Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Why the Public Option is Doomed To Fail, and What Can Be Done About It
Some highly profitable and job creating industries simply can't be reformed. Slavery and child labor cannot not be made humane and reasonable, not with kind and solicitous masters or school and limited hours for the kids. Both these practices were eventually cast aside. Allowing souless, greedy private insurance corporations to collect a toll for standing between patients and doctors may be next.
The president's health care plan is designed to preserve the parasitic private insurance industry a little while longer. In this context, the public option is a cruel and cynical hoax, an excuse not to abolish the role of private insurance death panels and toll collectors in the nation's health care system.
Nobody can read the president's mind, but he did promise to construct health care legislation in an open and transparent manner, even "on C-SPAN." Instead, Obama handed off the drafting of health care legislation to five House and three Senate committees. The most generous view is that he did this to give legislators a stake in the bills, and because there is this thing called the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches.
Another view is that the embedded influence of Big Insurance, Big Pharma, and Big Medicine were easier to conceal when spread out over several committees, where the lobbyists are themselves former congressmen, senators and their top staffers, and many current members and staff look forward to the same career paths. These are the men and women who wrote what is and will be the president's health insurance reform legislation. The result has been a half dozen versions of a thousand-plus page bill, chock full, as Rolling Stone's Matt Taibi points out, of deliberately obscure references to other legislation. Nobody can authoritatively claim to have read, much less understand all of it. And that's just the way insurance companies and the president like it. HR 676, the Enhanced Medicare For All Act, which does provide universal coverage at reasonable cost, comes in at under thirty pages.
To begin with, there are no less than three versions of the public option. The first is an imaginary public option first conceived by Political Science grad student Jacob Hatcher in 2001. It was to postpone the death of private insurance companies by forcing them to compete with a publicly funded insurer open to all comers which would drive their prices downward. This imaginary public option has never been written into law, and is not under consideration in Congress this year. It lives pretty much in the minds of the public and the lips of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, MoveOn.Org and many others. It's in the mouth of Howard Dean, who says it will be just like Medicare, only available to everybody. To distinguish it from the President Obama's version, it is usually called "the robust public option."
The second version of the public option is not imaginary, it is all too real. President Obama explicitly outlined its contours in his health care address earlier this month. Unlike the expansive and inclusive imaginary public option championed by MoveOn.Org, the president's public option will be stingy, means-tested, socially divisive, actuarially unsound and doomed to failure, unless its objective is simply to discredit the word "public" in the term "public option." The president has said it will be limited to 5% of the nation's population, those Americans too poor to afford the cheapest insurance available on his regulated "insurance exchanges" which won't be fully implemented anyway till 2013.
Hence those making more than a very small wage will be ineligible for the president's version of the public option, and those who currently get insurance from their employers, no matter how skimpy the coverage, how high the co-pays and deductibles, will also not qualify. Those who receive relatively good (or maybe not so good) coverage from their employers will pay a special tax to support both the public option and the subsidies the government will pay to enable others not quite poor enough for the public option to fulfill their legal obligation to buy shoddy insurance from private vendors.
In a social culture where Americans have been taught to despise poverty and the poor, even when they themselves are poor and near poverty, this will be bitterly and inherently divisive. It will provide economic incentive for the working poor to look down on and resent whatever benefits those even poorer than themselves receive. It turns medical coverage for the poor into stigmatized welfare subsidized by the near-poor, and all to the continuing profit of insurance companies.
And since the pool accessed by the public option will be relatively older, poorer and thus more chronically ill, it will not be economically viable in and of itself, much less of the size needed to compete with private insurers and drive their prices downward.
The only good thing one can say about the president's version of the public option is that even he is not firmly attached to it, and does not regard it as essential to his package. That's actually good news.
Beyond the imaginary "robust public option" of MoveOn.Org, and the divisive, destructive public option of the president, there is a third public option, a very real one. It's HR 676, the Enhanced Medicare For All bill, sponsored by John Conyers and Dennis Kucinich. Unlike the mostly imaginary "robust public option" of MoveOn.Org, it actually exists and ordinary people can read and understand it. Unlike the president's public option, which does not take effect till 2013, a fact still ignored by most of the mainstream media, HR 676 can be put into effect almost immediately. The first Medicare back in 1965-66 took only eleven months to send out the first cards and pay the first medical bills.
