The Public Option Lives On

Tuesday is a critical day in the saga of the public option. Democrats Charles Schumer (New York) and Jay Rockefeller (West Virginia) are introducing an amendment to include the public option in the bill to be reported out by the Senate Finance Committee -- the committee anointed by the White House as its favored vehicle for getting health care reform.

Before you read another word, call and email the Senate offices of Democrats Max Baucus (Montana), Tom Carper (Delaware), Robert Menendez (New Jersey), Kent Conrad (North Dakota), and Bill Nelson (Florida) -- telling them you want them to vote in favor of the public option amendment. And get everyone you know in these states to do the same. Hell, you might as well phone and email Republican Olympia Snowe (Maine) and make the same pitch.

Background: Every dollar squeezed out of Big Pharma and Big Insurance is a dollar less that you'll have to pay either in healthcare costs or in taxes to cover healthcare costs. The two most direct ways to squeeze future profits are allowing Medicare to use its huge bargaining leverage to negotiate lower drug prices, and creating a public insurance option to compete with private insurers and also use its bargaining clout to get lower prices and thereby push private insurers to offer lower rates.

But last January, the White House made a Faustian bargain with Big Pharma and Big Insurance, essentially scuttling both of these profit-squeezing mechanisms in return for these industries' agreement not to oppose healthcare legislation with platoons of lobbyists and millions of dollars of TV ads, and Pharma's willingness to cut drug prices by some $80 billion over the next ten years. The White House promised these industries they'd come out way ahead -- getting tens of millions of new customers who'd be buying private health insurance policies and thereby paying for an almost endless supply of new drugs. Healthcare reform would be, in short, a bonanza.

Big Pharma and Big Insurance have so far delivered on their side of the deal. In fact, Big Pharma has shelled out $120 million in advertisements in favor of reform. Now the White House is delivering on its side.

Last Thursday, for example, the Senate Finance Committee rejected Bill Nelson's amendment to require Big Pharma to give some $160 billion in discounts to Medicare -- thereby reducing the bonanza Pharma would reap from the healthcare bill. Not surprisingly, all Republicans voted against the amendment. But it was defeated only because Dems Baucus, Carper, and Menendez voted with the Republicans.

Carper later explained to the New York Times why he voted with the Republicans. The amendment, he said, would "undermine our ability to pass" health care reform, because the White House had made a deal with Big Pharma by which the industry wouldn't oppose healthcare reform -- and White House officials had told him "a deal is a deal." The Times described the vote as a "big victory" for the White House.

Schumer voted for the amendment. He said he was "not at the table" when the White House and Big Pharma made their deal so didn't feel bound by it. But even if he had been at the table, he wouldn't be bound. No member of the Senate is bound to a deal made between industry and the White House. Congress is a separate branch of government.

Big Pharma and big insurance hate the public insurance option even more than they hate big Medicare discounts. And although the President has sounded as if he would welcome it, political operatives in the White House have quietly reassured the industries that it won't be included in the final bill. At most, the bill would allow the formation of non-profit "cooperatives" that wouldn't have the scale or authority to squeeze the profits of private industry, or a "trigger" that would allow states to form public insurance options eventually if certain goals for cost savings and coverage weren't met.

But the public option lives on, nonetheless. It's still in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pension bill. It still headlines the House bills, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she's still committed to it. The latest Times/CBS poll shows 65 percent of the public in favor of it.

Now, Schumer and Rockefeller are introducing a public option amendment in the Senate Finance Committee. Carper, Menendez, Baucus, and other Dems on the Committee should vote for it, or be forced to pay a price if they don't.

Cross-posted from Robert Reich's Blog.

Comments

[polishlogician]

Yes, Virginia, there is the public option.

It exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to our life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no public option! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childish faith then, no poetry, no romance, to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch the public option, but even if they did not see the public option coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees the public option, but that is no sign that there is no public option. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see...Only fancy, poetry, love, romance can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory behind. Is it all real?

Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No public option! Thank God it lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, it will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

[Wendell Freeman]

no colective barganing-no public option..wh­y dont we just elect board members of insurance companies to the senate?.. oh wait-maybe we have!?!

[stevebol]

If democrats continue to make phony deals then liberals will push for states rights. Liberal federalism has arrived.
Obama was just kidding about HC........­...I hope. He's doing fine otherwise.

[looking4thelight]

Thank you Senators Rockefeller and Shumer. I enjoyed listening to your brilliant arguments in favor of the public option. I am optimistic that you can get at least 60 votes for a public option in the future. Thank you again for your hard work and heartfelt words.

[JustMusing]

http://intershame.com/on/Max_Baucus__D_Mont___Kent_Conrad__D_ND___Blanche_Lincoln__D_Ark___Bill_Nelson__D_Fla__and_Tom_Carper__D_Del_/

Check out the "bribes".

As a democrat, I'm deeply disappointed.

[stevebol]

This was dead from the start. 1,000 pages? A public "option" ? Get real. The GOP would love to give us some watered down plan that doesn't cut into they're profits so they can pat themselves on the back.

