On Saturday, October 24th, The Washington Post became the first major daily newspaper to publish an article exposing a dirty little secret that Democratic Party leadership in both houses of Congress have worked extremely hard to keep out of the public limelight up until this moment: that the “public option” gimmick they’ve been touting during the past couple of months will not be a “government-run health insurance program” much like Medicare, as they have disingenuously hinted in the past, but in all probability is going to be “just another insurance plan” sold on the “open market” and “administered by a private insurance provider”:
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.
This is nothing new. Senator Harry Reid himself was quoted not too long ago as telling Nevada voters at a televised town hall forum that he “doesn’t think the public option ought to be a government run program like Medicare”; he told the crowd that assembled it was his belief that “public option” should be run by a “private entity that has direction from the federal government”:
During a Friday tele-town hall event, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told constituents that he doesn’t think the public option ought to be a government run program like Medicare, but instead favors a “private entity that has direction from the federal government so people that don’t fall within the parameters of being able to get insurance from their employers, they would have a place to go.”
So what does this all mean?
In their feverish attempt to win popular support for so-called “healthcare reform,” the Democratic Party leadership came up with the “public option” gimmickry for the purpose of appeasing their own grassroots base, which is itching for more radical reforms. But by making them believe that “public option” is a “secret Trojan horse” that will put everybody on the yellow brick road of establishing a single-payer “Medicare-for-all”-type healthcare system within the United States, they keep them quiet. As a result, the Democrats then are able to ram through legislation that will benefit the multi-billion dollar private insurance industry and basically screw over their grassroots base, with little or any opposition.
Despite wild claims made by angry flash mobs of tobacco-chewing, flag-waving Tea Baggers that all of this is tantamount to a “massive federal government takeover of the healthcare system,” the Democrats, in reality, are crafting legislation that will substantially enlarge the markets of private health insurance companies and help them earn tens of billions of dollars in additional profits over the next decade; they are allowing the multi-billion dollar private health insurance industry to takeover the federal government and use it to force millions of Americans to buy their shoddy, substandard products, and demand that taxpayers pay out of their nose to subsidize the outrageous premiums they’re going to charge.
As for the “public option” itself, there is plenty of evidence to show that private health insurance companies are getting ready to profit from it. According to Kip Sullivan, a graduate of Harvard Law School and a member of the steering committee of the Minnesota Chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program, Congressional Democrats have taking the liberty of inserting numerous provisions into their draft “healthcare reform” legislation which basically enable the “public option” to be administered by “private-sector corporations, some or all of which will be insurance companies.”
Given the tens of millions of dollars in legalized bribes that the Democratic Party and its politicians are receiving from the multi-billion dollar private health insurance industry, should it be of surprise to anybody that the draft “healthcare reform” legislation allows these “private entities” to make a whole ton of money off of whatever “government-run health insurance program” is set up, too?
The corruption is truly astounding, isn’t it?
Duane,
Welcome to the Orange Juice! Great to add your progressive beliefs to the mix.
Yeah, welcome, Duane. Now they won’t be able to call me “Far Left Vern” any more. Your title should have been “SOME Democrats want…” or maybe “Democratic leadership wants…” The only people we have in Congress fighting for health care justice (besides Bernie Sanders) are Democrats, but our progressive takeover of the Party is infuriatingly slow.
There are lots of moving parts in this complex legislation, and there are both good Democrats and bad Democrats working on it (the Republicans have taken themselves out of the debate.) We need to keep up pressure on them now, AND after the bill passes too, and probably as long as we live. But some of these gripes of yours don’t bother me much; of course there will be premiums for the “Public option,” nobody is asking for a giveaway. I just don’t want 30% of my premiums to go to some corporation’s coffers and then have them drop me when I need them.
Like Taibbi wrote, “Then again, some of the blame has to go to all of us. It’s more than a little conspicuous that the same electorate that poured its heart out last year for the Hallmark-card story line of the Obama campaign has not been seen much in this health care debate. The handful of legislators — the Weiners (D-NY), Kuciniches (D-OH), Wydens (D-OR) and Sanderses (I-VT) — who are fighting for something real should be doing so with armies at their back. Instead, all the noise is being made on the other side. Not so stupid after all — they, at least, understand that politics is a fight that does not end with the wearing of a T-shirt in November.”
On that note, I just got back from Loretta Sanchez’ office with a bunch of MoveOn folks, pestering her to stand strong on the most robust public option; her aide reassured us that she would…
Don’t worry Vern. You’ll still be the biggest coffee filter I know…
In 1994, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office noted that a “mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action.”
“The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States,” the CBO said. The statement was part of an analysis of then-President Clinton’s ill-fated health care reform plan, which also required that all Americans purchase health insurance plans.
