"My Face Was Ripped Off" and Other Arguments for a Public Option
The other day I was watching Hardball and Chris Matthews introduced one of his regular panels composed of that hairless former McCain staffer and the sad-eyed "Democratic strategist" Steve McMahon. Matthews ballyhooed that the panel would be debating healthcare and, remarkably, that McMahon has "clients involved in the healthcare debate."
Clients in the healthcare debate, eh? Okay, that could mean anything. McMahon owns a media consulting firm and he used to work for Al Gore, Howard Dean and Senator Kennedy, so he could be one of us and therefore he might use this panel to debunk some of the ridiculous lies floating around the president's public option plan.
He didn't.
McMahon not only came out against passing a government-run public health insurance option, but claimed that the president should go for 80 votes in the Senate with a "compromise" healthcare bill. It gets worse. McMahon implied that the public option is a "controversial" idea from the left, so 80 votes and no public option, he claimed, would make "everyone happy."
That's rich. Everyone happy, McMahon?
More on "making everyone happy" presently, but first I want to address this line about how the public option is a controversial, left-wing measure. Naturally, the Republicans, along with private health insurers and the cowardly Blue Dogs agree with McMahon -- they want to scare you and your representatives into believing that the public option is some sort of wicked controversial third rail. It'll be, as McMahon called it, "a great big fight" so it ought to be avoided. Ballsy! They're trying to pass this off as somehow a left-wing moonbat idea totally divorced from the mainstream. You know the trick: if they can marginalize it, they can kill it.
But of course this "controversial left" meme is completely and totally a lie. Fact: The public option enjoys incontrovertible, super-majority support across all demographic sectors. How do we know this? A poll from Consumer Reports:
...66 percent of Americans support having the option of a public health insurance plan as part of health care reform. [...] A clear majority across all demographic sectors supported creating a public plan.
I don't see a lot of gray area in the words "a clear majority across all demographic sectors." But wait. There's more.
73% of voters want everyone to have a choice of private health insurance or a public health insurance plan while only 15% want everyone to have private insurance. [...] What's more, the preference for a choice of a public or private plan appeals to everyone -- Republicans (63%), Democrats (77%) and Independents (79%).
63 percent. Of Republicans. Support the public option. IEEEE! Avoid! Avoid!
Do I need to go on?
...about two-thirds (67%) of U.S. residents "strongly" or "somewhat" favor establishing a public health insurance option "similar to Medicare," with about 80% of Democrats, 60% of independents and 49% of Republicans in favor of such a plan.
67 percent. Tell me again how this is a controversial, far-left idea. McMahon.
And finally, a poll from and outfit called EBRI on support (or not) for the public option:
• Strongly support--53 percent
• Somewhat support--30 percent
• Somewhat oppose--5 percent
• Strongly oppose--9 percent
Altogether, 83 percent favor the public option and 14 percent are opposed. Controversial!
Now, you might be asking, What the hell is EBRI? Briefly, it's a conservative non-profit organization called the Employee Benefit Research Institute, and according to their website, this particular poll was paid for by such far-left moonbat groups as:
... AARP, American Express, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Buck Consultants, Chevron, Deere & Company, IBM, Mercer, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, Principal Financial Group, Schering-Plough Corp., Shell Oil Company, The Commonwealth Fund, and Towers Perrin.
In other words, it would've been in the best interest of some of these corporations to show very little support for the public option, but their actual survey results show exactly the opposite and, in fact, their numbers outpace the more Democratic-leaning Lake Research poll. (To be fair, it's also worth mentioning one outlier poll. Conservative Rasmussen shows Americans evenly divided on the public option.)
As for making everyone happy, McMahon and others are trying to tell us that we'll all be thrilled with 80 votes but no public option. Maybe his clients, whoever they are, will be happy with 80 votes, but not real people who have been long enduring real-life health insurance nightmares.
Last week, readers wrote to me with numerous heart-wrenching stories detailing a wide array of health insurance horror stories and insider shenanigans.
An executive director for a very profitable HMO who was attempting to emphasize "quality of care" told me about an angry memo he received from a regional manager scolding him with the mandate: "Only a naive or novice manager would put quality of care as their first priority." Profit, naturally, is king.