[JTPurcell]

Because President Obama has abandoned support for Medicare Line Public Option, my vote must go for any opponent. Actually, Jay Rockefeller looks very good.

jtp

[cripes]

Oh , don't worry they will pass a public option.It will be so watered down it will only have the words "public option" it, nothing else. These guys, our congress ,know how to get by us and they will as they always do.They are very aware how irritated the public is with the lobby money without saying their under handed dealing with our nations health.
Whatever we get will be BS and watered down at that. Be ready and not surprised when it comes.So sorry to spout off so pessimistically.

[RoveRoveRoveYourBoat]

it's time for a NATIONAL SICK DAY WALKOUT!

[wial]

What I don't get is why public option proponents don't emphasize first and foremost how freeing it would be for people. No more being trapped in a bad job for the health insurance. it would be like having publically maintained roads that allowed travel out of the little corporate serfdoms so many of us can't escape. It's the very essence of the American dream. Paradoxically, it's a libertarian idea.

[ForObamaInDallas]

We know that and are trying to get the message out. It is being drowned out by OPONENTS through fear mongering that our "freedoms" will be taken away.

The freedoms that would be taken away are the insurance companies freedoms to run rough shod over the american public for the almighty dollar.

[hidflect]

Maybe you're missing the big picture. This to-and-fro' drama is all Kabuki nonsense. There are no coincidences or accidents in politics. The end result has been decided and all the horseplay in between is just so much daytime soap drama to distract us. Think Wrestling. It's fixed.

[MilwMike1]

I agree that the fix is on. I couldn't be disallusioned by Obama. Maybe he can use that Pharma cash to send more troops to other "trouble" spots. I'm ashamed I campaigned and voted for the man.

[JamesinDentonTX]

Libertarians need to catch on to that!

[Malkin72]

Health Care Reform, as currently constructed, is UNCONSTITUTIONAL.

The mandate is unconstitutional.

There is nothing in the Constitution that would allow the federal government to force a citizen to purchase a product or service from a private business.

If the govt. wanted to raise taxes to pay for a public option or single payer, that would be constitutional since they govt. has the right to tax and spend.

They don't have the right to make you buy stuff.

Why is no one else asking this question?

[mariah793]

There aren't many of us saying that and I don't know why.

Actually the argument has to be framed in a way that bases a requirement to buy a product or service on a required predicate action. If we buy a car, government can force us to purchase auto insurance. But the predicate is an action we choose to take; we choose whether or not to buy a car. Likewise, a government-backed housing loan may require that we purchase homeowners insurance, but we choose to buy that house with that type of requirement.

I don't see how a requirement to purchase something from a private business can possibly be constitutional if the only predicate is being born. But, then again, I never dreamed the Supreme Court would crown a president in 2000 or be set to rule that corporations are "persons" thereby knocking down what few campaign-finance laws we now have.

I'm 62 and sad about my county. A colleague resigned yesterday and is moving to back to the country of her birth in Europe. She said there's no use staying here anymore, that she and her family have health care and good transportation and a better future there.

[pointus]

I wish I had the option to move to Europe... or even Canada. Only the wealthy (or those with very recent European ancestry) are allowed to emigrate.

[PorkyDomesticus]

I'll keep my trotters crossed for you, you poor American buggers.

[ggfree]

Hey, thanks. We could use lots of trotter crossing.

[Kevins]

Baucus and Snowe didn't.
Instead, they voted Americans' health away.

Here, as Reich says, is how to make them pay:

http://www.actblue.com/page/baucuspublicoption?refcode=hccw_baucus-dfakick

Let their congressional cronies watch them pay for their lobbyist dollars.
Make them face their responsibility.

[stevebol]

I'm happy with the health care I get from the VA. I don't want to see any HC reform at all.

[Robert Cantor]

what about me? Don't you care about me?

[Nonpartay]

What about the rest of us? Do only veterans count?

[jimbobuddy]

He's being facetious.

[eyepatch]

The real fear here is that if most
Americans chose the public options
it would put Insurance companies out
of business! and when I see democrats
vote with the republicans on a issue
that concerns all americans it makes
me wonder how much Big Parma and Big Insurance
have contributed to their campaigns.­..

[Robert Cantor]

if anything passes with more then a few republican votes we are in trouble.

[Billl]

Two choices should be offered to everyone to use either; free public care from a new national health system, or alternatively to use privately purchased private care.

Health care can be fixed for consumers, employers and taxpayers quickly, and save hundreds of billions of dollars annually, if the President and legislators would allow the use of what President Obama has called “government’s unfair advantages”, to be used to pay for and deliver high quality low cost health care, as part of the reform solution.

All government funded costs could be reduced drastically if distributed only through civilian government hospitals using the proven VA systems.

This change, coupled with sales tax funding, would produce huge savings while providing better services, which could rescue our government from going broke as it honors its prior commitments for Medicare, Medicaid, and all other local and federal commitments.

Everyone, including seniors, selecting public care would receive all care and medications free, no restrictions, no insurance, and no co pays.

Employers who select public care for their employees would not be required to pay for or have any further involvement with health care.

Nobody can collect the money to pay for health care as cheaply as the government can through a national sales tax, and nobody can deliver high quality care and medications as cost effectively as the VA.

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.