The White House of course, is not listening to the public outcry for Medicare For All. For example, a group of Oregon physicians calling themselves the Mad As Hell Doctors put up a web site that included an email-the-president page. After the White House received only about 5,000 emails in the first few days, it elected to block emails coming from the Mad As Hell Doctors as spam. Never mind that tracking polls as late as this June indicate majority support among the public for the simple extension of Medicare benefits to everybody.
And although the progressive caucus in Congress continues to wistfully describe its imaginary version of the public option as a line in the sand, it is neither lining up votes for a promised HR 676 floor vote, nor are they demanding that caucus members support amendments to let states to pursue their own versions of single payer in the near future. Congress is being set up to accept anything with the name "public option" and be done with it, even the president's cynical and divisive proposal. The die is cast. The Obama proposals, written by the health insurance lobbyists may pass, but they're not worthwhile. The president's version of the public option, if it stays in the bill is doomed to fail, and the MoveOn version never existed. The only possibility for the real public option, Medicare For All, this year is on the state level. That door will be opened or closed by the Congress this year.
The Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Progressive Caucus can partially redeem their sorry capitulation to the president and Big Insurance by insisting that states be allowed to go their own way on single payer, the only real public option.
- Posted in
59 Comments so far
Show All"The Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Progressive Caucus can partially redeem their sorry capitulation to the presdient and Big Insurance by insisting that states be allowed to go their own way on single payer, the only real public option." SAY WHAT!! The only way these congressional representatives can save their sorry asses is to vote YES on HR 676, Medicare for all, Single Payer.
Any thing less than that and they need to be removed form office because they are voting for their contributors, not their constituents. KICK THE CORRUPT OUT OF CONGRESS! Any representative who voted for the bankster bailout, the surge in Afghanistan and has not signed on to HR 676 is corrupt. This person is not voting for the people in their district, but for their contributors. Don't be fooled by some concept of the lesser of two evils, don't vote for any evil at all.
The public option is nothing but a red herring to keep letting the insurance companies get away with murdering sick people! Lets forget all the Congressional casuistry and realize that medicare for all or single payer would be the way to go for most Americans, but the miasma of our so called representatives in Congress like Baucus, will never allow this since they are quislings for big pharma and the greedy and extraordinary evil insurance companies!
Bruce Dixon presents the most cogent and concise explanation for the (purposely) confusing health care reform features lumped together under the name 'public option'. Anyone wishing to follow this important issue must read Dixon.
Mr Dixon, thank you for writing this.
I am in support of HR 676.
Perhaps the solution slipped through earlier this week with broad bipartisan support for a bill to terminate funding (defund is not a word) to ACORN. http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/09/23-0
This piece of legislation could accidentally clean up corruption in Congress, end lobbying, fix Wall Street & the financial crisis, end the war and give all Americans universal health care.
One can hope.
Even on "strategic" or political grounds, there is no rationale for "public option" over "single payer". An effective public option would, by definition, cost the insurance firms many dollars, as would single payer. Why would anyone believe that public option would be more "possible" or "doable" or "on the table" than the other? Anything that lowers cost, and enhances coverage, the drug and insurance companies would fight.
So it begs the question, why did the Democrats rule out universal single payer, the proven solution around the world, from the outset? Universal Single payer doesn't slow price increases, it cuts prices in half. Universal single payer doesn't cover more people, it covers everybody.
Excellent writing.
Absolutely true in your framing of the issue and your conclusion.
Let it be known that a majority of Americans want a public option. And single payer, HR676, is the only true public health insurance option.
It's pretty clear that until coporate money is taken out of political campaigns too many legislators will continue to serve their contributors rather than their constituents. Doesn't this issue work as a log jam to all meaningful reform? Shouldn't this reform be the first order of business? Saying it will never happen, as many do, is just accepting that positive reform of anything is pretty much impossible. Sure everyone gives campaign financing a passing mention, and then they carry on with some other cause, even after they have admitted that it hopeless without reforming the mother of all reform. But maybe the defeat of health care reform and one or two other reform efforts will create the kind of laser-like focus needed to actually get something done.
Supreme Court rulings over the past 30 years, plus the one about to be released regarding the constitutionality of McCain-Feingold, have made real campaign finance reform absolutely impossible.
