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Single Payer vs. Public Option
Nick Skala was in a bit of shock.
In early June, he was invited to speak before the Progressive Caucus of the House of Representatives about single payer health care.
There are about 71 members of the House who belong to the Progressive Caucus — about a third of the Democratic Caucus.
Skala is a true believer in single payer — having spent four years with Physicians for a National Health Program.
So, yes of course, he would love to speak before the Progressive Caucus to explain why single payer was the only way to control costs and cover everyone.
And that Obama’s public option was bound to fail.
He sent his presentation ahead of time to Bill Goold, the executive director of the Progressive Caucus, and Darcy Burner, executive director of the American Progressive Caucus Foundation.
Both were not pleased with Skala.
“Bill Gould emailed me after reading my testimony and materials I was going to present to tell me that they were not acceptable and that there could be no comparison between single payer and the public option with side by side comparison,” Skala told Single Payer Action. “Darcy Burner told me that they would construe talking about the public option — even comparing it to single payer — as an attack on the members of the Progressive Caucus.”
“Now, I can’t see how honest discourse about whether or not a public option will work — especially when it comes from 16,000 doctors and the majority of nurses — as an attack on anybody who supports it. We see it as telling the truth.”
Despite Goold’s and Burner’s objections, on June 4, Skala went ahead and made his presentation to the caucus.
“During the presentation it was very nasty,” Skala said. “I got some very dirty looks from Darcy Burner. During the question period and once during the testimony, I was interrupted, told that the Progressive Caucus had taken a position on this issue and unless I had something positive to contribute, then there wasn’t really much point to answering my questions. At least one of my questions to the staff of the Chairman of the caucus was interrupted by the staff of the Congressional Progressive Caucus unfortunately.”
And what exactly was Skala’s crime?
He believes the public option being pushed by Obama and the Democrats will fail.
“The public option preserves all the systemic deficiencies that we see in the current system,” Skala said. “It maintains a finance system that is based on private insurance and private insurers and their drive to fight claims, issue denials, screen out the sick and make a big profit generate tremendous administrative waste — 400 billion dollars a year.”
“Now you can expand coverage by just raising taxes and paying insurers to cover people but that’s not a sustainable system,” Skala said. “But it won’t cover every body and it will fall apart quickly due to rising cost as we’ve seen in Massachusetts, Vermont, Oregon, Tennessee and Minnesota — state after state after state and it hasn’t worked.”
“Now the definition of insanity is to repeat what has gone on in the past and expect a different result. Yet that’s what we’re doing with the public option. And as a representative of physicians in that capacity, and certainly the relationship I have with nurses and patients, I feel it’s my duty to be honest about the best policy research, the best literature, and the best experience that we have and that all indicates that the public option is going to fail.”
The complete interview with Nick Skala, see video here or below:
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Show AllI am extremely disappointed, though not terribly surprised, that the Progressive Caucus cannot seem to understand that pumping our tax dollars directly into the coffers of the major insurance companies and HMOs is not going to help all Americans to obtain HEALTH CARE. It may get all Americans HEALTH INSURANCE. There is an enormous difference. Are they blind or are they, too, beholden to the dollars pouring into Congressional Campaign chests? To he** with the citizens, we must protect the corporations.
I think the answer lies in your last sentence. They are so beholden to the money puring into their pockets that they can say who cares about the people we only care about the corporations.
"They are so beholden to the money puring into their pockets"
And in the future that will be public tax dollars. Public tax dollars going into the coffers of DC politicians to keep a truly public health option away from ordinary Americans.
This is a pretty glaring example of why "Progressives" need to abandon a Party that wants their votes but not their ideas.
You can't be pro-Democrat and pro-third Party when the DNC seeks to defeat any third party candidate challenging them in municipal elections to national elections.
You can't be pro-Democrat and pro-third Party when the DNC will ban you from their conventions and send police to arrest you if you show up to protest.
"Progressive Democrats"? What a joke.
