Small Business Owners Stand Up To Giant Insurance Lobby

Today, eight small business owners affiliated with the Main Street Alliance showed up at the conference with a simple question for Ignagni: Why is AHIP attempting to maintain the status quo? After sending a letter Friday requesting a meeting, the entrepreneurs were not surprisingly rebuffed. Instead, they appeared outside the conference, where they explained, one-by-one, how the exploding cost of health care premiums was making it difficult to operate profitably.

David Swanson:

Why is a bill better than no bill? Why is a bill that funds absolutely useless parasites like health insurance companies at the expense of our grandchildren's unearned pay better than nothing? Why -- when blocking a bill would almost guarantee a better debate in round 2 -- is it more important to pass the bill and close off the opportunity for valuable reform? Is there nothing this bill could do that would lead you to oppose it? If the senate turns the "public option" into something that does not even exist until possibly "triggered" years from now, then will you oppose the bill? But the public option barely exists in the House version either. Why wait until the last minute to pointlessly pretend you oppose this pig?

[cross posted at NPR Check]

Yesterday, I heard for the first time on NPR about how the public option has "widespread public support." Here's Melissa Block on Tuesday's ATC:

Leaders Absent at Health Care Demonstration in Midtown

Sure enough, President Obama got out on the road, briefly, to shore up support for health care reform. Yet it is his opponents that have monopolized the airwaves and framed the health care reform debate to such a degree that the public option has been all but abandoned in the corridors of power (Baucus' proposal makes no mention of it), while the people are still chanting in support of a 'single payer' system in the streets of the nation's cities.

The CBO confirms today my long-held suspicion that the vaunted "public option" is not much more than a high-risk pool and forecasts that premiums will actually be slightly higher than private offerings.

Currently, private health insurance is available via the following mechanisms:



1. Large employer group coverage

2. Small group market (small business)

3. Individual market (self-employed, unattached)
  Read more…

President Obama appears to have completely "sold out." His approval rating plummeted, not because of Republicans, but because of how he is "negotiating" health care reform. Single-payer should have been used as a bargaining chip.

To compromise both single-payer and a public opton is to trade out health, financial stability and our nation's solvency in exchange for Blue Dog and Republican votes. This is a direct affront, and duplicitous act, against the very people who put him in office and gave him a majority in Congress to work with.

Letter from the House Progressive Caucus:

Dear President Obama:

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 ofproviding 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.

Now, if only they don't cave!

What I want to see is some estimate of the enrollees. 10 million, like HR3200? Or 130 million, like the original Hacker plan? You can't manage what you don't measure!

BarbMD declares "This is what is sounds like when someone representing the Democratic wing of the Party speaks" in reference to AFL-CIO president Trumka laying down markers for what health reform must have, including the so-called public option (It is unclear if Trumka is referring to Hacker's 2007 Medicare Plus, or the sliver public option being debated in Congress). Trumka's line in the sand is the public option, but where do member unions stand?

Pitting Profits against Patients is economically unsound, unethical and a conflict of interest. When you think about this, it is outright ghastly. We are paying billions for the Insurance Industry's advertising, exorbitant salaries and billions more for them to lobby against us to increase their profits and remove competition. Without a non-profit government run public option, prices will not be lowered; it would accelerate the increase in % of GDP spent on health care. This will force tax increases to an unsustainable level, heavily subsidize profits for the Insurance Industry, bankrupt our country and the Democrats will be blamed.

The article is about a dispute between Jon Cooper and Gillibrand about who is more committed to the public option. Cooper is challenging Gillibrand in the 2010 primary.

Spokesman Matt Canter cited a Gillibrand mailing issued last week stating: "I continue to advocate for a public health care option, like "Medicare for All," that would allow people to buy in at an affordable rate - something like five or six percent of their income.

This is a way of piggy backing off of the popularity of the real Medicare for All without actually doing anything.

Obama buries the public option, worries about brand image.

Via Marc Ambinder:

The Obama administration is stunned by the angry reaction of liberal Democrats after Kathy Sebelius seemed to be walking away from demands of a public option. Apparently, the administration never intended the "public option" to be a major focus of their reform efforts.

Via the Washington Post:

[At] a time when the president had hoped to be selling middle-class voters on how insurance reforms would benefit them, the White House instead finds itself mired in a Democratic Party feud over an issue it never intended to spotlight.