Short of a constitutional convention, nothing can be done about corporate control of our political process at the national level.
The only alternative left to the citizenry is massive civil disobedience, including strikes, boycotts, sit-ins, and most importantly, tax resistance.
If there's any upside to the health insurance reform effort, it may be that the tax penalties for refusal to comply with the individual mandate will result in so much headache for the IRS that the federal government can be ground to a halt. Ironically, that mandate is the one provision most likely to be in the final legislation, because it delivers all those new customers to the insurance companies.
Unfortunately, corporate campaign donations are just a small part of capital's dominance of the process. There are also the gifts and trips, but far more important are the jobs they can give politicians before and after they hold office, and give to their families and friends even WHILE they hold office.
Campaign finance reform is necessary, but it's far from a solution. It's just a small piece. And given how difficult even that small piece would be to win, there is a strong argument for thinking outside the electoral system.
The current president is giving compromise a bad name. Progressives do all the "compromising" and the other side just takes what they want. This isn't a compromise, but can be called by its proper name, appeasement of tyranny. That's what it was when Neville Chamberlain did it with respect to what was the Rome/Berlin Axis at the time. It failed then, and will fail again. The far right is all about megalomania and greed. They want all the power and money, and they plan to get it at the expense of "government of, by, and for the people."
AD
The tax payer should own the hospital and all that's in it!
All the facilities and supplies in the hospital are bought through GSA contracts where the manufacturers maintain their products according to the contract.
NO CHARGE for using any of the facilities or supplies there in, for any person! Any local family practitioner can send patients to the local hospital for tests with out charge.
Each community is responsible for finding it's own administration and staff to run these facilities.
This would allow medical people to concentrate on practicing medicine and doing the job they went to school for. It should also allow them to make more money!
Mr Dixon's analysis of the social divisiveness reflected in this debate is absolutely spot-on.
Get real, people ... there will be no meaningful health care reform until the entire delivery system collapses under its own dead weight, because we live in a mean-spirited, self-centered, ill-informed, pathologically competitive society, enabled by a corrupt and demagogic political system.
matthew loughran
excellent article. it lays it out about our shit healhcare system in the US.
its money driven and is really divisive along class and racial lines.
everyone regardless of race or class deserves to be treated like human beings. healthcare is a right and responsibilty for everyone. if we can't that to be the central part of our so called reform our health system will collapse very soon.
hr 676 is the only way to go.
everyone should look at the green party. we are the only political party that has single payer healthcare as a part of its platform. the web site is www.gp.org
matt
galveston tx
You could of just said, there will be no meaningful...reform until we get rid of Capitalism.
Also, the most important thing is to follow Nader and now Michael Moore's lead to get money out of politics. This is the subject that most requires a March on Washington, writing and calling your politicians, organizing etc.
Great article, but I wait for the other shoe to drop: what you we do about it? Dixon places all his hopes for single payer on the Progressive and Black Caucuses but they aren't doing anything about it---so what can WE do about it?
"so what can WE do about it?"
Absolutely nothing. Its even possible there will be nothing done this year. These good fo;ks Pelosi/Waxman and the President lost any chance of even what they want a month ago.
It is amazing how a little power makes very small people think they are bigger than they are.
I disagree. We have to be crystal clear about what we need (Medicare for All) and say it loud and clear to our neighbors. We have to start threatening politicians with losing their seats if they don't give it to us.
The tinder of public opinion already exists. We just need a spark to start a fire. A spark is hot and not some lukewarm slush.
Joe
SINGLE PAYER, universal, comprehensive, covering all health needs from the womb till death - with no means test. Dental, vision, and long term care must be included. All of this would cost less than what we are now paying.
The insurance companies MUST be eliminated. They kill people and they have destroyed the doctor/patient relationship. They cost too much. We can no longer afford to have insurance companies. They are the enemy. They must be destroyed.
Single Payer is the only plan that will work for everybody. The other plans that are now being discussed are really "Insurance Company Protection Bills".
You have it right.
Second that.
We need Government Reform. I vote for the Public Option as in Of, For and By the People.
This isn't living under corporate tyrany, it's barely surviving.
Excellent observations drholmquist.
