Howard Dean: Real Health Reform ‘Rises And Falls On Whether The Public Is Allowed To Choose Medicare

[Better Believe It]

Howard Dean: Real Health Reform ‘Rises And Falls On Whether The Public Is Allowed To Choose Medicare’
By Igor Volsky
Feb 24th, 2009

Today, during an appearance on MSNBC’s Hardball, former Gov. Howard Dean (D-VT) said that a public insurance option is essential to any health reform effort:

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.

Progressives argue that regulated competition between a public and private health insurance plans would lower health care costs and improve quality. In other words, allowing patients the choice of a private plan or a public plan would re-invigorate real market competition. Private and public plans would have to deliver the highest quality at the lowest possible cost to attract patients.

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

According to congressional aides only 9 to 10 million people will have the public option in a decade, 2019, and the rest of us will be required to have private health insurance or be fined!

That's just doesn't seem right to me and it appears like a huge multi-billion dollar handout to the insurance industry.

If a public plan can't provide better benefits at a lower cost than private health insurance why in world would anyone want it?

And if a public plan can provide better benefits at a lower cost than private health insurance why in the world can't we opt for it?

[Faryn Balyncd]

1. We need to keep our eyes on this simple criteria, as the lobbyists work to subvert it....K&R

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

2. An outdated FEB article as we already know Medicare is not the public option

why, I don't know. But really an article from February has little or no relevence to the current discussion.

As far as I know, Dean is still a strong advocate for a REAL public option and the President reassuringly has stated he is too.

[Faryn Balyncd]

3. True, but we need to ensure that all Americans can choose a public plan that is not a second class..

....plan.

Medicare is a good model in that all Americans over 65 are in it, ans consequently has wide participation of physicians and other providers.

But corporate interests are doing their best to turn the public option into a second class indigent only plan that may have very limited provider participation.

In that respect, Dr. Dean's criteria is still quite relevant.

[Oregone]

5. So according to Howard's own criteria, the public option reform he supports fails as reform?

Ug. This guy makes my head spin

[Faryn Balyncd]

6. If Dean supports HR 3200 in its present form, that's what it sounds like.

but I think Dean supports allowing all Americans to buy in to the public plan, and I don't think Dean wants the public plan to be structured in such a way that it is a de facto lower-income-only plan with limited provider participation.



As always, the devil is in the details.

[ipaint]

8. Medicare as an open choice for everyone isn't an option because

the health insurance industry can't compete with them. Medicare's low overhead would prevent that.
A weak public option which includes limited access is easy to compete against and overcome. This is about shareholders bottom line. And it's about saving the insurance industry from the profit loss they see coming when the baby boomers switch to medicare.
They desperately need to find a new permanent market and it will be the 45 million people mandated by the government to buy their overpriced coverage. An ever renewing market forced to purchase insurance.
The only way insurance companies make money the kind of money they are used to is to not pay claims.
The insurance companies have a thousand different sneaky ways to make sure they don't have to insure those who will drain profits. If the public plan has limited access and weak regulatory power over insurance industry profits it will fail. Watching the criminal insurance companies for compliance will be expensive. Any improvement to the reform will have to be negotiated and approved by them. They will stack any committee of oversite board with lobbyists. They will pay off representatives in government and any strengthening of a public option will die as soon as it's mentioned.

If people are truly dead set on settling for less they really need to understand what less is.

Not to mention 8 and half million americans are being discarded to the trash heap, a direct result of settling for less.

[Sebastian Doyle]

4. Same old story since 2003

Dr. Dean speaking the truth about what's right for the country, and the DLC going out of their way to sabotage his plans.

[BlooInBloo]

7. Dean has been an overall wonderful advocate for Obama's health care...

Gotta get the fucking Senate, dammit.

[Faryn Balyncd]

9. HR 3200 limits the public option to lower income citizens, with provider participation OPTIONAL.....

Some "public option" (as currently written.)


Look at the difference between what Dean envisioned (all Americans having the choice to buy in to Medicare, a plan that all over 65 are in, therefore not an indigent, or lower-income-only plan, and with wide provider participation), and the HR 3200 version of "reform": . . . that is, a "public option" that is ONLY AVAILABLE to those under 4xFPL (that is, with incomes under 14,570 x 4 = $58,160 for a family of 2 http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/09poverty.shtml), and with many, if not most, physician choosing not to participate, since PROVIDER participation is OPTIONAL).


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6095831&mesg_id=6095831



If it was widely known that the major House "reform" bill (HR 3200) would propose a "public option" only for lower income Americans, would mandate that everyone purchase insurance or be fined 2.5% of income if insurance is too expensive), would create a weak lower-income-only "public option" with limited provider participation, setting the precedent for the privatization of Medicare itself and a complete TWO TIERED system, and all this was to be presented as the "progressive" plan before the bill even goes to the Senate (with Baucus, Nelson, Lieberman, et al) and conference committee, HOW MANY WOULD SUPPORT IT?



Is it any wonder that the corporate interests want us to leave the details to them, not worry our "pretty little heads", and just be happy that "change" and "reform" is on the way?




(The same special interests that have lobbied, so far successfully, to make participation by providers in the public option NOT MANDATORY, are continuing their longstanding attempts to destroy Medicare by allowing Medicare participating physicians to "privately contract" outside of Medicare with Medicare beneficiaries. This is currently only allowed if the physician provider ceases all participation in Medicare. The change they are wanting would open the floodgates to the creation of a two tiered system, markedly more expensive for the elderly. HR 3200, by sanctioning a two-tiered system in the public option for those under 6500, sets a strong precedent for heading our entire system in the direction of a complete two-tiered system - - - a weak public plan for the poor, and expensive mandatory insurance for the not yet poor).

[Vidar]

10. K&R..

[KoKo]

11. I saw him on CNBC against a RW Nut Job...he did great and pretty much

said what this post says. Sort of shot down the babe anchor and the RW Nut Job with his "gotcha's back at 'em."

[Wednesdays]

12. K&R

:kick: