Support a Public Option

Nearly 50 million Americans -- one-in-six of our fellow citizens -- lack health insurance. And even those families lucky enough to have health insurance have seen their premiums triple in the past decade, now paying an average of $16,000 per year and rising rapidly.

In short, America's health care system is in a crisis, and it's time to do something about it.

Congress is currently working on new reform legislation that will make quality health care available and affordable for all Americans. But we know the forces of the status quo will battle us every step of the way.

So we're asking for your help, today, to get this critical legislation passed.

Please sign our online petition at www.CitizensForAPublicOption.com today -- and circulate it to your friends -- and show your support of Congress' work to reform America's health care system now!

The whole reason for health insurance in the first place is to spread costs among as large a group of people as possible, so we all pay a reasonable amount for quality health care and don't get stuck with an enormous bill if we get sick.

Unfortunately, that's not how our system works anymore. Now, private insurance companies have been able to cherry-pick the healthy customers they want -- denying coverage to people who are most in need while charging exorbitant premiums to other folks with "pre-existing conditions."

That's not right. It's time for private insurers to treat Americans fairly.

That's why, as part of any health care reform plan, we support a public health insurance option that would foster greater competition in the marketplace. If you're happy with your current insurance plan, you could keep it. But a public option would create more choices for consumers -- and lead to lower costs and better quality for all. Plus, a public option would allow you to always keep your insurance, even if you lose or change your job.

Please sign our online petition at www.CitizensForAPublicOption.com today -- and circulate it to your friends -- and show your support of Congress' work to reform America's health care system now!

At a time when our country is struggling to pull itself out of a severe recession, we can't let our health care system continue to be an anchor dragging down our nation's economy.

We'll take this petition to our colleagues, to show them the strong grassroots support for reforming America's health care system now -- including creating a public insurance option.

More than 33,000 people have already signed our online petition since we launched it on Friday -- but we'd love to have your support as well. With private insurance lobbyists roaming the Capitol, trying to stop real health care reform, the time to act is now. We need you to make your voice heard.

Please stand with us: Sign our online petition now -- and help us pass strong health care reform legislation this summer!

Comments

[akuma river]

So if I get sick, get hurt, or something, how will I or my family be able afford to go to the doctor?

Right now, I have this weird bite/boil thingy on my knee (we thought it was a spider bite or mrsa or something). I went to the doctor in April for it, spent hundreds of dollars out of pocket. The medicine didn't work and I still have this weird thing on my knee that worries me. But I can't go to the doctor because I don't have the money.

So tell me, why can't I get insurance? I'm willing to pay if I know I will be covered but I've seen too many people spend thousands of dollars for insurance and then for it to drop them or refuse to cover the expense and there is nothing the people can do.

Why can't we just have a medicare for all program?

[akuma river]

I'm one of those 50 million without health insurance.

I'm a 25 year old grad student and I was told it would cost me about $200 a month to get covered for a student insurance program ($400 a month for private insurance) for a single adult and there are many restrictions in which I won't be covered. I don't have a job and even if I did I wouldn't be able to get health insurance through it because I would be working part-time to attend school. Not only that but I have a pre-existing condition, I have gray's disease otherwise known as hyperthyrodism, it's inactive at the moment but it has messed with my health before (enlarged my thyroid for one and cost me thousands of dollars in expensive tests when I was covered by my parents insurance when I was in college).

I have absolutely no guarantee that I will not be denied coverage or that I won't be given full coverage. I have no income, I'm a full-time single grad student living with her parents in order to afford to go to school and I have student loans up the wahzoo.

I also have no gurantee of employment after I earn my Masters.
My masters is in Interdisciplinary Studies and Publishing and I think I'll have a better chance of trying my hand at writing a novel than getting a job in this economy.

[wdw505]

in 6 years you stayed with a major you knew had no jobs in the near future....­.......goo­d choice

wow

[Lemeritus]

GOP Opposing Public Health Care No Matter What It's Called.... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/23/gop-opposing-public-healt_n_219742.html.

But what's in a name? Ask Senator Schumer who seems to have confused "public option" with Senator Conrad's "co-op". Make no mistake: Co-ops cannot use market share to bargain down the prices of services or apply competitive pressure to the rest of the insurance industry. Further, per Conrad himself, the co-ops could get federal seed money, but that would be the end of federal involvement. This is NOT REFORM; it is barely the semblance of reform. In fact, it's worse than doing nothing because it will close the discussion without affecting the status quo. This is an issue which comes to the surface only once in every generation. Once our opportunity is bartered away, we will be left -- I fear -- with what the insurance companies want us to have... with what the good senators (Republican and Democrat) allow us to have.