And the following note was easily the most shocking. If you happen to be Stephen Colbert, stop reading now.
I received an email from a California woman named Allena Hansen who was mauled by a bear. I repeat, she was mauled by a bear. And her insurance carrier dodged and refused to pay for the requisite medical care:
Last summer, while working on my ranch in the Southern Sierra mountains, I was attacked and badly mauled by a predatory black bear. Although my face was ripped off, and I was blinded, I was able to make my way back to my vehicle and drive myself down a rutted mountain road to a fire station for help. From there I was airlifted to UCLA Medical Center where a team of nearly a hundred people put me back together in a grueling seven-hour emergency surgery.
That was the easy part.
Although I've maintained a private individual health insurance policy with Blue Cross of California for thirty (30) years, they have, at every turn of my ordeal, tried to waffle, obfuscate, or outright deny me benefits for medical care. (continued here)
Everyone will be happy with 80 votes and no public option, McMahon? Who, exactly?
Despite the evidence, your elected representatives -- irrespective of party or ideology -- are crumbling and hedging and capitulating on this thing. And why? It can't be polls or lack of popular support. So we can only gather that anyone who is trying to tell you that the public option is unpopular, controversial, fringe or out-of-touch is either lying, bought off by the healthcare lobby, a spineless capitulator, or all three. Passing healthcare reform with a public option is an easily winnable fight, yet too many Democrats on the hill are taking a dive, and too many Americans are falling for the same lies. Don't let them get away with it this time.
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The Public Option is DEAD folks. WHY? Because the Congress responds to dollars, and the private insurers have lots of dollars, and they WILL NOT allow a government ran competitor. EVER!
Understand that Obama merely TINKERS with this dysfunctional, wasteful, unfair system we have now. He only adds more bureaucracy, more layers onto the overly fragmented mess we have now. HE MAKES IT WORSE.
This mantra of,"affordable quality health care for all" is a fantasy. Health care is not affordable now, and it wont be much better under Obama care. Obama may succeed in hiding much of the costs of his expansion by way of the maze we call the Federal budget, but make no mistake, he ramps up spending on a massive scale. The cost reductions are window dressing compared to offering subsidys for 46 million uninsured.
I have this idea called the TWO BILL SOLUTION which says that Congress would write two bills, one written by the Democrats called the SPA Program (single payer authority) and the second bill written by the Republicans called the TAC Program (total choice-private insurance based) THEN let the states opt into either the SPA or TAC program voluntarily through a local election. In this way we may see Vermont opt into the spa program and elect its own board to run it, and would self tax and self rule. We may see conservative Utah or Kansas opt into the TAC Program and would self tax and self rule.
.
Not all 46 million will need subsidies, some of these will be paying into the system that they use everytime they go to the emergency room. There are lots of cost saving measures that we can use. Here are a few:
1. Drug companies $80 billion over 10 years
2. Medical companies $2 trillion over 10 years
3. Savings within the system: focusing on primary care, rather than emergency care; improving the billing system (some hospitals have one employee per hospital bed just to manage the insurance billing); reducing duplicative testing, and medical errors; ending the current overpayments to private insurance companies that contract with Medicare; requiring accurate billing, only for services rendered; and insisting on better prices for prescription drugs for seniors will result in hundreds of billions of dollars of savings.
4. Increased input into the system by new premiums paid by those currently uninsured
5. Focusing on quality of care http://orr-hcr.blogspot.com/2009/06/cost-conundrum.html
6. Computerized records easily shared and organized by patient
7. Comparative effectiveness research (qualy) http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik22-2009jun22,0,7237655.column
A problem is that progressives have let this debate be over health CARE when it should really be framed in terms of health INSURANCE. That's right, folks, INSURANCE. Call for single payer or public INSURANCE, which is not to be confused with CARE. Care is what doctors and nurses and other health practitioners provide. INSURANCE is what pays for it. INSURANCE is what many don't have or pay exorbitantly for, and why many don't get proper CARE. INSURANCE companies lobby against universal care. Start demanding universal public INSURANCE. When the debate is framed in terms of health CARE, it is easy for the insurance lobby and the ideologues of the right to conjure up horrible liberal socialist commie pinko places like Canada, Europe and most of the Western world, where, my, my, you can't even choose your own doctor and you have no individual freedom at all, and the bigbadgummint controls your care.