Instead of any true "public option" let alone Single Payer or Medicare for all (as corrupted as that program has become) we will get what I call the Mitt Romney Option.
Those who say they are happy with their private health insurance (selfish fools and idiots) will then find their health care costs continue to spiral out of control and/or increased denial of actual services as needed. The politicians (including Obama) will claim victory and because most of the changes will not go into effect until after the 2012 election it will be a non-issue.
Not to be too nihilistic about it but the world would be far better off were an asteroid to destroy Washington (and northern Virginia for that matter). The corporatist lobbying interests are now simply too entrenched for any other meaningful change.
-30-
We need to rename single payer. It should be called Patriot Care. When the right wing begins to attack it we can question their patriotism. The right wing think tanks have been doing it for years. The fact that these screwballs were carrying signs at their tea party in Washington with slogans like "keep your government hands off my medicare" proves that the right wing is incapable of thought. They respond to jingoism, emotion and paternalism. If we frame things using their own language maybe we will get somewhere.
Excellent.
Medicare for All!
Reform is not an "option"
Single payer NOW!
Good slogan. The only good slogan. Eliminating the age requirement for Medicare would take one sentence, not 1018 pages and 5 committees.
Why shouldn't children and young people get what older people get? The answer is that older people are voters and organized in their own interests, rather selfishly if you ask me. AARP worked only for their constituency and did not dilute their effort with concern for less organized people. It worked for them.
Insurance for young people makes sense. It is mostly preventative, routine and emergency type care and gets a lot more health bang for the buck compared with the diminishing returns for prolonged and complicated end of life care. But younger people have to say GIMMEE. Yes, make your representatives do something for you or vote the useless pieces of --- out of office. The old people, the bankers, the weapons makers were not shy and retiring and they get what they want.
The funding is a little more complicated, but nobody ever demands balancing the budget before they start a war or bail out a gang of banksters.
Joe
Did they really say "keep the government hands off my Medicare"? Hilarious.
Joe
A very good article, but we have to remember that Obama is not a saint, he's a politician. We must stop expecting much from politicians in a system that stops even the good ones from delivering.
Obama has just signed a fantastic law that allows people to carry loaded guns in national parks. Doubtless he was trying to ingratiate himself with the more rabid Blue Dogs, but how long before someone gets shot at Yellowstone or Yosemite?
And how will that gunshot victim pay for the extended health care they need (given that the shooter will likely be of limited means)?
The question is: does the President *really* give a damn, or is he so busy trying to keep everyone in DC onside that he's forgotten the reason he was elected?
The other day someone brought up the fact that Big Insurance doesn't cover alternative practitioners or homeopathy. I also read another article on health care
http://www.alternet.org
/healthwellness/142833
which talks about how the for-profit addictions throughout the entire medical realm. Insurance can be great to have but for all the insurance one has, what good is it when what it actually covers stinks? What good is insurance when we're stuck in a world where more doctors and nurses make more mistakes that could result in consequences ranging from prolonged sickness to death by error all because of greed by the doctors, pharmaceutical companies, and medical equipment manufacturers producing defective equipment more than ever?
When I look at all this, I begin to wonder if we will ever really come close to the day single payer is enacted and if we do what will be of those other issues in the medical world? Maybe there's a glimmer of hope but looking at all this and still having nightmares after my older friend's wife told me how he survived under the knife in the hospital, it still feels like dimming lights of depression. :(
The gist of this is that there is no way a public option of any kind will be passed. Is HR676 doomed?
What kind of morons are we as a people if we accept this half-assed legislation as "reform?" It's all fine and good to urge the states to act independently, but that is about as likely as a snow ball in hell to be effective. I live in Hawaii, which has long had mandated employer provided pre-paid health care (but not family coverage). It is crappy, expensive, leaves many uninsured, and there is a shortage of doctors. Yet, from what I can ascertain, Hawaii has one of the highest rates of insured citizens in the US. If this is any standard to live up (down?) to, we're really screwed.
Wait just a darned minute!
The majority of Americans want at least a government option, 87% of Democrats prefer a single payer system.
So why is Obama pretending that to be reasonable we must benefit the for profit insurance corporations at the expense of We the People? He's screwing the vast majority on this issue.
Wake up and smell the miasma!
