Daschle Is Dead Wrong About the Public Option

Tom Daschle has been a friend to me for many years, a mentor and some who has done a great deal for me personally. I admire him greatly, and will always be appreciative to him. But I have to break from him on this issue: Tom Daschle is dead wrong on the public option in health care. Dropping it from the health care plan is not a minor issue, and doing it will not help get health care reform passed. In fact, it will almost certainly make the bill die a quick death.

The progressives who have been fighting for health care reform know that the public option is absolutely essential for reform. A public option keeps insurance from continuing to be in charge of everyone's health care, keeps people from being repeatedly screwed by insurance companies. It is the insurance industry that is at the heart of the problems with health care in this country, and giving them legitimate public competition is the best sign cure we have. Health care reform without a public option adds a trillion dollars to the deficit without giving any significant benefit to middle class people being hurt by their insurance carriers.

Beyond the importance of the issue, the politics of once again caving to the insurance industry don't work to get health care reform passed. I work closely with all of the progressive groups pushing for health care reform, the ones who have been putting money and ads and activist power and email lists into the fray. And I think I can say with a fair amount of certainty that they would pull the plug on this bill if there's no public option -- just walk away from the fight, maybe actually actively lobby to kill the bill.

Daschle has the political equation wrong: it's possible you might not be able to beat the mighty insurance industry if you fight them on this issue, but you are dead as doornails before the fight even starts if you don't take them on. And I happen to believe insurers can be beaten, since Democrats need only 50 votes in the Senate rather than 60. A popular President with a great political apparatus and about 13,000,000 email addresses, and energized grassroots knowing they have the fight of their lives to work on: it ought to be enough to deliver 83% of Democratic Senators.

I speak from personal experience in thus issue. In 1993-94, the Clinton White House created a bill that ended up getting no passion from grassroots health care activists or the groups we were hoping would lobby it through. The people who didn't like it were able to defeat it easily because the worked harder to beat it that our side did to fight for it. If Democrats walk away from the public option, that is exactly what will happen again.

This kind of politics -- trying to avoid a fight with the big special interests by walking away from the most important piece of the puzzle -- is exactly what has gotten Democrats into political trouble time and again over the last 40 years. It's what I call in my book, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, the culture of caution. It's what President Obama campaigned against when he ran, saying he would take on the special interests and bring change to Washington. So far on health care, he has held up his end of the bargain. So have the Progressive Caucus in the House, and Senators like Bernie Sanders and Russ Feingold, who have all said they would vote no on a health care bill with no public option. The Democrats in the Senate need to stay on board with the President's plan, and resist this siren call of avoid a fight with the insurance industry. Avoiding that fight doesn't get you a health care bill, folks -- it makes health care reform DOA.

The general public is overwhelmingly in favor of a public option. Stand and fight for them. Let's change the culture of caution to a big change moment that will be written about in the history books, where we took on the insurance lobby and beat them to finally deliver national health care reform legislation.

Comments

[icmountainpeaks]

If they were to put a 3% sles tax on all imported goods it would more than pay for a public option plan.
It is politicians and weather they have a D,R or an I at the end of their name what we will end up with is more payroll taxes and less coverage. The best start would be to give all elected officials the worst health care insurence in the us. Starbridge lowest paln with coverage limmits of a thousand dollars. Then they just might consider working for a better plan.

[jadeba]

We all need to write our senators and representatives and hold their feet to the fire about this. Even if your members are not blue dogs. The blue dogs definitely need to hear from everyone. Let them know you expect them to give up their own "socialist" publicly funded health care if they deny us what we provide them. I've written my senators, now on to the reps.

[Roberta]

i don't know how he could have hurt us more - as HHS Secretary or as private BS lobbyist.

[howeverfaraway]

You really think these Congressmen would ever be denied treatment? Ever? They would make the deniers famous. No chance of stripping their beneftis from them- medical establishment would treat them for free.

[Chernynkaya]

I agree with Max Lux and on one point in particular: If there is no really robust public option I will actively work to kill the bill. Not only do I not want to spend taxpayer dollars on a gift to insurance companies, I equally don't want Congress to be able to say they passed historic health care legislation when they ask for our votes.

[olmossy]

Right there with you .

[TJCole]

We're a public country aren't we...?

Privatization is Fascism...­!

[JoshieB]

For years Daschle has taken more money from insurance companies than a doctor working as a general practitioner, internal medicine specialist, or family medicine doctor can make working 70 hours a week. Whether he's right or wrong is not the issue. He is bought and paid for, and nothing he says should be considered to reflect concern for public interest.

[olmossy]

As far as I'm concerned, Congress and Senate either work for the American People OR they work for the Insurance Companies. You can't serve two masters, least you love the one and despise the other.

That Simple. President Obama, Democrats in Congress and Senate, Choose Sides. Stand UP!

Are WE more afraid of "our" government than the Iranian people are of theirs ?

[force fed up]

Insurance companies (and Big Business) ARE the problem in this country. Hang the Grafters!

[cesca1]

so congress thinks the "public option" is no good. Well then strip all these bozos of their government provided insurance, as well as all governemnt employees, and see how much fun they have getting good, affordable health care coverage - even with their greedy, lobby money deep pockets.

