Blue America Alert: Blanche Lincoln now supports a quality, affordable public plan!
By John Amato Wednesday Jul 08, 2009 12:15pm
For the first time since the health care debate started, Blanche Lincoln has made a positive statement about the public option. Blue America is scheduled to run ads today against her previous position that said she was worried a public plan would hurt the insurance companies.
“We want to keep what works in the private industry and make it better,” Lincoln told Arkansas reporters in a conference call today. “There’s a lot of discussion about what else we might need that we can’t get from the private sector.”
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One of our biggest concerns is that it doesn’t need to be a government plan that usurps that ability to compete in the marketplace, which I’m concerned that a totally government-run option would do,” she said.
She was afraid the poor, poor health insurers would be a cryin'. Greg Sargent at the Washington Post's Plum Line called her office and asked Blanche for comment on Monday about the ads that Blue America is running. Here's her response.
It came in the form of an op-ed today. What timing, right?
Looks like pressure from the left might be getting results, albeit limited ones, in the case of “centrist” Dem Senator Blanche Lincoln, who has been resisting any commitment to backing a public health care option.
Lincoln, who’s getting hammered by ads demanding she commit to the public option, has now shifted towards supporting one, at least in rhetorical terms. In a piece for today’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, she says the final health care reform should include a public plan or a non-profit substitute.
Here’s the key graf from Lincoln (the piece is subscription only):
Health care reform must build upon what works and improve inefficiencies. Individuals should be able to choose from a range of quality health insurance plans. Options should include private plans as well as a quality, affordable public plan or non-profit plan that can accomplish the same goals as those of a public plan.
The assertion that reform “should” have a public plan or non-profit substitute is a shift from her previous position, which was only that she was “evaluating” a public plan or a substitute.
Lincoln’s position had made her a top target of the left. The Blue America PAC, which is headed by liberal bloggers Howie Klein, Jane Hamsher, John Amato and Digby, raised money for ads targeting Lincoln in her home state of Arkansas, pushing her to commit to a public option...read on
Yes, she left herself a little wiggle room, but that's what the pols have all been doing so far in the health-care debate. She's now much closer to Chuck Schumer's position than that of Max Baucus. Lincoln actually used Blue America's framing in her op-ed. We're not done yet, but all I can say is that this was made possible by your contributions and a lot of hard work by the brilliant Digby and the rest of the Blue America PAC.
In this op-ed, Lincoln makes absolutely no mention of an employer mandate to provide coverage to their workers, which Wal-Mart, America's largest employer and a virtual kingmaker in Arkansas, signed onto this week. Instead, Lincoln goes out of her way to support a public insurance option in competition with private insurance. There are weasel words there, of course - note the "non-profit plan that can accomplish the same goals." But in the final analysis, two events happened to Blanche Lincoln in health care recently - Wal-Mart's sign-on to the employer mandate and the prospect of Blue America running ads in her state ($25,000 can go a fairly long way on cable in Arkansas, by the way). She chose to specifically align herself with the element of health care policy that Blue America endorses.
But she's not all the way there, so we plan to keep pushing. But this should be a valuable lesson - every small thing you do to advance solutions to the health care crisis can make a difference. The political animals in the Senate know that on this high-profile vote, defying the public on a popular plank will cause them some difficulty. It's up to us to make sure of that.
Please support the Campaign for Health Care Choice so we can continue to raise the pressure on the ConservaDems who want to hijack this crucial policy goal
By the way, Greg Sargent's blog is a must-read every day.
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Health care payment must come from a single source.
Single payer.
Did you say ...
?
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Spoken like a true messenger from the blood sucking health insurance vampires.
Where in the constitution does it say that we should have a vampire infested corporatist polity.
There is no free lunch, the payment for health care needs to be devoid of the profit motive, which is only furthered by the denial of care, NOT the issuance thereof.
When will you corporatist fucks admit this? Never, of course.
I doubt it. She's just looking for a way to turn down the noise.
I'm sure she'll be looking for ways to add triggers, mislabel and/or misrepresent an inferior plan, or something along those lines.
We'll need to keep an eye on her.
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I'll be suitably impressed.
This is "So someone explained to her how this smoke-and-mirrors dazzle-em-with-bullshit cunning stunt of a plan will more than compensate the Profit Whores" change I do not believe in.
a mouthful.