[vanmungo]

Part II of the Snake Oil Analysis: Motivation

Why are these three Senators hustling this snake oil rather than the only proven and workable reform: nonprofit single-payer Medicare for all?

Let's have a look at the really important numbers: legalized bribes--er, campaign contributions--to these guys from the health-sector corporations for the 2008 and 2010 election cycles:

2008 2010 TOTAL
Durbin $489,084 $7,000 $496,084

Leahy $46,550 $7,000 $53,550

Schumer $10,000 $148,000 $158,000

In other words, these three esteemed Senators are all well-paid employees of the very HMOs who are seeking to maintain their piratical death grip on the health system, bloating costs by denying coverage, hiking premiums and deductibles, and siphoning off hundreds of billions in profits and bloated CEO compensation--not one penny of which goes to medical care for anyone! As Paul Krugman said, what the rest of the world calls health-care costs, the HMOs call revenues.

In my first post, above, you have the details that explain the consumer fraud of the public option

Now you have the motivation for perpetrating this fraud.

For details on the only real health-care reform--single payer--and how to achieve it, please see the following Web sites:

www.singlepayeraction.org
http://www.healthcare-now.org
www.pnhp.org
http://www­.1payer.ne­t/
http://www.guaranteedhealthcare.org/

[vanmungo]

What these three guys are peddling is not real reform but snake oil. Notice the snake-oil salesman's standard maneuver: making outlandish claims for a product without telling you what's in it.

Well--let's put this "public-option" potion (the same one being peddled in the House by Waxman and Rangel) in the test tube and find out:

Unlike the nonprofit, single-payer plans in place in the rest of the industrialized world, this "public option" would charge premiums and impose deductibles; unlike them, it could not accept government funding (after the initial infusion), and so would have to be self-sustaining. Moreover, it would likely be saddled with the oldest, sickest, and thus most expensive cohort, and would have to offer higher fees than Medicare--so no cost savings, none of the cost efficiencies of a single risk pool; it would be competing with 1,300 private HMO risk pools, which would aggressively market the youngest, healthiest, and thus cheapest and most profitable cohort.

This is consumer fraud that fails to loosen the HMOs' dysfunctional vice grip on this system.

Public-option plans have been tried in several states and have failed to reduce costs or substantially increase coverage. The only PROVEN way of accomplishing both goals--based on a half-century's track record in Europe and Canada--is nonprofit Medicare for all.

For a detailed analysis of the pitfalls of the public options, see:

http://www.commondreams.org/print/43440

http://www.pnhp.org/facts/singlepayer_faq.php#public-option

[NeoDog]

I work for a living and pay my own insurance bills. I don't want to subsidize the insurance bills for people too lazy to work and those who don't belong in the USA in the first place. The poor already have Medicaid and the old have Medicare. What else do the libs want?

[wdw505]

i agree..........

[jmpurser]

Well you fellows run along and pay for your own health care, police, fire department and military.

The rest of us will live in a real nation.

[vanmungo]

In the dysfunctional, cost-bloated U.S. system, you pay too much for too little coverage, like all Americans. If we had a nonprofit, single-payer Medicare for all system--as in Canada in Europe--we would have HALF the per capita costs and better health outcomes, just like them!

But, hey--if you like getting cheated by the HMOs, we can only recall the sage words of P. T. Barnum: "There's a su ck er born every minute."

[RickB47]

The centerpiece of President Obama's approach to health care reform is cost reduction. Interestingly, he refuses to consider any action regarding medical tort reform. Ask most Doctors and they will tell you that a lot of "unnecessary" cost is incurred in performing "extra" tests solely for the purpose of protecting their butts so that some trial lawyer hanging out in the hospital waiting room doesn't sue them for $$$$$$ because they didn't test for the 1% chance the problem was different from that indicated by the ten tests they had already run.

I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that the trial lawyers were big supporters during the campaign. Nah, he wouldn't do that. Would he?

[jmpurser]

As long as we've got 50 million people without coverage and we're loosing 30% of every health care dollar to insurance overhead no one is going to give a rat's ass about the 1% or less that might be going to fear of getting your ass sued off. Let's deal with the beats first and THEN swat mosquitoes.

[wdw505]

50 million uninsured means 270 million with insurance......not bad

[Chaimirija]

Wow...worried about insurance jobs being lost? Well, hospitals are laying people off right now...even doctors...they are citing less visits and an increase in charity care.

[wdw505]

do away with the requirement to deal with charity non-life threatening care. Problem solved

laughing

one more thing..... do away with the preexisting conditions exclusion

[Chaimirija]

But, then, gasp, hospitals wouldn't have to eat it!

