In a surprising vote Tuesday, ten Democrats voted to add a public option to the most conservative of the five health insurance reform bills working their way through Congress. That's just two votes short of passage.
This robust support for the public option -- in what most observers consider the most conservative committee in the Senate -- signals a sea change in Congressional opinion toward the public option. The odds are now very high that some form of public health insurance option will be included on the final bill when it emerges from a House-Senate Conference Committee later this fall and is ultimately passed by Congress.
The three bills that have passed House Committees, and the Senate Health Committee bill, all contain a public option. And increasingly it appears that the strongest form of public option will come out of the House.
In the midst of the right-wing, town hall onslaught last August, the pundits -- public option opponents -- all but declared a public option dead and buried. This narrative was amplified by the private insurance industry that doesn't want to compete against a not-for-profit public health insurance program focused on providing health insurance instead of maximizing the ever-ballooning profits of Wall Street investors and the salaries of CEOs that take home tens of millions.
The big private insurance companies don't want to change the status quo that has allowed a few big players to corner the market in most markets. An AMA survey, released in late January, gives a score gauging the concentration of the commercial market for 314 metropolitan statistical areas. The report showed 94% had commercial markets that were "highly concentrated" by standards set by the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department.
A Robert Woods Johnson Report indicates that over the last ten years wages have gone up 29%, health insurance rates have gone up 120% and the profits of the private health insurance industry have gone up 428%. No wonder they don't want competition.
So why the resurgent Congressional support for a strong public option? There are three reasons:
1) First and foremost, voters' support for a public health insurance option is as strong as ever. All of the right-wing talk about a "government takeover" has not fooled voters who are forced every day to deal with the stranglehold that the private insurance industry has on their health care.
Last weekend's New York Times poll showed that 65% of all voters support giving Americans the choice of a public option and only 26% oppose it.
More importantly, the public option is also popular in swing Congressional districts. The firm of Anzeloni Liszt just released the results of a poll it conducted in 91 Blue Dog, Rural Caucus and Frontline districts. The poll found that 54% of the voters in these battleground districts support the choice of a public option.
And the poll also found that the voters in these districts want reform and want it this year. The polling report says:
Overall, 58% of voters believe the health care system is in need of major reform or a complete overhaul, and almost 59% are concerned that Congress will not take action on health care reform this year. The risks of inaction to Democrats in swing districts increases if voters perceive opposition stems from ties to the insurance industry, as 74% are concerned that the health insurance industry will have too much influence over reform.
Those kinds of polling results get the attention of Members of Congress.
2) Members of Congress have begun to realize that they will have to live with the consequences of what they pass for years to come. And what the voters will care about in the future will not be slogans or ideology. Once the program is passed, the voters will care most about one thing: affordability.
All of the health insurance reform bills contain mandates that every American buy health insurance or pay a fine. All the bills allow relief for hardship cases, but most people -- or their companies -- will have to buy health insurance.
Members of Congress are beginning to realize that if they are requiring the voters to buy insurance, it has to be affordable. The public option is an extremely powerful tool to assure affordability.
First, its presence in the market place will drive down the prices of premiums for private insurance. That, of course, is why the private insurance companies hate it. Insurance companies aren't seriously worried they will be forced out of business. They just don't want to cut their prices and profits.
Second, the Congressional Budget Office has found that it will save the Government huge amounts in subsidy monies that it would otherwise have to pay to make more expensive for-profit plans affordable. The most robust version of the public option saves over $100 billion over ten years.
If you don't have a public option, Congress' only choice is either to cut subsidies that are the major means of providing affordability -- or they must raise more revenues. Given the massive need for affordability, and reluctance of many to raise taxes, the public option is looking better and better to many swing Democrats.
3) Finally, they have begun to realize that the public option helps protect them from potential political harm when they vote to support a health insurance mandate. Anzeloni and Liszt make clear in their polling report that in swing districts:
It's wrong to think about the public option in isolation from other elements of reform. Forcing an individual mandate without a public option is a clear political loser (34% Favor / 60% Oppose), and only becomes more palatable when a public option is offered in competition with the private sector (50% Favor / 46% Oppose)
Turns out that a public option provides a political inoculation against backlash to a mandate. That's because people have no stomach for being herded into the arms of private insurance industry like sheep to the slaughter. They want to know that if the government is going to require them to get health insurance, that it also provides the choice of a not-for-profit public plan -- that they are not left at the mercy of private insurance CEOs.
Here's the bottom line: the odds are better by the day that before the holidays President Obama will sign a health insurance reform bill that for the first time provides Americans universal health insurance coverage -- and includes the choice of a robust public option.
Robert Creamer is a longtime political organizer and strategist, and author of the recent book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com.
Jeffrey Feldman: Caution: Health Insurance May Be Hazardous to Your Health
The health insurance industry does not make obscenely huge profits by selling health insurance that keeps us healthy, but by selling us the idea that health insurance keeps us healthy.
$3,578,117!
That's how much progressives pledged this week to fund primary challenges against any Democratic senator who blocks an up-or-down vote on health care reform with a public option.
It's a huge sum, and the clearest signal yet that any Democrat who helps Republicans filibuster health care reform will face an enormous backlash from the grassroots.
Here's another way to make sure conservatives think twice before joining with Republicans: Many of these senators hold coveted committee chairmanships that give them significant power within the Senate.