Insurance companies are exempt from Anti-Trust Laws. It is a legally endorsed monopoly. There is no market.
BTW, Great work Blue America!
So this statement must have stopped the ads. That's a shame - we need pressure on this woman.
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That hasn't changed...Thanks for asking.
Nowhere in her comments is there any evidence of concern for her actual constituents.
This is alarming - This woman is a straight-up Corporatist - unabashed, without pretension - in your face - "fuck the people" Corporatist.
She needs to take a peek at the poll numbers - otherwise - this IS going to cost her her job.
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should make EVERYONE suspicious of the efficacy of this plan -- for the public, the Great Unwashed, the Hoi Polloi -- if a corporatist like Lincoln has something positive to say about it.
the "public" option seemed conspicuously closer to the interest of the HMOs than the other options they were supposedly putting forth.
That is why it is an unacceptable "compromise" (compromise usually involves 2 parties, not just one). In fact it is worse than that, as it can be seen as a farce really.
That's being considered right now in D.C.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/...
When you look at this hodge-podge mess of various SCHEMES that appear to been concocted by the health insurance lobbyists lawyers, anyone with a brain will see The Public Option will be meaningless. As I see it, I think it will cause more heartache and damage to the SECURITY and HAPPINESS and HEALTH of the American People than anything else.
We need SINGLE PAYER and as a response to "Republican" up top who is telling all those without insurance to just "get a job and pay for it and to shut up" I will say this:
WE HAVE ALREADY PAID FOR IT!! IT'S CALLED TAXES!! THE THING IS THAT I WOULD ACTUALLY LIKE TO GET SOMETHING FOR MY TAX "CONTRIBUTION" THAT I NEED.
The Pentagon budget should be cut to pay for a national health program and once the for-profit insurance companies were out of the picture all the premiums now being paid could instead go toward a decent health care system that is standardized and has streamlined accounting and paperwork.
Our taxes/premiums would go toward paying for the NECESSITIES of health care not stock options and McMansions for Blue Cross/Blue Shield CEO's.
... but do we know anything specifically wrong with what's in the works? Yet.
tee
aitch
are
oh
doubleyou
completely detached from any real knowledge of the issue/problem at hand.
Somehow she heard all that noise about cost. So voila, throw in "affordable" and in her feeble mind... problem solved.
Travelling with this Blanche lady must be a "pleasure" with all the boats she seems to miss.
...but it is a pretty meager nail on which to hang a belief that she will support a strong public option in a final bill.
It is nice to see that she may at least have heard the complaints about her position, but her statement is little more than a small rhetorical shift. The pressure on her needs to increase.
Once again, John, your headline greatly overstates the progress that has been made and the reality of what someone (in this case Lincoln) said.
There are two ways to view her statement. First John's:
Now, the more realistic way:
Emphasizing the positive is nice and it has its place, but not when interpreting the statements of a conservative Democrat who is looking for ways to get the pressure off her. I'd bet anything that the emphasis in Blanche's brain conforms to the latter paragraph above, not the former.
man, you guys are going to be some dissappointed when the public option goes nowhere.
the democrats have learned from barry, tell them anything give them nothing.
they are just paying lip service and i will say i told you so.
I knew I shoulda voted for McDepends. He woulda got it done.
They need the progressive agenda
there was no formal vote on any heath care bill.
I'm all in support of anything that people want, until it seriously conflicts with my all expenses paid for vacation in Tahiti.
Oh, BTW, those commercials suck. Really. Did you get your cousins to do that writing and some homeless people to do the acting? Or was it the other way around?
Here's a commercial, take some real footage of people dying at hospitals while their paperwork for payment is being processed. This is something that happens if not every day, at least every week in this country. REAL stories do a much better job of pointing out lies than fake horribly acted 30 second POS.
votes for it!
it does not matter as long as she'll vote for cloture.
She gets more money from Blue Cross/Blue Shield.
Obama will never confront entrenched economic power, it is progressives that must shut up and sit down in order for the illusion of national consensus to work its magic.
we got her to write an Op-Ed...
She felt the heat. The ads will run....
We're working on our next action....
Rope-a-dope. Way to go.
stop wasting your money and time on the public option. Use it for the single payer.
can't you guys at blue america focus your ads at the president now? I think we need to get his attention more than anybody else. He needs to grow a pair and start listening to us instead of wall street and HIC.
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