A really good public option would outcompete private insurance. This would be different than a "mandate" which forces people to buy private insurance--what they tried in Massachusetts, the only public option there being that the government helps you buy private insurance if you are below a certain income level. That system is obviously the worst solution because, as you said, it only perpetuates and expands the current non-health-care system and enriches the insurance companies.
I am a big single payer supporter. Single payer would create one large all-inclusive pool, which would create the best economies of scale, and get rid of denials, complicated paperwork, and profit-taking.
A public option that gets the government into insurance for everyone, that is basically Medicare for all, while not as good as single payer, is far better than a "mandate".
Obama and others pushing for a public option say "if you're happy with your current insurance you can keep it". How many people are really happy with their current insurance, really? Most of the state central AFL-CIO's have endorsed HR 676-- and union people have among the best private insurance. I have pretty good private insurance, and it still sucks. I would switch to a public plan in a heartbeat.
By purveying these illusions about the public option, you are playing a game rigged by the corporate liberals and the HMOs--they are using vague, undefined notions of a "public option" to derail the single payer movement into what is clearly a dead end.
Have you really thought about the specifics of a public option? Have you seen a plan that clearly spells out what this option would entail? I have, and it stinks--it's another K street contrivance to offer a veneer of reform--to gull complacent liberals--while preserving the for-profit, dysfunctional status quo
The first inkling of the details of the public option came about a month ago from the repugnant Chuck Schumer, who devised the scheme at the behest of the equally repugnant Max Baucus. Here are the devilish details, according to The New York Times:
“The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, asked Mr. Schumer to seek a solution. In his response, Mr. Schumer set forth these principles:
• The public plan must be self-sustaining.
• It should pay claims with money raised from premiums and co-payments.
• It should not receive tax revenue or appropriations from the government.The public plan should pay doctors and hospitals more than what Medicare pays. Medicare rates, set by law and regulation, are often lower than what private insurers pay.The government should not compel doctors and hospitals to participate in a public plan just because they participate in Medicare.
• To prevent the government from serving as both “player and umpire,” the officials who manage a public plan should be different from those who regulate the insurance market.”
In other words, this is a guaranteed-to-fail farce that would replicate all the worst features of private insurance and offer none of the cost-savings or coverage expansion of the single risk pool of true single payer.
It’s time for progressives to stop being played for fools by the K-street sharpies who are trying to slather lipstick on this pig of a private system. The only real reform--one that has a proven track record for half a century throughout the industrialized world--is single payer; anything else will be a sham and a scam. See http://www.pnhp.org/facts/singlepayer_faq.php#public-option.
Or, as Rose Ann DeMoro, head of the California Nurses Association, put it, the public option will at best simply be a "smaller hole in the parachute."
See the following:
www.singlepayeraction.org
http://www.healthcare-now.org
www.pnhp.org
.
Illusions? You are correct about the advantages of single payer. I am a fervent supporter of it. It may be a longshot but there is still a chance to create a public option that will actually do some good. Seattle Congressman Jim McDermott (a former doctor) is fighting for that. It would not look anything like the completely bogus Schumer/Baucus plan you cited. If the public option sets itself up to compete with private insurance, it will fail, indeed. If it's set up to force private insurance to compete with it-- by having no preexisting conditions, no deductibles, no rejections, and no profit, private insurance will not be able to comptete, and will have to adapt. McDermott is also arguing for new insurance rules that would force insurers to not cherrypick only "healthy" customers, and so on. This is a legitimate middle ground.
ANY public option would leave most of the system in the hands of the private insurers. In fact, Jacob Hacker, the leading academic theoretician of the public option, has projected that it would EXPAND the market for the private insurers.
See
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/april/hacker_says_that_pub.php
and
http://www.pnhp.org/blog/2009/04/09/jacob-hacker-provides-details-for-public-option/
It's critical to understand that all the talk about the public option is diversionary--every person like you who spend time championing this half loaf--which is really no loaf (Rose Ann DeMoro of the California Nurses Association likened it to making the hole in the parachute smaller), is therefore spending that much LESS time and energy fighting for the only real reform--single payer.
To that extent, the HMOs have you right where they want you--not devoting all your time and energy to fighting for single payer.
