace for you.

Did you get the gist of the plan there? Let me summarize it for you: imagine a Jon Stewart deadpan. That's it. That's the plan. A silent, deadpan stare from Blunt when the subject of health care arose would have been just as informative and a lot more truthful than that barrage of cliches he offered.

Dodd Singlehandedly Stops Bush's Domestic Spying Bill

by: hotflash

Fri Oct 19, 2007 at 12:48:42 PM CDT

  Dodd will send a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid this afternoon informing him of his decision [to put a hold on the Senate FISA renewal bill because it reportedly grants retroactive immunity to telephone companies for any role they played in the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping program].

  ...By doing this, Dodd can effectively hold up the telecom immunity bill, because bills are supposed to have unanimous consent in the Senate before going forward. One Senator can make it very difficult to bring a bill to the floor by objecting to allowing it to go to a vote.

  Dodd's planned action comes amid reports that the Senate Intelligence Committee has reached a deal with the White House on the legislation that would give telephone carriers legal immunity for whatever role they played in the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program, which was approved by President Bush after 9/11. The White House and the phone companies have been lobbying aggressively for immunity, and the announcement of the immunity deal today dismayed many opponents.