When he's not on MTP to save us from those dastardly insurance companies or to fiercely advocate for a public government insurance option, what does Tom Daschle do with his free time? Golfing? A beach getaway? Or perhaps,

Daschle, in his capacity as a high-paid consultant at the law firm Alston and Bird, is once again working closely with lobbyists for UnitedHealth, the largest U.S. industry player, aiding the company's effort to convince moderate Senate and House Democrats to, among other things, kill the public option and keep company profits high.

Gosh, it's like he's two different people or something!

I am looking at the latest numbers from dailyKos's Research 2000 polling and what they reveal is a pretty clear picture that I, as an unaffiliated (I don't like using the word Independent since there is an "Independent party"), pretty much share the same sentiments as the majority of indies. We are all sitting "there" on the fence. I am not too high on the Democratic party, though they still have some members that are worth fighting for, but I absolutely loath the Republican party pretty much from top to bottom on a  state and national level. Turns out that polling of indies pretty much reflects my views:

It's not the best piece of writing I've ever done. It's not even the best thing I did this week, and doesn't contain any ideas or insights you haven't seen here at the Mighty Corrente complex already.

What it is, is an attempt to spread some of those ideas you have here to a wider audience. That's why it's a top ten list, something that folks are used to seeing. People who don't even want to know what a "public option" is will read a top ten list. I dunno why, that's just the way it works. If I'd had more time I would have added five or ten more things you can do at the bottom, but what the hell?

Anyhow, here it is.   Read more…

As readers know, I've been looking for an explanation of what, if anything, "public option" actually means. I think I've finally found the right analogy:

[M]any congressional leaders of police reform insist that the votes are not there for a complete government takeover of America's private warlords and militias. As a compromise, Sen. Bill Melater, D-R.I., and others have introduced a bill that would include a public plan alongside a requirement for all Americans to buy private police protection. ...

The three co-founders of The American Prospect, each of them -- Robert Kuttner, Robert Reich, and Paul Starr -- considering himself a good progressive, square off in an article titled Debating the Public Option.

You would think from the title that the three of them are debating the merits of a public option, or how a public option ought to be structured, but what it really is is Kuttner, staunch single payer advocate, calling out Starr and Reich, apologists for parasites, on their stupidity. So ok, Kuttner doesn't actually call them stoopid. Allow me...

It's simple. You do the math on savings and you look at how the insurance companies are going to behave, given their incentives*. From Bill Moyers Journal on May 25, 2009:

BILL MOYERS: I want to get your thoughts on President Obama's plan. As I read it, it's very difficult, at this moment, to know the details of it.

DR. SIDNEY WOLFE: 'Cause there aren't any details.

BILL MOYERS: There aren't any details. But he seems to be advocating a public option that would compete with the private insurance-driven sector, as a way of lowering the cost. What do you think about it? Is that- am I reading his plan correctly?

DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: Well, most of the cost savings he's talking about are really illusory, I think. And my research group has done most of the research work on administrative costs in health care. And the administrative costs he's talking about saving are a tiny fraction of the potential savings under single-payer. 'Cause hospitals have to keep their bureaucracy, if you're dealing with hundreds of different plans.

Single payer has administrative costs of 3%, vs 30% for CEO salaries and bonuses, profit, and the call centers to deny you care under for profit "health" "insurance." Getting rid of that waste saves $350 billion a year. Since the public option is but one plan among many, you don't get the adminstrative savings. QED.

Robert Reich:

Enter Olympia Snowe. Her move is important, not because she's Republican (the Senate needs only 51 votes to pass this) but because she's well-respected and considered non-partisan, and therefore offers some cover to Democrats who may need it. Last night Snowe hosted a private meeting between members and staffers about a new proposal Pharma and Insurance are floating, and apparently she's already gained the tentative support of several Democrats (including Ron Wyden and Thomas Carper). Under Snowe's proposal, the public option would kick in years from now, but it would be triggered only if insurance companies fail to bring down healthcare costs and expand coverage in he meantime.

What's the catch?

Paul Jay, of The Real News, interviews Roger Hickey, one of the Very Serious People who bring you managed competition this time around about single payer, the public option, Obama's campaign promise on health care and whether he'll keep it, and that little foofaraw at the Senate hearing.

Izvestia-on-the-Hudson "reports" today that Senator Schumer, "scorched by Republican opposition to the idea of a new public program like Medicare," (scorched? what're they gonna do, take away his birthday?) offers a "middle ground": a public plan based on a set of principles, the first of which is that it won't be supported by public funds:

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.