Actually I am fighting for single payer, and have been for years, actively and vociferously. At the same time, I think the public option has the potential, if done right, to be the next best alternative to single payer. I just think people need to look at that rather than rejecting it outright, because our real choice right now might be between a really crappy public option designed by the insurance lobby that sabotages itself and "proves" it doesn't work, thus setting the timetable for reform back another 10 or 20 years; and a better public option crafted by some of the more enlightened members of Congress (for example, Jim McDermott who is actually one of the architects of single payer legislation in congress), which would include regulations to severely rein in the excesses of private insurance. It's not a black and white issue. If you believe only pure white will do, you may only get black.
The whole point of the "public option" is to keep the HMOs in business. You're kidding yourself on this.
The advantage of single-payer is in risk pooling--everyone is in the same pool: well, sick, young, old, sick, and poor, thus averaging out the risks and costs of guaranteeing cost-efficient coverage to everyone. In the "public-option plan," everyone is NOT in the same risk pool, as they would be in single payer. In a "pub-op" plan, the oldest, sickest, and poorest would end up in the public plan; the youngest and healthiest--and hence most profitable--cohort would aggressively marketed by the private HMOs.
Hence the whole advantage of single-payer risk pooling would be lost: combining EVERYONE's resources (through a modest tax rather than bloated private premiums) so that the currently healthy 80 percent subsidize the unhealthy 20 percent and thus achieve cost efficiencies not obtainable if these two groups are in separate pools. Moreover, because of these untenable costs, the "pub-op" public plan will have to charge premiums and impose deductibles, just like the private plans--more of the same, notwithstanding the "public" branding. This is the essence of sham reform: game the system so that the public sector founders, thus discrediting the idea of publicly funded health care for another generation.
As Tom Harkin said to Kevin Zeese, "I used to sell insurance. The basic rule is the larger the pool the less expensive the health care. Today we have 1,300 separate pools - separate health care plans - and that is why health care is so expensive; 700 pools would be more efficient and less expensive and one pool would be the least expensive. That's why single payer is the answer."
With ANY variant of the public option, you maintain the multiple risk pools and hence the chaos and dysfunction. The whole business is an elaborate diversion and sham.
hamster, the problem with your idea is that a public option will not "set itself up". It will be an insurance industry "set up" for sure. Follow the money.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
I'm sorry, but you and vanmungo both keep saying what "will" happen. That's called giving up while the fight is still on.
hamster, read the tea leaves, or just follow the money. I don't gamble, but I would bet $100 dollars there will be no single payer and by the time the public option is hammered out, the insurance crooks and thieves will be grinning like Cheshire cats. Our corrupt Congress is in their pockets and they will do what they're told. You can take that to the bank.
I'm not suggesting we stop fighting. I'm not giving up. It's increasing public awareness and we need that. I just know that this Titanic is sinking. If I'm going down, I'm going down fighting.
Rebel Farmer just suggested I call the party I want to start the Main Street Party instead of the Mainstream Party. I LIKE her suggestion. It resonates and feels more inclusive, since I would like to see it the party of small business, family farms and working Americans. Now I have to get on facebook and learn to twitter. Never thought I'd see that day. But, it's a good forum for single payer as well.
I learned on Long Island when Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO) sold their worthless, contaminated Shoreham nuclear power plant to the state for $1 and came out of negotiations with big smiles, what that meant. They stuck the state with hundreds of millions in clean up costs. They had contaminated the chamber before they had a license to operate. The state brought this on itself, because they had granted permission to test.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
I have not predicted what "will" happen--I have quoted the only publicly floated explicit version of a public option, and I have analyzed the dead-end implications of any conceivable version of it.
If you want to keep beating your head against that brick wall, be my guest. There's no law against irrationality.
We actually agree more than we disagree. Congressmam McDermott has floated explicit guidelines for a public option which are pretty good. He's one of the biggest single payer champions in congress, but I think it's wise to have a backup plan in the short run if the door gets slammed on single payer-- not that any single payer advocate should call for anything less as the ultimate goal. I'll leave it at that.
"A really good public option would outcompete private insurance."
