Email from Democracy for America (no link):
With 40 Senators on the record in support of passing a public option by majority vote, we’ve proven that the majority of Senate Democrats are ready to get the job done. All it takes now is leadership. It only takes one senator to offer an amendment from the Senate floor to bring the inclusion of a public option to a vote this year.
It would be a truly marvelous thing if the election of Scott Brown scared the Obama administration and the Democratic Party enough to make them actually lead on this and other issues and enact substantive change in accordance with the Constitution, which requires only 50 votes in the Senate plus the VP to make laws.
Could determined presidential leadership produce a public option — favored by a large majority of voters — for America, do you think?
Discuss
10 Comments . Comments are closed.I think it's really easy to support a concept
rather than a bill. I support the concept of universal healthcare, i.e. some system where everyone has healthcare. That doesn't mean that I support any bill that would execute that goal.
40 senators support a public option in theory. We'll see how many get on board when someone puts pen to paper.
Some concepts are more specific than others
and what "the public option" means in this debate, in terms of how it would actually be implemented in legislation, is not, I think, really very ambiguous to Senators, however good a job the Republicans and the media have done of confusing the majority of the public about it.
I think it would be wonderful
if our Democrats passed a public option with the HCR bill. I am not a fan of the health care reform bill without it. I don't like it because of the mandate to buy insurance from the private insurers. I would be much more willing to pay premiums into the public option.
Public Option is my homeboy
The idea that citizens would be able to purchase a plan at a lower cost from a tax collecting government as opposed to a money grubbing insurance company is fantastic. Out of curiosity, where does the public option play into the ability of the HCR Bill to lower costs? If that is indeed the goal of reform (lowering costs instead of aiming for a 100%-insured population), how does the public option lower the cost of care?
Does a public option mean insurance companies would not be driven by profits but by results? Customer service improves? Where does PHRMA come in? Surely the government would mandate it get the lowest cost for its pharmacy benefits, receive every reimbursement possible, and do whatever it could to lower its costs for in- and out-patient treatment, right? Just throwing it out there; does the cost of care decrease within 15 years? 20? Hopefully sooner, obviously, but I'd like to be educated a little more (as I suspect we all would).
It doesn't seem like you want to be educated
it sounds like you want to throw straw-shaped-men against a wall and see which stick.
Absolutely NO WAY
Because that would only apply people who could not exist in this area financially. It would be a bogus provision, a lie, a piece of Orwellian doublespeak to be used as an illusion of something positive, a false marketing talk point. Kill This Satan Inspired piece of crap health care bill and start over.
Start over?
Why? It's not like the Republicans in last 8 years showed any interest or leadership.
So would the public insurance company
have to make new, separate negotiations with providers the way BCBS and all the other insurers do (in secret backroom deals)? That'd be a big deal, to have to have another company to negotiate with, and who knows if they'd try to milk extra money from us. And wouldn't we have to hire a whole new company worth of employees to run this plan? Seems like a big upfront cost. What is the point again?
Enjoy your 39 percent annual rate hikes for the next 50 years
A public option will create a vast national competitor to the private health insurance companies who have badly mis-served the public for the last century or so. They could use it: we have the worst health care in the world given the prices we pay.
Good to hear, Howard
I still wish he were the candidate in 2004, and I wish he was Sec. of HHS now. I gave the DFA bat $5 today. It's not much but it's what I had.
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