I guess I’ll put this in GQ since I’m not looking for yet another health care debate so much as an understanding of how an ideological base adjusts when their party’s president comes up short of a stated goal. I could just be naive though and this will end up in GD anyway.
As much as I hate to acknowledge it, it’s looking more and more like Wednesday’s address to congress is going to be an attempted realignment for the health care debate along the “Public option is only sliver of reform” line. I am having to come to grips with how I feel about this politically in light of a disheartening month of rhetoric. I, as a liberal, am having to decide how I feel about the democratic party and even the spanking new president on the issue I truly did not believe would explode just like it did over a decade ago. I do give the conservatives credit for essentially “winning” a major debate so shortly after a major Democratic victory.
So liberals, if in fact we can’t get a public option even through reconciliation, are you ready to concede? How reformative do you think a bill without a public option can really be? How much blame do you place on the democrats and how much on the republicans? How would this failure affect your support of Obama? Would a Co-op plan be an acceptable compromise?
If you never put up a fight you will never win a fight. And if your opponent knows that, then you will accomplish nothing in an adversarial system. If there is no public option, there is no reason to play nice with the pubbies at all in any sector. But if they cave and don’t fight over this issue, they never will fight over anything.
The most important thing for me is that everybody is covered, no “pre-existing condition” exclusions, and co-pays are capped so that nobody will have to go bankrupt over healthcare. We could do that without a public option. Switzerland requires everyone to buy health insurance, with subsidies to those who can’t afford it. That would be vastly preferable to the status quo (46 million uninsured).
I respect what the House Progressive Caucus is doing, and I hope they win the game of chicken they are playing with the Senate. But if they can’t win the fight for the public option, they shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Requiring everyone to buy from the current insurance companies is a terrible idea. The public option is not negotiable, and that negotiation wouldn’t even be on the table if there were more than three blue spines in Congress.
No I am not. If the dems hold together they can pass the public option. If they can make it work (the Repubs will sabotage it) ,they will have a great political victory. It is too important to let Repubs get away with morphing it into a business boon. The insurance companies are the problem, not part of the solution.
Yeah, I would accept it but it would be proof we are a plutocracy and the dems are incompetent.
A public option, according to the CBO, would save about $150 billion over 10 years. If we don’t get one, that means we are giving $150 billion away to insurance companies because we don’t want to give them any competition. If we get individual mandates that is even more evil. If we eliminate the public option, we also have to get rid of mandates.
But if we get rid of pre-existing conditions and lifetime caps, and we get a patients bill of rights, subsidies, efficiency and cost control mechanisms and annual caps then it won’t be so bad. It’d still be worth it.
If we can’t even get a public option with super majorities, then this is a really bad sign.
It’s a sign that both parties are in the insurance companies’ pockets. Baucus has a donor list that looks like a who’s who of Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Surprise, surprise that the “compromise” is looking more like a total cave. The public option IS the compromise, dammit.
Agreed. A strong public option based on medicare is a compromise of single payer medicare for all.
We have to compromise our compromises (take co-ops rather than a public option) with super majorities. If the dems lose in 2010 it will be because they didn’t give people enough reason to vote for them.
There really must be a public option. It’s the only step in healthcare reform as currently proposed in the U.S. that leads in a positive, humane direction. Human health should not be limited by the motives of profitmongers.
I think that’s what irks me the most. The Dems in Congress have completely wasted this chance, not just to finally bring American access to healthcare up to First World standards, but to capitalize on their majority (a majority that’s as much the work of the Republicans’ failures as it is the result of the Democrats’ assets) and actually give people a reason to keep voting for them. The major legacy of the Democratic resurgence of 2006/2008 is going to be a muddled mess of tiny co-ops that have no negotiating power whatsoever and a massive federal giveaway to the insurance industry. Yay.
I’m not ready to concede yet. Public funding is the one insurance reform that can mitigate the effects of the physician shortage, by ensuring that potential earnings in economically depressed areas are worth going there.
But any incremental progress is still incremental progress. I’m just not convinced that an individual mandate to buy insurance from Aetna is the progress we need. Sounds like some of the bills were intentionally rewritten by Blue Dogs & GOP to do more harm than good.
We’ll be back in 2011 with a Progressive caucus & do this again.
Or the Republicans will take over again because too many Democrats will stay home. What’s the point of voting Democrat if they so relentlessly give the Republicans whatever they want?
You only need a plurality of a plurality to run this country. We need some bloody cusses to fight for this country. And this is a country that worships strength, as most countries do. That’s why fascists generally succeed.
They want a fascist socialist revolution with death panels for those born before 1945? Baby, I’m the creature of their dreams, a bona fide Great White Hope.
To be honest, I don’t understand what the value of the public option is. Can someone explain it to me?
It’s not supposed to be cheaper than private insurers, and it’s not supposed to follow rules any different than those followed by private insurers. So what’s the practical effect of having a public option?
Why not just the new regulations plus a universal mandate?
I also don’t understand what exactly is being proposed when people say “Let’s do co-ops instead of a public option.” Co-ops are already legal, and already exist, so in what sense can co-ops be an alternative to the public option when we’re talking about how to reform health insurance?
The reason I support people going into co-ops instead of the public option is because I trust my judgement more than I trust theirs. If they think that heavily subsidising the cover of people with pre-existing conditions is economically sustainable, I want the freedom to not be dragged down with them when it blows up in their faces.
But I don’t understand what it means to talk about this in the context of reform of the insurance industry. Co-ops already exist, don’t they? So how is this a proposal for any kind of reform? How do you write “let’s do co-ops” into law?