[Doofus]

Single Payer? What's that you say, again? Sign Senator Sanders' Single-Payer petition.

http://sanders.senate.gov/petitions/index.cfm?uid=7fd59f2e-88e1-477a-8eaf-762a5b050809

[howeverfaraway]

Sign Bernie saunders petition instead!

[jmpurser]

http://sanders.senate.gov/petitions/index.cfm?uid=7fd59f2e-88e1-477a-8eaf-762a5b050809

[howeverfaraway]

Sign petition for a "public option"? I don't think so. How about the insurance companies get to compete with eachother to provide a "private option"?
Single payer NOW!

[Dynamohum]

President OBAMA is holding a press conference right now firmly telling Congress to pass a PUBLIC plan. He is being very firm in his language.

[illinoisan]

"The whole reason for health insurance in the first place is to spread costs among as large a group of people as possible, so we all pay a reasonable amount for quality health care and don't get stuck with an enormous bill if we get sick."

That describes public health insurance. Private health insurance is designed to turn a profit by collecting premiums from carefully selected insureds and then minimizing payouts by all possible means.

I work in insurance. My brother once asked me what the difference was between an insurance company and a ponzi scheme. My response was to ask what the difference is between a risk pool and a nation.

[Doofus]

In theory, 'insurance' is indeed about collecting premiums, amassing a
pool of funds to pay benefits (making modest profits on that), & paying
benefits to policy holders as needed. It's about 'risk sharing'. It can work
well & fairly enough, IN THEORY. Greed, however, tends to get in the way.

[Chaimirija]

ya know, for a doofus, you're pretty insightful

[Chaimirija]

new fan

everyone ought to bump the above to other blogs

[whitehawk]

I do not know what is so scary about Public Health care, really!!! Campaign donations or lobbying Senators must get over themselves, work for the people, not the pharmaceutical/ insurance companies. Really dumb to expect voters to beleive that Congress deserve optimum health care but constituents don't. What is wrong with this picture.

Blue dogs Dems and Repubs, forget capitalism until the country heals from the largest screwup of Capitalism in history created by greedy Senators and House. The people want / need, have a human, moral right to health care, preventive, wellness, critical health care that starts in every community. Clinics for prevention and wellness programs, clinics for medical appointments, urgent care for fractures etc., the ER doesn't / shouldn't provide.

War is what seems to excite the opponents on health care. War oversees strips every dime away from any respectable health care program possible. Efficiency is the problem in America. Insurance fraud, id. fraud, but a well oiled system will save millions in the short term, trillions in long. "please take another look at Canada's plan"....."the security with the photo, halogram..id card, the computer data for all patients can be retrieved in seconds not days. Pretty efficient. What is it about Canada? The rich don't complain about their taxes, neither do the poor!! Because we believe in equality for all.

[Bronxdude]

In collusion with health insurance corporations, pharmaceutical manufactures, and physicians who regard healthcare as only a revenue stream, the Reagan deregulated, for-profit medical culture has methodically raped America, while complicit, unscrupulous, and self-serving republicans silenced by special interest and kick-backs acquiesce. Since obstructionistic republicans support the systematic plundering of the middleclass by ruthless corporations like UnitedHealthcare, this is why we need the government between the public and greed-driven, parasitic health insurance providers. Profit at the expense of human suffering is a republican engineered abomination. Forget bipartisanship; true not-for-profit reform will provide affordable and competitive options that include a public offering. Since Georgia is self-insured, state employees have no due process patient protection rights, which means UnitedHealthcare can deny medical care and authorize exorbitant copays and deductibles with no appeal oversight. Real, quality-driven reform will end the monopolistic strangle-hold enjoyed by morally bankrupt health insurance corporations. In Georgia, Cigna and UnitedHealthcare officials colluded with state republicans to eliminate Blue Cross and Blue Shield as a competitor, narrowing the slate of choices to two, with the end result being higher premiums, bigger profit, and reduced benefits. Mr. Obama: The health insurance industry (and the despicable republicans they bankroll) will not retreat quietly from billions in annual profits! I want the same public option Congress and the military enjoy. When compared to the average American, why do politicians live longer? Answer: universal health insurance. Real choice will end the single profiteer option extorting Americans.

[ntmessage]

Good rant. But it started with Nixon! Regean totally wrecked it and Bush piled on.

[Dynamohum]

There are greedy Democrats that have taken money from these special interest groups to legislate in their favor as well. It is time for it to stop on BOTH sides of the aisle.