Perhaps we need a "Three Million Mom and Dad March", a rally the size of the crowd on Inauguration Day (I was there, joyous and hopeful, now increasingly disappointed by Obama and the Democrats) to surround the Capitol and push for universal health INSURANCE which, if carefully implemented, will lead to universal health CARE.
Remember, progressives, start emphasizing the word INSURANCE. Take back the language. Expose the BS in the debate for what it is. Otherwise, I fear this whole vital issue will fail again, like jello nailed to a wall.
In liberal socialist pinko Canada you and your doctor determine your health care needs and treatments unlike the land of the fee.
Good point. Well said.
Our care isn't going to change. Just who pays.
This is exactly the opposite of correct. The need is for access to health care, not for insurance. Insurance was one way to pay for it, until the companies got so corrupt and greedy that they started throwing sick people under the bus. What good is a system that lets someone skim 30% of incoming dollars off the top, for the purpose of: 1) paying executives huge salaries and bonuses; 2) hiring legions of clerks to deny and cancel coverage; 3) swelling corporate profits; and, last but not least, 4) buying politicians? Time to smash it and start over with a different funding model.
I don't want to destroy the health insurance industry. I just want to shrink it until it's small enough to drown in the bathtub.
we need to protest. We DESERVE the same type of health care that those we elect into office have. If we can't have it neither should they!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! that is the bottom line, we shouldn't accept anything less!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We need to push hard for single payer, and then "compromise" with a public option. I can fully expect Republicans to be dead set against any public plan, so let's not waste time watering a healthcare bill down so a few of them jump on board. They're in the wilderness, let 'em stay there and howl.
Until we americans have the opitons to get our criminals out of congress , I expect the backdoor campaign money to promote 428 per cent profits for pharmacy and health insurance, get huge profits by insurance by denying benefits, and preying on american citizens while giving themselves top of the line perks will continue. You would think we have nothing but thieves in congress.
The 60 vote U.S. Senate filibuster rule effectively allows rulemaking by the minority. The American people are ruled by the most corrupt system on planet earth. We will never have an effective and fair medical system.
First, let me assure you that I do know the difference between government option and single payer.
Having said that, I commend to all of you single payer fanatics the story in today's NY Times (on line) about the horrors at the Philly VA hospital and the suffering caused to vets by the VA's lack of oversight.
Compare this to the complaints from docs generally about HMO's aggressive oversight and managed care demanding peer review every five minutes. This was the VA. Under single payer, when we get our care at the DMV, it will not be better. Yes, I suport the government option in our current health care debate and I think the government option will force private sector people to do better. But I will not shove under the rug the fact that many people do see the public option as a chance to tip toe to single payer, and the VA article might give you some pause. That and the articles in the British press about their wonderful system (see Guardian)
You can get any quality of single payer health care you want by demanding it and not settling for anything less. Replace congressional fossils with people who will work for you not big pharma and the HMOs. A country that outspends every other combined on the planet in military spending with over 760 foreign military bases can EASILY afford good health care if people want it to happen and rejig the priorities. Citizens do not have to exempt yachts from the sales tax like they did in California. Under Bush-Cheney VA care was outsourced to for profit cronies - doesn't have to be like that.
Although the tendency with "compromise" legislation is to pretend that "everyone" is happy, usually no one really is. That's why sometimes you just need to force through a bill on a bare majority vote.
Bob! Great op ed!!
What is it that they are missing?
What part of "the MAJORITY OF AMERICANS WANT A PUBLIC OPTION" don't they get??
It's simply mind-boggling that they can't vote in favor of something that will make people in this country:
Happy
Healthy
Vote for them again in their re-election.
Vote against them if they vote no on this issue.
My gosh, the Big Pharma and Insurance industry has an incredible strong hold on them. Those greedy b@&!@&ds.
Thanks again for another great read. I hope lots of people read this article and it helps more people get angry enuf to take action.
