Sen. Stabenow...Really?

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

I just heard Sen Stabenow on the Ed Schultz Show and was disappointed to hear her say that premiums will eventually go down because the proposed public option will cover the cost of the uninsured who now seek care in the emergency room. That's tantamount to saying the price of gas will go down when the cost of a barrel of oil drops. In order to make her argument, you have to assume that the insurance industry will eventually do the right thing. Seems she and her colleagues believe insurance companies will eventually start to do the right thing?

Really?

[Romulox]

1. Stabenow is a crappy DLC/Dino. A complete disaster for Michigan, too. nt

[blue_onyx]

5. I wouldn't say she's a disaster

She is hit or miss when it comes to voting. We could do better but I don't think she's as bad as you seem to think.

[Motown_Johnny]

8. agreed, she is bad but not a disaster,

Clearly not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I think her heart is in the right place.

[sandnsea]

11. She was a hero when she advocated for pregnancy coverage

I think she advocates for Michigan fairly well. Different states have different needs, that's all it seems to be to me.

[Cant trust em]

2. Wouldn't it be more like saying...

The cost of maintaining my car will over time go down if I do regular maintenance, and not wait until it breaks down and I have to take it to a mechanic.

[sandnsea]

3. That's part of the argument for a public option

and mandating everybody into an insurance program, to get people out of the ERs.

Why are you disappointed in that?

[DefenseLawyer]

6. That's part of the argument for what the public option has morphed into.

The idea of a true public option is it would drive down premiums directly, because insurance companies would have to compete directly with a cheaper public insurance plan that everyone would have the option to buy. Competition would drive down premium costs. This thing is simply calling something the "public option" that is essentially taking all the people the insurance companies didn't want anyway (the profit killing sick) and putting only them in a public plan, while mandating that the profit driving healthy are forced to buy private plans. The only way to sell this as anything other than a boondoggle to makes insurance companies richer is to argue that those currently uninsured will be able to get more preventative care and will use of the expensive resources of the ER than they currently use. That's all well and good, and it is probably true. However this is an indirect path to savings on insurance, for it assumes that the insurance companies will pass those savings on to their customers in the form of lower premiums instead of lapping them up as higher profits. I fail to see any incentive for the former on the part of the insurance industry without a competitive reason to do so. The argument fails.

[sandnsea]

9. That's as big a lie as the death panels

I am so sick and tired of lies.

Anybody whose employer doesn't provide insurance will be able to buy into the public option. Period. The Republicans are the ones who are proposing insurance pools for pre-existing conditions, NOT anyone supporting the public option.

The public option and the insurance exchange will provide competition to the insurance companies. They will also get everybody insured and out of the ERs which will also help drive down costs and to deny that that has been a key argument for ANY health care reform is to flat out LIE.

No wonder the Blue Dogs and moderates don't listen to the left.

[DefenseLawyer]

13. Okay Pollyanna

We'll see what we end up with.

[sandnsea]

15. I'm talking about the current proposal

If you'd support it instead of lying about it, maybe we could make some headway.

[AndyA]

4. Well, allowing the credit card companies time to get ready for the new regulations

has worked out pretty well.

They didn't do anything bad, like raise rates on current and future balances, close accounts with little or no warning, lower credit limits, or...

Wait...

...Well, I'm sure it will be different with the health care insurers, right? There's no reason to believe they wouldn't do the right thing...

Ummm...yeah, right.

:eyes:

[blue_onyx]

7. What wrong with this particular statement?

It seems that she is advocating in favor of the public option. Isn't that a good thing?

[S_E_Fudd]

10. She is right

She is pointing out one of the goals of having the public option.

With fewer people going to emergency rooms for primary care, the overall cost of health care should drop...

I agree there must be legislation and oversight to make sure this happens...but she is just making one of the primary arguments for a public option...

[Mari333]

12. I am not happy with DebDeb

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

14. Here's what's wrong with Stabenow's statement.

First, there is no robust public option to provide increased competition and thus drive down premiums. There's a compromised bill that will cover the uninsured. That's the good news. The rest of her statement assumes that EVENTUALLY (emphasis hers) insurance companies, of their own volution, will start lowering their premiums when the public plan eventually absorbs the costs of those seeking treatment in the ER.

:rofl:


Is it me?

[sandnsea]

16. Using Medicare rates or negotiating rates

doesn't make enough of a difference to call one a robust option and not the other. That is the only difference between the "robust option" the House liberals are screaming about and the one in the House bill.

It's a load of crap. There was never going to be a public option that allowed workers to opt out of their employer health insurance because there is no way to force employers to hire the staff to let every employee run in a different direction.

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

17. I shouldn't pick on Sen Stabenow

After all, I live in Chicago, and with one exception, everything Barack says is O.K. is O.K. by my congressional representatives. Believe me, I've been to two town hall meetings in which my rep played cheerleader assuring us that the robust public option we are seeking would be deliverd by year's end. My reps position today? Not so much. The one exception, of course, is Roland Burris, the only Senator to insist on a public option:

"I firmly believe in a public option and will oppose any bill that does not include one."
-Burris


As best we can discern, he's not down with anything less than the robust public option we started fighting for.

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

18. Designed to Fail

This is shaping up into another "designed to fail" government program that the Rs are rooting for so they can scream, "SEE! The government can't do anything right!" The private sector will shue out the undesirables like myself--the ones they lose money on--and the public pool will not be large or diverse enough to absorb the uninsured and people like myself to realize the cost savings that are being promised (I'm young and have an uninsurable, chronic illness).

In other words, compromise is a huge gamble, one that likely won't pay, and the Dems shouldn't be gambling with health insurance reform.