Randy Barnett, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, asks, “Where in the [Constitution] is the power to mandate that individuals buy health insurance?” His answer: Nowhere.
“The business of providing health insurance is now an entirely intrastate activity” beyond the regulatory sway of the federal government, he said.
Washington lawyers David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey argued in an Aug. 22 column in The Washington Post that Congress has no constitutional power to tell people what they must buy.
“The Constitution assigns only limited, enumerated powers to Congress, and none, including the power to regulate interstate commerce or to impose taxes, would support a federal mandate requiring anyone who is otherwise without health insurance to buy it,” they said.
To the liberal/left Verne from the practical silent majority in the middle who don’t vote or are not members of the corporate party whose honest and truthful roots are from killing indians, taking their land, torturing and making slaves and then betraying our country until a new party was born. What is the point of talking about good or bad democrats? There are good and bad republicans. Take Abraham Lincoln for one, take W. Bush for another. Oh and which party got us into Vietnam, escalated the war in Vietnam, and which party got us out of Vietnam?
Go to http://www.opensecrets.org and you will see that as the cartoon shows Obama, Clinton, Emmanuel, Baucus, Sibelius — they are all just a bunch of corporate funded porcine or bovine-like politicians. And they don’t bite the hands that feed them as often times will a dog.
So we’ve established that they are better than dogs, but they are not unlike pigs or cash-cows.
Roberts: Medicare has already been significantly privatized and thats why we marched to the HCA HHS office in Santa Ana. I didn’t notice you pointing out that the point of a medicare that is not privatised, or a public option that won’t be taken over by for profit insurance, is to have a dumping ground for people who are too sick to make a profit from. [Thats why there was a US postal service so that we could develop a national mail delivery system — not that it was gonna make lots of profits.]
Vern and the liberals should understand that their left liberal politics of pandering to the corporate party of slavery — Howard Dean’s Democratic party that took fiscal responsibility and single payer off the table and substituted a fake debate about so-called public option/big insurance/PHARMA bail out #5, so that there could be more big bailouts, and supply-side economics on steroids in the name of reform. A bailout that even the CBO says will inflate insurance premiums and lead to private insurance subsidies from the tax payers in the ball park of one trillion dollars.
Just stop building the Democrats. Stop voting for them. And if you are going to promote or vote do it for fiscal responsibility and people before profits, compassion before corporations.
Art: Duane is a GREAT add to Orange Juice! Truly, one of the few truly independent progressive voices in Orange County.
Duane: Long time no see, but hope all is well!
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right….
I’ll be back tomorrow.
Gustavo,
Thanks my friend. We are excited to have him on board – and look, already he has everyone riled up!
He makes a great point in this post too. Both of our major political parties are corrupt – and big money always wins out in the end, no matter who is in charge in DC.
Welcome to Orange Juice, Duane 😉
I noticed your comments about the democratic amendments. I saw a notice for the Weiner and the Kucinich amendments. Are those two ammendments attempts to put the public option back in the hands of government? Have any ideas about those amendments and wish to comment?
Here is a reference to the Weiner amendment: http://capwiz.com/pdamerica/callalert/index.tt?alertid=14249971
#7 Art,
While I agree wholeheartedly that money has corrupted both parties, I disagree that the Democrats are as bad as the Republican corporatists, can you believe that George Bush WOULD NOT even ban “DOWNER COWS” from the food supply. SICKENING!
Yes, it is a new day at the OJ. Realistic progressives like me, Red Vixen and anonster will now need to fend off attacks from our left by Duane and Henry. It’s all good. Supposedly these guys mostly share the same goals as us – in this case a single-payer healthcare system that covers all Americans and saves hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives a year. However, we eagerly await these guys’ big game plan for how to get there. “It’s harrd werk” as W moaned several times.
First let me take care of Terry, then my old friend Dr. Henry Duke, and then some of the substance in Duane’s article.
I was wondering when Terry would do his “Tenther” post; it’s one current rightwing hobbyhorse I hadn’t noticed him haul out yet. This is of course the ultrafundamentalist reading of the Tenth Amendment which would hold that nearly everything the federal government has ever done over 230 years to “promote the general welfare” is unconstitutional because it’s not specifically enumerated in the Constitution. Of course this argument is not worth taking seriously. It’s interesting he gets his first legal/constitutional argument from the renowned judicial body the Congressional Budget Office; obviously this was an offhand comment explaining why it would be a challenge to “score” the unprecedented individual mandate.