I have come to the same conclusion. No more playing nice. Politicians think you are stupid and take advantage of you. Here's what they understand: GIMMMEEE OR ELSE YOU ARE GOING TO LOSE YOUR CUSHY NO TALENT ASS-SITTING JOB!!!! We need Medicare for all and we need it now. Most people agree with us. Why are we shy? Why are we pussy-footing around instead of giving leadership?
Tell people if they want to pay some outrageous monthly bill for insurance to a private company, then that is their right. (Foolish, but you have a right to be foolish, just don't drag me into it.)
People who are worried about attacking Obama should relax. He can take care of himself. But apply the pressure mostly to the useless Uncle Pumblechooks who represent us in Congress. It will trickle up.
Joe
Hey, I read "public outcry" here. As far as we can discern from Europe, the only ones who are crying out publicly and VISIBLY are those who are against it.
"Public outcry" means millions and millions of people hitting the streets. Not once, but every week. In growing numbers. That's what "public outcry" means, FYI.
SO JUST DO IT. Don't just rant on the web! You all sound like the Annual Conference of Couch Potatoes Inc.!
If you want it, go for it - as in "what would the American Right do if they wanted something really badly"...?
Mr. Dixon is a Lightweight when it comes to grasping that a social revolution has already started. Some form of government sponsored "social medicine" will be activated by next summer (2010).
The first 2 years will be the "shake-down cruise". By 2012 both parties and their Presidential candidates will be introducing their own new "Presidential Reformed Universal Medical Coverage Plans".
With no reform of the current state of U.S. Medical Coverage; the scenario is bleak; Hospitals closing or downsizing, Healthcare jobs being reduced, Insurance & Pharmacial Companies facing economic ruin ( as their paying subscribers dwindle ). The public will starting rebelling and their primary targets will be their elected representatives...for starters
Change is inevitable, and in this case desired. At least twice as many citizens will be enrolled/added to the pool of eligible patients. This will economically stimulate the Healthcare Field and create increased jobs by a factor of 4 or 5.
Stand back and take the longer view....Get on the bandwagon.
/
What bandwagon?
What concrete evidence do you have that any of this will take place, swami?
Right now all we have is a giant boondoggle for the private insurers and Big Pharma. Of course, that's what's happening in reality, on the planet earth. Not sure on which planet your imagined scenario will unfold. Do tell.
Your are right. Bruce Dixon is definitely a lightweight when it comes to the important job of maintaining the status quo. Take the longer view indeed, there are billions, no trillions! more to be made before it all crashes - then split and enjoy their money!
Hospitals will survive Medicare for All, and survive it handsomely. Medicare is the most stable, least difficult to collect source of revenue for hospitals. Hospitals are having revenue problems with the stingy, shifting, complicated, illogical, reimbursement-denying private insurance coverages. (I know since I worked for years in IT in hospitals, including with billing.) Hospitals face financial and moral dilemmas from the choice of denying care to uninsured people or having to cover the cost primarily from the fees paid by private and insured patients.
The layoffs will take place in the billing and IT departments, as the ridiculous burden of collecting money from the greedy and capricious insurance companies declines. But that saved payroll money can go into direct patient care, which is usually in short supply in a hospital.
Joe
Single-payer OR SINGLE TERM!
Exactly.
Apply this to Congress and the Senate as well as Obama.
Joe
Use the power of your vote. Communicate with your elected officials that you will not vote for them if they don't vote yes on single payer health care. And stick by it.
www.NotOneMore.US - Pledge For Peace
Mr. Obama,
stop playing nice.
You know, we all know, that the Rep. senators and perhaps even some Democrats will vote against whatever they finally come up with.
A simple law is all it takes -- Do away with Medicaid, everyone on Medicare, from cradle to grave.
Not that Medicare is so great, it is not. It has huge holes.
But first things first.
ONE SINGLE PAYER -- MEDICARE
What about HR676 and a private option for those that want to keep their own private policies that is until until they loose their employer sponsored healthcare plans.Like as is offered under N.Y.State. insurance regulations.
No forced govt. pay rather a choice.
You see hardly anyone can afford private healthcare policy unless they are a professional I.E. a lawyer or medical professional. Maybe a I.T. prefessional.
Sooner than later most employer plans will be made more worthless than they already are. As less and less can afford a true quality "A"grade policy; both the employers and employees.
