Gov. Dean Debunks Gingrich’s Health Care Falsehoods: ‘Nobody Is Forcing You In To The Public Option’

[kpete]

Source: Think Progress

Gov. Dean Debunks Gingrich’s Health Care Falsehoods: ‘Nobody Is Forcing You In To The Public Option’ »

On ABC’s This Week today, former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich claimed that most government-run health systems are disasters. He said that the Veterans Health Administration is “the one system that actually works reasonably well,” and dismissed Medicare as “basically a private system with a government funding.”

Gingrich also claimed that Americans really won’t have any “choice.” “One estimate by Lewin Associates is 131 million Americans will lose their private insurance and be pushed into a government plan,” he claimed.

DEAN: Look, let’s be fair. Lewin Associates is owned by a health insurance company. So let’s — let’s — let’s — the CBO, which I think is a more reasonable organization, says 5 million or 10 million people are going to end up there. <...>

Second of all, what the speaker didn’t tell you is, let’s just suppose you get forced out of your employer-based system, which I think is unlikely, but let’s suppose that you do. You’ve got a choice. The government will pay your subsidy to either go into — based on your income, either to go into the public option or a private option. Nobody is forcing you in to the public option.

Read more: http://thinkprogress.org/2009/08/09/dean-gingrich-abc/

[Eric J in MN]

1. The Lewin study

"If the public plan is opened to all employers as proposed by former Senators Clinton and Edwards, at Medicare payment levels we estimate that about 131.2 million people would enroll in the public plan."

Firstly, we're unlikely to get a public option open to everyone which pays doctors at Medicare rates.

But if we did, and 131.2 million Americans chose it, that would be because it's a good plan.

http://www.lewin.com/News/Article/15/

[Downwinder]

2. Who pays for Newt's health care?

[mascarax]

17. Ha! No kidding.

Hypocrite is probably the nicest word I can muster to describe him.

[UpInArms]

3. Lewin Group is part of Ingenix, a UnitedHealth subsidiary

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/22/AR2009072203696.html

The political battle over health-care reform is waged largely with numbers, and few number-crunchers have shaped the debate as much as the Lewin Group, a consulting firm whose research has been widely cited by opponents of a public insurance option.

To Rep. Eric Cantor (Va.), the House Republican whip, it is "the nonpartisan Lewin Group." To Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee, it is an "independent research firm." To Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (Utah), the second-ranking Republican on the pivotal Finance Committee, it is "well known as one of the most nonpartisan groups in the country."

Generally left unsaid amid all the citations is that the Lewin Group is wholly owned by UnitedHealth Group, one of the nation's largest insurers.

More specifically, the Lewin Group is part of Ingenix, a UnitedHealth subsidiary that was accused by the New York attorney general and the American Medical Association of helping insurers shift medical expenses to consumers by distributing skewed data. Ingenix supplied UnitedHealth and other insurers with data that allegedly understated the "reasonable and customary" doctor fees that insurers use to determine how much they will reimburse consumers for out-of-network care.

In January, UnitedHealth agreed to a $50 million settlement with the New York attorney general and a $350 million settlement with the AMA, covering conduct going back as far as 1994.

[silverweb]

4. K&R

:kick:

[Snarkoleptic]

5. That part was great, but most of the show consisted of the round table

in which Cokie and Peggie tried to sound sympathetic to the plight of the uninsured proles.
The whole round table was a RW sounding board. Shame on ABC for stacking the deck to ensure a one sided debate. I expect this crap from RW-assclown David Gregory, but not George Stephanopolis.

[neuvocat]

6. After that Dem primary debate I'm not surprised.

It is good however to see that Dean is taking up the mantle against the RW rhetoric. I wonder why Dean wasn't asked to be HHS.

[katkat]

8. Re: I wonder why Dean wasn't asked to be HHS.

Two words: Rahm Emanuel. He's never gotten over Dean being right about the fifty state strategy and his being wrong.

[slipslidingaway]

7. Only 5 - 10 million people will be in the public plan...

http://www.pnhp.org/blog/2009/08/08/reply-to-critics-of-%E2%80%9Cbait-and-switch-how-the-%E2%80%98public-option%E2%80%99-was-sold%E2%80%9D/

Thread in GD...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6258429&mesg_id=6258429

"...It is not inevitable that a scrawny “public option” will be strengthened

The argument that any “public option” is better than none has rarely been articulated, but I suspect we will hear it more often as the reality sinks in that the “public option” in the Democrats’ bill is a joke. “Public option” advocates who learn for the first time that the “option” in the Democrats’ bill will insure few or zero people have only two choices: to abandon the “public option” movement, which is no doubt emotionally difficult to do for those who have invested heavily in the movement, or to continue to work for the Democrats’ version of the “public option” and rationalize that choice with the argument that a tiny “public option” can always be improved once it is established...