That's a more far-sighted observation than the great majority, and it's ethical and logical, but it depends on an unlikely assumption that such a policy would be corruption-proof. Instead, the proofing has to be built in. Without it, the private insurers will SELECT the healthy and REJECT the unhealthy, who will then burden the public option with far greater costs per capita. The privateers, backed by O'Bamba and the gang, will have succeeded in turning a challenge to oppression into an intensified opression. The public will pick up the tab for the unhealthy, offloading the privateers, and the privateers will raise their profit margins even higher on the healthy ones exploiting a falsified perception of reform. This isn't pooled risk at all. This is intensified corruption. Saintly O'Bamba fully understands and supports it. Most so-called "progressives" in the Demok party support intensified corruption. We need pooled risk, medicare for all, with strong anti-corruption provisions, and enforced requirement to cut costs by a factor of two in two years and three in five years.
What makes you think the healthy are so naive as to think their crappy insurance will still cover them when they actually get sick?
Your earlier post did address the whole pile of problems with private health insurance with a proposal for strict regulations, but people seem to be saying they don't think such an elaborate regulatory scheme imposed on a laissez-faire capitalist game makes much sense. It's an elaborate game which single payer seems to avoid, by effectively pushing the capitalists off the healthcare field.
The system will be gamed so that the so-called public option will not really offer a better alternative to the HMOs. The code phrase for this in the Beltway is "level playing field."
See my reply to BeForKids above. Go back to sleep, vanmungo. There's no point in carrying on the fight, since you already know what "will" happen.
As I pointed out above, I have not predicted what "will" happen--I have quoted the only publicly floated explicit version of a public option, and I have analyzed the dead-end implications of any conceivable version of it.
But your blind faith trumps logic, facts, and the judgment of the leading authority on the subject--Jacob Hacker--that the public option will EXPAND the market for HMOs (already quoted above).
You haven't specified what you even think this "public option" will look like or how it will function, yet you've jumped all over it like a monkey on methedrine. It's sad to see even self-designated leftists being so easily gulled by what is clearly a gambit by the K-street corporate liberals to deflect a movement for serious reform.
It's not surprising that you would counsel someone else to go back to sleep--that seems to be your default mode on this subject--you need to wake up to the realities. Or maybe you prefer to stay happily snoozing in the bed you've made with the DLC neoliberals who who are as hot for the public-option scam as much as you; the difference is they KNOW it's a scam--that's their specialty. You've just been duped by a vague, hazy marketing slogan that you can't flesh out with a concrete definition or specifics. Just keep repeating public option, public option--it's like opium--you forget about single payer and forget that public option is an empty term with no real content.
Have a happy nappy.
Ya' know, public option vs. single-payer is one of those litmus tests that distinguishes corporate liberals from real progressives/radicals: like support for Palestinian rights.
David Lindorff today gives a nicely succinct explanation about why the public option is phoney baloney:
"Having a so-called “public option” plan working in competition with private insurance plans will not solve this problem. Either the public option will become like the private options—trimming benefits and rejecting some applicants—or it will become a dumping ground for all the high-cost, high-risk people that the private sector insurance industry doesn’t want. At that point, the public plan will become a huge cost burden on the taxpayer, who will begin demanding that it cut back in the benefits it provides, taking us right back to where we started.
"The fact that the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress are both raising the issue of the high cost of health care “reform,” and are talking about ways to raise revenues to pay for it tells us all we need to know about the alleged “reform” schemes they are contemplating. They are doomed and, even if implemented, will not work."
See the entire article at http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff06152009.html
vanmungo, it's even worse, because Obama is saying the public option must be self supporting - no taxpayer money. So the really sick will have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps or go without.