If there was a private option it would no longer be HR676. HR676 does away with private insurance altogether, except for luxury plans that cover procedures beyond the national plan. That is a pretty radical plan in the U.S., but it's straightforward and it is what's needed. And it's actually not radical when you look around the world as see that it WORKS elsewhere. See Rosemary Jackowski's comment 9/24 3:26pm.
HR 676 is what progressives want. On that, Mr. Dixon is right.
But on the robust public option not being real, he is wrong.
Here is what the co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus wrote on Sept. 10th about their robust public option:
>>
http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/uploads/CPC
%20Co%20Chair%20Letter%20to%20
President%20Obama%20Sept%2031.pdf
We continue to support the robust public option that was reported out of the Committees on Ways and Means and Education and Labor and will not vote for a weakened bill on the House Floor or returning from a Conference with the Senate.
Any bill that does not provide, at a minimum, a public option built on the Medicare provider system and with reimbursement based on Medicare rates-not negotiated rates—is unacceptable. A plan with negotiated rates would ensure higher costs for the public plan, and would do nothing to achieve the goal of providing choice and competition to keep rates down. The public plan with set rates saves $75 billion, which could be lost if rates are negotiated with providers. Further, this public option must be available immediately and must not be contingent upon any trigger.
Mr. President, the need for reform is urgent. Every day, 14,000 Americans lose their health care coverage. We must have health care reform that will effectively bring down costs and significantly expand access. A health reform bill without a robust public option will not achieve the health reform this country so desperately needs. We cannot vote for anything less. >>
Fifty-seven CPC members signed a letter saying they would insist on a robust public option.
The REALITY of this robust public option is this: if 38 or more progressive Democrats vote against a non-robust public option, the bill fails. If other Dems in the House and Senate, and the President, know this in advance, they have a choice: make the bill have a robust public option as they have repeatedly outline, OR THEY GET NO BILL.
If they get a really robust public option, that is a path to Medicare for all. If they vote down a corporate-giveaway bill, that is a path to Medicare for all next year or in 2011.
The robust public option IS real, if progressives hold their ground and maintain the courage of their convictions.
We'll see. The robust public option offers a path forward. Dixon's argument fails to offer a path forward.
In my experience, "robust" is a popular sales term used to sidestep details about a product. It is evidently well-tested in focus groups and widely used in the healthcare software industry. Sounds good, but means little. It is meant to subtly bully people who don't want to ask too many questions and appear foolish.
Joe
It means this:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/21-5
>>Grijalva says, "The CPC will do its best to ensure that the public option is as close to Medicare as we can get it."
To that end, he says caucus members will use their key committee positions and needed votes to promote "a robust public option that:
• Enacts concurrently with other significant expansions of coverage and must not be conditioned on private industry actions.
• Consists of one entity, operated by the federal government, which sets policies and bears the risk for paying medical claims to keep administrative costs low and provide a higher standard of care.
• Be made available to all individuals and employers across the nation without limitation.
• Allows patients to have access to their choice of doctors and other providers that meet defined participation standards, similar to the traditional Medicare model, promotes the medical home model and eliminates lifetime caps on benefits.
• Has the ability to structure the provider rates to promote quality care, primary care, prevention, chronic care management and good public health.
• Utilizes the existing infrastructure of successful public programs, such as Medicare, in order to maintain transparency and consumer protections for administering processes, including payment systems, claims and appeals.
• Establishes or negotiates rates with pharmaceutical companies, durable medical equipment providers and other providers to achieve the lowest prices for consumers.
• Receives a level of subsidy and support that is no less than that received by private plans.
• Ensures premiums are priced at the lowest levels possible, not tied to the rates of private insurance plans.
That's the outline of a real public option -- one that is robust enough to fight for.>>
Except for payment of premiums and "Enacts concurrently with other significant expansions of coverage and must not be conditioned on private industry actions." (which I don't know what the in the world it means), it sounds much like "Medicare for All". Why complicate it? The complications are opportunities to confuse people and for the insurance, pharmaceutical and medical supply industries to chip away at the rational cost saving features.
Simply reduce the age of Medicare eligibility down to zero. By the way, it will help younger people to get jobs. Teachers, nurses and others will be more likely to retire before 65 if they have health coverage.
Joe