“Public option” proponents who urge us to support even a token “public option” must remember how much is at stake here. At stake is not only the willingness of the public to believe that government health insurance programs can outperform the insurance industry. At stake as well is whether Congress will give the insurance industry a trillion dollars per decade of taxpayer money.

The Democrats’ legislation calls for subsidies to people under a certain income level (probably 300 or 400 percent of the poverty level) so all Americans can afford to obey the proposed law requiring them to buy insurance from either the insurance industry or the “public option.” These subsidies will probably amount to a trillion dollars per decade. If the “public option” doesn’t survive, or survives but never insures more than a tiny percent of the population, that will mean that all or nearly all of that trillion dollars will go to the insurance industry.

It is not written in stone that creation of the “public option” must go hand in hand with a huge bailout for the insurance industry. After all, one could imagine a scenario in which enrollees in the “public option” are the only ones who get subsidies. That was Hacker’s original plan. But Democrats decided early in their bill-writing process that subsidies had to go to both the “public option” and the insurance industry, and Hacker and company did not complain. That decision, plus the Democrats’ desire to achieve near-universal coverage, plus the Democrats’ decision to create only a tiny “public option,” means that if a “public option” is enacted it will be enacted only in conjunction with an enormous insurance industry bailout.

A well-fed insurance industry is bad news for both single-payer and “public option” advocates. An insurance industry strengthened by a trillion dollars per decade of new tax dollars will not only be in a better position to oppose single-payer legislation, it will also be in a stronger position to lobby Congress and the regulators to ensure the “public option” remains stunted..."

[lib_wit_it]

11. Totally lame. Totally disappointing.

[slipslidingaway]

13. Yup, I agree n/t

[lwcon]

9. So, Dean's bragging that the Public Option won't be "robust," "strong," etc.

It won't be big enough to "keep" (haw!) the insurance companies honest, now will it?

[lib_wit_it]

12. Pathetic. The "public option" now being considered is worse than no public option, because

people who support the ideas of a strong public option, but who aren't total news hounds will be placated by the notion that there is a public option included.

[DallasNE]

10. People Are Forced Out Of There Heathcare Plans Today

Companies are dropping plans all of the time -- except when people are forced out in this manner they join the ranks of the unemployed. Besides, this recession has forced more people out of their healthcare plans, joining the uninsured, than what the CBO projects would end up having to choose a different plan. Additionally, I have been with my current employer 11 years and am on my 4th different coverage. Have I had a choice on any of these changes? Of course not.

[ScottLand]

14. I don't think we will have a choice.

ANYTHING would be better than the system we now have. We will have no choice but to try to do better with the government plan.

[Wizard777]

15. DOCTOR Dean would have been a better headline. Gov. Dean MD. Would have been the best.

[The Wizard]

16. How come private industry can't compete

with a public option? I always thought Republicans believed the government was always less efficient than private industry.
If it comes down to it, flood the emergency rooms and tell them to stick the bill where the Sun doesn't shine.
Everyone should cancel policies at one time. Have a national cancel your health care coverage day. Their computers will start smoking.

[Libertas1776]

18. Nobody is forcing

you into the Public Option, but at the rate things are going, Congress will probably force us into a private option. How the fuck is that Democratic?

[zbdent]

19. When Dean has the camera, he should ask why Gingrich was so beholden to

the public option that he enjoyed as a member of Congress ...

[bemildred]

20. Indeed, Newt ought to have rejected government health care when it would have meant something. nt

[kestrel91316]

21. What about the concept of "option" is so difficult for RWers?

Seriously. Are they all just mentally deficient??

[llmart]

22. Is that a rhetorical question?

[Oregone]

23. ‘Nobody Is Forcing You In To The Public Option’....UNFORTUNATELY

Yes, we have no nuts, therefore, America does not get the right thing done.

[ipaint]

24. Dean defined the public option he supports here:

“If Barack Obama’s bill gets changed to exclude the public entities, it is not health insurance reform…it rises and falls on whether the public is allowed to choose Medicare if they’re under 65 or not. If they are allowed to choose Medicare as an option, this bill will be real health care reform. If they’re not, we will be back fighting about it for another 20 years before somebody tries again.”

http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/02/24/dean-public-option/

None of the plans propose anything close to what dean described so by his own definition the designed to fail public option emerging will set us back 20 years, if it is offered at all.
But we all get mandated extortion which increases insurance corps power and guarantees any chance to reform this bill in the future will be met by a stronger corporate push back than we are seeing today.

This is less than nothing not better than nothing.