The whole situation is insane and Obama is a total sellout. He's throwing overboard everyone who can't swim. And i hear he will be helping to fund the private plans with Medicare and Medicaid cuts.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
You're right--Obama gave the game away in his remarks to the AMA:
"What are not legitimate concerns are those being put forward claiming a public option is somehow a Trojan horse for a single-payer system," he said. "I'll be honest. There are countries where a single-payer system may be working. But I believe -- and I've even taken some flak from members of my own party for this belief -- that it is important for us to build on our traditions here in the United States. So, when you hear the naysayers claim that I'm trying to bring about government-run health care, know this -- they are not telling the truth."
vanmungo, single payer is not government run. So even if he was for it, he would be telling the truth. I certainly don't get the impression he's for it.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Sioux Rose
Single payer: simple, logical, elegant, cost-effective, and humane... but the entrenched interests, which is to say the congressional WHORES owe their allegiance to them that financed them (their campaigns) and so the hardly transparent attempts to thwart the best way to provide health care. Instead it's obvious that our congressional mis-leaders are demonstrating their fealty to the insurance companies, those callous agents of massive disregard who exist mostly to glorify their god, Mammon, rather than deliver anything remotely tangential to the term (health) CARE!
I applaud Mr. Mokhiber who has been tracing corporate corruption in so many high and mighty places for over a decade. If only his findings were made available to the larger public!
Most of us here realize single payer is the correct way to go with the health problems in the country. However, Siouxrose points out that, though desirable, it is also impossible to put through, as too many lawmakers are being paid big bucks to stop it, and consequently will not support it. Better to take one step at a time, instead of killing the whole thing. The public option, if good enough to draw people into it, would be better than nothing, and try for single payer next time around.
The public option looks more like window dressing at best and as pointed out, it has failed miserably in states where it passed. I don't see any baby steps on this issue. Single payer is already the easy step. The lawmakers and Big Insurance/Pharma are making a mountain out of an anthill. The Democrats will be losing the real center should they fail to focus on single payer.
Wow. Even with the "progressives" in Congress, the fix is in.
Go to http://www.singlepayeraction.org/blog/?p=960 and sign up to take action.
Is Skala proposing something along the lines of the health care system in Canada? I've read into Canada's single payer system, and honestly I think what we have in Australia, which is again similar to many European countries is much better and more likely to resound with the majority of Americans.
That's a good point, aussiegirl.
While I'm not familiar with the differences between Canada and other nations' health insurance systems, it seems most on this side of the pond compare the U.S. only to Canada's system.
If we were serious about changing our system in the U.S., we would line up each single payer system and take the best of each with an eye to how they might work in the U.S. I'm sure no two nations do it the same, and neither should we.
Finally, while Canada's system may have issues, it is much maligned by those who want no government involvement (IOW, they want corporate, money-making, greed to rule health insurance). I take it all with a grain of salt. The only thing I am sure about is that for-profit health insurance does not work. The U.S. is the poster child for that case.
Sometimes I would ask myself the question "What does being honest get you these days?" While it can feel miserable and even put one in tears to be honest, your inner self can only thank you and even empower you. Mr. Skala, when I was a kid and got punished more often for being honest, I still did not give up staying honest and fighting for what's right. Not even my trip to the hospital last month or my car breaking down last week with the exploding engine nearly costing my life stopped me from being honest even with my crooked car dealer service consultant and insurance company. Keep up the honest work and others shall continue to join.
My parents taught me very quickly to lie. While encouraging me to always be honest, and letting me know I could tell them anything, anytime, I found very quickly that honesty was often followed by punishment, even for the slightest affronts. Lying was the best way to go. And, sadly, I think a lot of politicians were raised the same way.
USans say your parents are properly balanced human beings.
I can see how lying is like fast food. "Fast and effective relief" is a powerful seducer with long term damaging effects. I don't think it's enough to encourage honesty but to also reward it.
Oregoncharles
My son, very perceptive at an early age, said to me one day: Evil prevails because people who are filled with it have far more tools available to them than do those who possess a strong moral/ethical code. And to make things worse, everyone loves a winner! Most people love to follow the leader.
"And to make things worse, everyone loves a winner! Most people love to follow the leader."
Bingo. But there have been unexpected successes even from the perceived less "winnable". I think we have to convince people to look at "winner" in a different light. I can't expect evil to diminish completely but trying to prevent it from getting worse would help.
Agreed, Jennifer.
Glad you made it back alive!
Thanks Ted.