Our friends at Democracy for America have launched an open letter urging Senate Democrats to strip committee chairmanship from any Democrat who filibusters health care. Will you join in? Clicking below adds your name:
http://pol.moveon.org/norewards/o.pl?id=17816-9193653-yXBqLWx&t=3
Let’s compare the dual system to the reforms proposed by Mr. Baucus’s legislation, which will use the government to force consumers to purchase manditory insurance, to pay for health care services run by the most expensive care system in the world, and whoes patient outcome results are far from the best.
Mr. Baucus’s plan will produce obscene profits for the health care industry while bleeding the life blood out of consumers, employers, and taxpayers.
With a true Public Option:
Seniors and everyone choosing public care could have it no restrictions, no insurance, no co pays, free period.
Employers who select public care for their employees would not be required to pay for or have any further involvement with health care.
Taxpayers and everyone would save hundreds of billions of dollars annually.
Going back and forth between free public, and user purchased private care, would allow unlimited choices, ultimate freedom, and always free public care would be available.
I would rather spend my taxes to fund the treatment of the guy down the street with a brain tumor than spend it on the Wars. Why is it the Republicans always think taxes are the boogie man? The cost of living goes up every year--food, clothes, transportation, etc. Why shouldn't taxes fund the things we REALLY WANT, not what Wall Street and the Military Industrial Lobbyists say we want.
I, by the way, am a conservative-----but have always been in favor of what Teddy Kennedy wanted and proposed. Not only do I want a public option----I am also in favor of universal healthcare....which possibly makes me I guess one of the strangest people in the world :-) :-)
To me, this shouldnt be political----I believe it falls into the "DUH" category. I really have no idea why Repubs have demonized this push to help the health of people. I understand that they dont want gov intervention---but that is why it is called an OPTION!!!!!!!!!!
If a conservative like me can understand their idiotic issues, why cant the dems in the senate do the same and pass this?? If they cant get 60, do the reconciliation and just get 50. Believe me, the repubs would do it if they couldnt get the 60
I can't see how you can argue for our current system and claim to be either compassionate or a believer. Conservatives who are truly compassionate need to speak to their web of family and friends and convince them to stand up for a universal health care system. Universal healthcare is the only modern, compassionate, reasonable answer.
Start a healthcare solutions dialogue with your famliy and friends by asking them what they think the answer is. We have a thread of emails that has opened minds.
Just look at Honduras. With only a couple thousand protesters three months ago, it is pushing their military to the extreme. Now with protests of over 100,000 and in a country with an army of only 8,500.
Empire USA has too many disasters coming to a head all at once. Could be this time next year a government all fascist hypocrisy, could be all social democracy.
I suggest "Medicare for All" or "Medicare for None".
With "Medicare for All", we'll all pay our fair share and not push the problem off to future generations. Maybe it is socialism. Is that so bad? Its worked for our parents for the last 60 years and I didn't hear them complaining about it; except when their modest premiums and co-pays were raised.
With "Medicare for None" we can all get private insurance through our jobs or pay our own way if we are retired or otherwise without employer provided insurance. Millions of us will go into bankruptcy, as the private companies will drop you if you had a pre-existing condition. But hey, that's capitalism.
We are an upper middle income family, and we are struggling.We will make it somehow,BUTwhat about all those who cannot?
I pray that Creamer is on the mark, then,
I will be soooooooo happppppyyyyyy when I can call them and say, PISS OF!!!!!!
(1) What giant retro-rocked slowed earth down when it came into orbit around the sun, when by an act of perfection the inertia to go straight and the gravity pull toward the sun were in perfect balance?
(2) The perfection of our four seasons that allows us to inhabit the maximum amount of earth’s surface possible, by just the right slant of earth on its axis and perfect speed of rotation, how could that be anything but by intelligent design?
Absolute things self-evident and beyond the mind of man to comprehend, unless excepted by faith, will leave you wondering in meaningless darkness.
Now Darwin had a boat trip around the world paid for by the rich, had all his books paid for and published by the rich, and then a grand smoke screen designed to protect excessive wealth was brought into being by the rich. For the theory of evolution is that man evolved “from the lesser to the greater,” and that the super-sexy and super-intelligent rich nobility, they are the ultimate perfection of the human race.
But Darwin starts with an unknown, a million years ago thing impossible to be know, and attempts to transport our minds to a future unknown that we are to except as fact. But going from an unknown to an unknown, that is going from darkness to even greater darkness, and that is the blind leading the blind.
Meaning----if you dictate that we MUST carry insurance, but then leave us with no where to get it except from the very private insurance companies you tell us are ripping us off and treating patients/customers horribly .....well how EXACTLY does THAT HELP US? Don't define the problem and then offer no solution! How can you tell us that the insurance industry is cherry-picking customers, charging outrageous premiums, forcing huge-co-pays onto the sick, etc, and then tell us we MUST GET INSURANCE, while offering us nothing better?
They HAVE TO offer us a public option. How can they not? Without it, all of this will have been for nothing and the insurance industry will just sit back and wait for all those new customers to roll in....
I have to say that I find it sad that the only thing that seems to be motivating some of these politicians is the desire to CTOA.......(cover their own ***) How about what's best for the people that put you in office?
Don't start Revolution without me!
"What I suspect is that our representatives keep dangling the "public option" over a cliff and threatening to let it drop to make sure we will be so relieved when it is snatched back at the last minute that we will eagerly embrace even a watered down version of what is at best a very poor substitute for the real solution, "single payer".
Has anything changed since then that I should know about?