Oh, they get it all right. But they get something more important......huge campaign contributions from the insurance industry and drug companies. This money will stop Dems and Repubs from voting for any single payer public plan.
And its Ironic... the insurance companies and BIG Pharma have both moved their jobs to countries with healthcare that is government paid for...
If a single payer/public option is so bad and so wrong, then we should not allow imports from countries with such socialist programs....
You cant have it both ways:
Its terrible , but we dont have it and are the one with a huge trade deficit.
Its terrible and ineffcient, but private insurance cant compete with a government program and we spend twice as much as those with a government program.
16 million will lose their current insurance coverage. 20 Million lose it every year as their employers change plans trying to find something less costly (and as an employer... we have tried everything... nothing works for more than six months.. then they hit you again with a 20% increase) ... duh....
Regards
I agree. Great article and comment!!
Great post! Points out how dems are the problem as much as the repugs. Single payer medicare type insurance for all Americans who want it. Supplemental Insurance available, if one wants.
Single Payer Health Care, Just Say No: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4u5x9XAsAs&feature=related or this heart-breaker: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc2n8JxYXgs
Repub bs
That is a niece piece of propaganda. How come no one in Canada iis trying to repeal it.
That is why for the same reason people in Canda are coming to the United States to buy their prescription medicine. LOL.
Detroit, half the population is gone.
Average price of a house in Detroit 18K.
Where did the people and MFG go to in the 8 years.. to Canada. Just across the lake, population increase, same unions,but they have healthcare and the avg price of house is 200K.
More cars produced in Ontario than in Michigan now.
56% of Fortune 500 execs favior single payer. 60% of physicians.
Either we get the insurance middleman who eats up 40% of every healthcare dollar out of the equation or we lower payments to providers ( who treat the unsinured for free) and increase taxes. And of course the rest of the savings is that we sepnd 2-4 times more for the same drug.
Medicare...Docs get 100% of medicare rate. Medicare HMO... the DOCs/hospitals get 75% less plus it cost 15% more per person to the government for medicare HMOs... who seem to go out of business every 2 years, stiffing everyone.
Regards
More fear mongering videos.
I don't believe either video.
I support our president completely but if they try to pass healthcare reform without a public option, people need to take to the streets. Anything less would be no reform at all.
CORRECT!
I'm from Europe. I have lived in and experienced 3 different European health care systems (the UK, Denmark and Germany). They all have their various strengths and weaknesses as you would expect but the overriding principle is:
HEALTH CARE IS A RIGHT FOR ALL NOT A PROFIT MAKING BONANZA FOR THE FEW.
Imagine that. Europe considers it immoral to make profits out of people's misfortune. Private insurance thrives in all 3 countries alongside a single payer or governement regulated private insurance scheme (Germany. Regulations make it not for profit, everybody has to enroll in one scheme and there is no exclusions for pre-existing conditions.)
We already have the equivalent in the USA. It is called Medicare. Of course it has some problems but most people of all demographics and political persuations seem to accept it as a good idea. Why doesn't every politician just point to Medicare when people try to scare you about the public option being "socialized medicine" "will put the government between you and your doctor" etc. etc. Doesn't medicare just prove that will not happen?
Medicare for all. Why is it not that simple?
Have these goofs not realized that most Americans want a public option and that you win elections by having more people vote for you, not by having more donors in the medical field.
I'd imagine that keeping everyone healthy would be paramount in the ongoing struggle to keep everyone happy.
The democratic Congress and our President better give the American people a single payer system, with controlled costs, or a strong public option that can eventually grow into a single payer system. If they do not, they will be shamed by history. They will also eventually be forced to abate the fiasco of emergency hospital care for the poor because the cities will go bankrupt over the next two years carrying that burden.
No rational person who cares about his fellow American can argue in favor of the status quo, which is an employment based health insurance. The government is going to be forced to fund medical education and 1,500 public primary care clinics throughout the country to provide basic care for uninsured while the rest of us pay sky high health insurance premiums for declining service.
We cannot continue to have 48 million people uninsured, and the other 100 million people on employment based insurance, where they are only one serious health issue away from losing job, healthcare, savings and home. If we don't get the public option or single payer system now, it will be another 40 years before we have another chance like this.
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