P.S.: I hope I can say the same to my car after I finish getting through the car dealer and auto insurance company. If there's anything I can't stand besides most pols, it's insurance companies of all stripes and car sales people. Again, another hell raiser for being honest in life. I mentioned more about this in another post on this site.
I'm with you on that. Pols and insurance companies are at the bottom of my list as well. At least with car sales people you get something tangible for the screwing. Although sometimes it does blow up on you...
Here's Bill Goold's contact information:
Phone: 202-226-4055
Darcy Burner's contact information:
Email: darcy@progressivecongress.org
*** Please let these wonderful representatives of progressive policy know how satisified you are with them!
Thank you.
SEAGLASS writes:
"If the so called Progressives the far left of the party [is] bought by the Health care Vampires what possible hope do any of us have?"
-----
The main health care Vampire is Obaama Himself, who wants a "win" (see Democracy NOW!) for the truly-mad mishmash of bs He's calling a "plan".
Obaama's done nothing with His biiig "win" but toss the Treasury to the corporations (including the military contractors and "defense" contractors). The latest installment of that is His utterly stupid determination to sand-bag Single Payer in favor of the insurance corporations -- including a telephone campaign from the DNC to harangue local single-payer activists in favor of His "plan".
If it takes a Revolution to enact Single Payer, that's what we should do, and promptly.
As for Obaama, He HAS Single Payer (AND his wife's retirement from that $300,000/yr "health" gig with the U/C non-profit). Maybe He could use His stellar "coverage" to summon an array of psychiatric practicioners to help Him with that nasty compulsion for "wins" and media adulation.
Obama's support of FIRE is the only transparent thing in his government.
Or, at least it should be transparent to liberals, but we know the democratic party was transformed into the Obama party, a party that has abandoned tradition and made a new form of discrimination fashionable. Many of the young have a certain animosity toward boomers, their care and their social security.
You ever wonder why this administration is insistent on insuring children, other than it sounds so wonderful? Who could be against that? Most children don't need expensive care, so they make very profitable insurance policies. It's the middle aged, the pre-Medicare population having problems. Most health care costs arise in the last months of life. So, as bad as it sounds, I don't think uninsured children is the problem.
But the new thinking says that middle-aged America, especially white, IS the cause of all that is wrong with the world. We brought about all the problems that we spent our lives, as liberals, opposing. This issue of health care is another where the thinking now is that while many deserve care - poor, minorities, students, children, immigrants and even the poor of other countries - we do not. Everyone will skirt around the injustice of having working people pay for others to have care, while also supporting the rights of insurance execs to haul home millions in stock options. The democrats will ignore issues like bankruptcy caused by medical bills. We are the people of which no one will speak except to call us names and blame the post-Reagan corporate rape of our nation on.
The fix is in.
The public option will make it into the final legislation but will be so distorted as to be worthless.
Fake Progressives (the type who are offended by and try to censor honest debate) will declare victory.
You can see it coming a mile away.
**He believes the public option being pushed by Obama and the Democrats will fail.
“The public option preserves all the systemic deficiencies that we see in the current system,” Skala said. “It maintains a finance system that is based on private insurance and private insurers and their drive to fight claims, issue denials, screen out the sick and make a big profit generate tremendous administrative waste — 400 billion dollars a year.”**
So you see, Mr. Skala, it won't be a failure at all. The public will have the option of continuing to prop up profiteering at our expense - both at the expense of our health, as well as the continued taxation to subsidize corporate profits. Think back to the 2003 Medicare bill at a cost estimated to be over $600B at the time. (Who knows what the costs actually ran up to.) The congress said it was so "our seniors could afford the prescriptions." Then they wrote legislation denying "our seniors" the ability to negotiate drug prices. This public option will be no different. Talk about something good in public, while letting FIRE dictate the profitable terms in the legislation where it matters.
So it won't be a waste! Instead of 400 billion a year it'll be 500. That's called profit. That's called the best investment you can make in America these days - buying a congress.