We don't need health insurance in this country - we need health care!!!!

[vanmungo]

Notice how many people advocate a "public option" without having any idea about what it might entail. Hence "public option" becomes a vague, amorphous signifier of good intentions, so championing it is pretty much like advocating "peace and love."

We need to know the details of what you're supporting--would it charge premiums? Would it impose deductibles? Would it have to be self-sustaining, or could it accept government funding? Would it base its fees on Medicare, or would it have to offer higher fees? In the only publicly floated version of this plan to contain any specifics, the answer to all these questions is "yes," meaning that the plan is just another HMO with phony public branding..

Lux writes, "A public option keeps insurance from continuing to be in charge of everyone's health care, keeps people from being repeatedly screwed by insurance companies.­" This is misleading. Any public option would leave the HMOs in control of MOST of the system--hence no real cost control or increase in coverage.

Public-option plans have been tried in five states, and all have failed to reduce costs or increase coverage. The only PROVEN way of accomplishing those goals--based on a half-century of experience in the rest of the industrialized world--is a nonprofit, single-payer approach.

For a detailed analysis of the pitfalls of the public options, please see the following: http://www.commondreams.org/print/43440 http://www.pnhp.org/facts/singlepayer_faq.php#public-option

[freshnotbitter]

Medicare-M­edicaid-VA­-Schip are public option.

If you combine it all to create a universal coverage system in which those not insured privately pay what they can afford (percentage of income) and they fall into the public option, then you can create one federal system that has huge cost savings to finance lack of sufficient premiums and you can spearhead prevention and automation that benefits everybody when the private insurers follow suit. Does the CBO count those collateral savings in their "scoring" system?

We need that kind of approach - call it single payer lite - because we can see the train wreck coming on medicare and just pushing medicare more into private corporations will be a total and complete failure.

[vanmungo]

You are incorrect. Medicare is not a "public option" for those under the age of 65.

Medicaid is only for the very poor.

VA is only for veterans.

SCHIP is only for children.

That still leaves the vast majority of Americans at the mercy of the cost-bloating, blood-sucking HMO greedheads, with their extortionate premiums, untenable deductibles, and sneaky coverage exceptions--you know, the whole crowd that profits from DENYING care rather than providing it--which is why the U.S. health-care system is dysfunctional and unraveling.

What we need is Medicare for all--everyone in the same risk pool, nobody out. This is the only PROVEN method for achieving this--as exemplified by the experience of the rest of the industrialized world for the past half century--is nonprofit single-payer health care. If you have separate public and private pools--and retain some 1,300 distinct HMO pools--you wil never achieve meaningful cost controls. Your "lite" plan does not address that problem.

We should all get on the phone to the key players--R­angel/Pelo­si in the House and Baucus/Kennedy in the Senate to demand that they request that HR676--Conyers's single payer bill--be costed out by the CBO. That hasn't happened yet because single payer will emerge as the most cost-efficient option by far, and the fix is in--the HMO-owned member of Congress don't want that knowledge to go on the public record.

See the FAQ at www.pnhp.org

[ynp7]

What we need is a tax. That's what you call something that everyone pays into and where no added value can be derived from introducing a profit motive.

Except for a fringe element on the right everyone agrees that we should all have access to health care services. Some of us can pay more and they should. Some of us can pay less. Some of us can't pay at all.

How anyone can argue that anything but a single-payer system is what we need I can't even begin to imagine. This "public option" Obama is talking about might eventually lead us in that direction, but it's not what we need and not what we should be fighting for. If we have to compromise down to it in the short term that will probably be acceptable, but it's objectively the wrong thing and sort of wasting our time trying to get it instead of going directly where we need to be.

[jadeba]

Colorado has its own version of public health care for those making below about 24K per year. Low premiums, great coverage and services. A friend of ours (who has this insurance) was injured and operated on 4 times (her deductible 600.00). This system has worked very well.

Single payer is the ideal but, with all the forces (rethugs, blue dogs) working as hard as they can against it, it has little chance of success. Sooo, the public option is the best we might get.

I signed Bernie Sanders petition for single payer anyway. We can hope for a miracle.

[pmorlan]

I totally agree that Daschle is dead wrong on the public option. He is WAY OUT OF TOUCH WITH THE PEOPLE. But quite frankly I think that we should have been fighting for single payer and if absolutely necessary settled for the public option only if we had to do so. Sadly our weak corporate Democrats led with the public option so they had nothing to fall back on. IDIOTS!

[BBackSoon]

Your argument does not have any merit.

Daschle is not ‘Dead Wrong’ because he is not expressing his own opinion. He is expressing an opinion held by the groups that pay him. That makes him a spokesperson.

This is like arguing with the Sham-Wow guy.

His statement has no value since it has been bought and paid for. It is simply advertising in disguise.

[Ben6768]

Shame on you Daschle, you are a corrupt P.I.G like everyone else.

[suigeneris]

This article is totally correct -- and Daschle is only exposing himself as a corporate tool (in both senses of the word) for even questioning the public option.