I would be doing Terry a disservice though, if I claimed that like most rightwingers he offers absolutely no ideas for healthcare reform. He does have the following which he’s repeated a few times:
Personally, I don’t understand why Democrats don’t do it nice and simple. Just pass a law mandating everyone buy insurance this year, paying for those who need subsidies with the funds from those who make more than $50,000 but don’t bother to buy and the youth who don’t care. Two thirds of the people who dont have insurance are that wealthy or already qualify and are too lazy to bother, so the numbers are there.
Assuming he offered this advice in good faith as opposed to “here’s something real stupid the Dems could do to shoot themselves in the foot,” let’s examine quickly why that wouldn’t work. Basically there is nothing here to prevent insurance companies to keep jacking up their premiums exponentially, as they do year after year and have promised to continue. If I were one of these young/healthy/over $50,000 fellows, I would certainly resent being mandated to hand over ever-growing chunks of my income to profit-making corporations, wouldn’t you? And just for the purpose of helping the poor and feeble, whom many Americans just resent – oh, I get it, this is Terry’s recipe for Democratic electoral catastrophe! No thank you, a good public option (if we can get one) will do just fine.
But of course Terry’s not serious about this idea, as he has just posted a comment above contending that the individual mandate is unconstitutional. Surprise, it was not a good-faith suggestion. Or is he just terrified of Emerson’s famed Hobgoblin of Consistency this Halloween season?
My old friend Dr. Hank Duke is a fine activist, but sifting through the shambling wreckage that comprise his typical commentaries for something useful or germane is an arduous and sobering exercise. Indians were killed, okay. Abraham Lincoln was a good Republican, okay. Actually we weren’t got out of Vietnam by either American party, but by a vast grassroots peace movement and the Vietcong.
Duane, can you make heads or tails of the paragraph that was addressed to you? I can’t. The US postal service working efficiently, cheaply, and not for profit, side by side with Fed Ex and UPS for those who need to get things there in an extra hurry for extra cash, is a good comparison to the public option we want in healthcare. How is either a “dumping ground?” My mail always gets there.
A bailout that even the CBO says will inflate insurance premiums and lead to private insurance subsidies from the tax payers in the ball park of one trillion dollars.
Oh yeah that would be of course the sh*tty Baucus bill which contained an individual mandate with no public option, and a tax on existing generous insurance plans. If that’s how the final bill turns out, we’ll be pressuring progressive Congressmembers to join Republicans in filibustering it.
… if you are going to promote or vote do it for fiscal responsibility and people before profits, compassion before corporations.
Sound advice here, finally. Doesn’t sound like Republicans to me, but a lot of Democrats fit that description to a tee.
Welcome Duane, We actually have a place here where everyone can put out their views and recieve respect if not agreement from 99% of those here.
To bad our leaders are to beholden to the special interests to be even able to discuss possible options on many issues.
I’m writing this message with the underlying purpose of thanking everybody here who posted responses welcoming me to the world of the Orange Juice blog.
I also appreciate the fact Art Pedroza extended an opportunity for me to blog for this site about two weeks ago. Blogging is something I’ve thought about doing for some time.
Although I probably won’t be posting stuff here every day, I guarantee that when I do, what I say will be interesting, thought-provoking, and maybe … controversial!
To Vern Nelson:
In respect to some of the comments you’ve made here, I’m seriously thinking about writing a more detailed piece pointing out how the “public option” gimmickry that Democratic Party politicians have been peddling not only will most likely have *zero* impact upon the current business practices of the private health insurance industry, but in all probability will help them substantially increase their profit margins.
For example, remember all this phony baloney rhetoric about how the “public option” was supposed to be a “low-cost alternative” to plans offered by private health insurers? The Congressional Budget Office posted a report online today pointing out insurance premiums charged by the “public option” will be *higher* than private plans because it would attract more enrollees who are sicker and require more intensive medical care.
The way I see it, the “public option” gimmickry was a strategy devised by the Democrats to trick the public into supporting legislation which in reality has little to do with providing better quality health care, but more to do with forcing millions of people to subsidize the profits of the multi-billion dollar health insurance industry both through taxes and mandates which require them buy their crappy, overpriced products.
and with this Duane is in the mix! great first post and great to see you on the “Orange Juice”
paz,
`g
Well, we’ll see, the details change every day, and we all have to be ever vigilant. But to paint “Democrats” with such a broad brush is unfair to the dozens of Democrats who are trying to get single payer or a strong public option as a path to SP, and encourages apathy and defeatism out here.
Help with the ongoing progressive takeover of the Democratic Party by joining your local DFA (Democracy for America, http://www.democracyforamerica.com/contact_messages/new) – we meet the first Wednesday of every month – that’s this coming Wednesday – at Karl Strauss Brewery near South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa –
or PDA (Progressive Democrats of America) write my friend Dr. Bill at drbillhonigman@gmail.com
It’s obviously going to be a long struggle.