Yes, the public option would be lame compared with single payer even if it was a real, true public option. It would do almost nothing to stop costs from spiraling out of control for example. But making "public option" even more lame, and virtually worthless, is that (as most everyone seems to know here) by the time the insurance companies through their lobbyists get through with dictating the details, it won't really be a true public option.
"raising taxes and paying insurers to cover people " That's not Public Option, that's the "Individual Mandate" that the Insurance Companies are pushing, AKA "RomneyCare", the failed Compulsory Insurance of Massachusetts. If that's what you are fighting, that's good, fight on.
But Public Option is a different animal. It's not run by private industry, it's PUBLIC. it doesn't give money to the Insurance Companies, it pays Doctors and Hospitals. It's not insurance, it's a payment plan.
It is designed to move the 4Profits out of the business without suddenly dumping one million white-collar workers onto the Unemployment rolls and without opening US up to Restraint of Trade and Takings lawsuits.
SinglePayer, as currently formulated, outlaws private insurance and dumps their employees out in the cold. The supporters of SinglePayer don't seem to be able to recognize that this is illegal, it's not politically possible and it's not fiscally responsible. Maybe because they don't understand how a Democracy works, we don't have a dictator, laws cannot be made by fiat, Congress and the President could not install SinglePayer overnight even if they could get the votes.
The beauty of Public Option is that it's end goal is SinglePayer but it gets there by outcompeting the Insurance Companies rather than attacking them. And the Companies are terrified of it for exactly that reason.
They are all geared up to fight SinglePayer and have a pile of tools at their disposal to do that. Restraint, Takings, and other legal means, Propaganda (SOCIALISM, be very scared!) et cetera. And they have bought enough Congresscritters that SinglePayer just barely got a hearing. But they are not ready for a market competition plan from US. That's the scramble we're seeing in trying to pivot and fight this off. And they are doing that by spreading disinformation, like this: “The public option preserves all the systemic deficiencies that we see in the current system,” Skala said. “It maintains a finance system that is based on private insurance and private insurers and their drive to fight claims, issue denials, screen out the sick and make a big profit generate tremendous administrative waste..."
NO. Public Option is designed to compete the 4Profits out of the business, not preserve them. It does it gradually rather than disrupting one sixth of our already damaged economy and without incurring a couple decades worth of courtfights.
So if you want SinglePayer, the only available path that leads that direction is Public Option, It's too bad that people like Russ Mokiber (who I respect a lot) are allowing themselves to be played by the Insurance Companies, but that is the net result of rallying support for a doomed bill at the expense of the bill that would actually achieve the goal we all want.
"So if you want SinglePayer, the only available path that leads that direction is Public Option, It's too bad that people like Russ Mokiber (who I respect a lot) are allowing themselves to be played by the Insurance Companies, but that is the net result of rallying support for a doomed bill at the expense of the bill that would actually achieve the goal we all want."
Well, I'm not sure this is true - I could say the same for many things and miss by a mile.
I will say that current political reality (reality as defined by politicians, who, BTW, are writing the laws) usually does not allow for quick changes. It is a tragedy, but from my perspective, it's true. Things happen in slow, frustrating, maddening steps in Washington, if they happen at all.
Now, having said that, who the hell knows whether the public option will work. First, as Mr. Skala noted, it's already been tried in several states and has not worked. Why try this failed model on the national level?
Second, the health insurance industry is heavily involved in the current legislation. To me, that's already three strikes against us - a done deal. While I am old enough to realize that most things work slowly, I also realize that corporate entities cannot, and should not, be trusted to keep the public good at heart. It's not their mission to look out for us - their mission is to maximize profit for their shareholders, and ultimately, their officers. So, just the fact that the insurance industry is sleeping with Congress while this is being crafted throws a monkey wrench into it. It may help a little, but ultimately, it will not help the American public.
Is the public option better than nothing? I don't know. It may be, but even so, I think it will fall far short of getting to the issue of the lack of _adequate_ coverage for most Americans. And if this won't do that, maybe it should fail. I'm afraid that if this passes, Congress will thump it's chest and wash it's hand of it and we will be left high and dry...again.
We have to understand that making money off of sick people is the American way.