Wyden, Merkley Promise A Floor Fight To Open Public Option
By Susie Madrak Tuesday Oct 27, 2009 12:00pmLooks like we're going to see a push to open the public option. Get on the phones and let your congress creatures know you're behind it:
Sen. Ron Wyden has doubts about the scope of the public option plan announced Monday.
"I agree with Senator Reid that health reform should give Americans more options. Now, I want to work with him to ensure that all Americans can choose those options," Wyden said. "The bottom line is that the public option can’t really hold private insurers accountable if it is only competing for 10 percent of the insurance market, because private insurance companies aren’t going to change their business practices if 90 percent of their customers can’t take their business elsewhere.
"Real reform means empowering Americans to choose insurance that works well for them and their family, while rejecting plans that don’t. Including a public option is a step in the right direction, now let’s remove the firewalls in this bill that prevent Americans from choosing it," Wyden said in a statement.
[...][Jeff] Merkley, for example, said he would be unhappy if more Americans weren't able to select the so-called public option. As a member of one of the committees that wrote a health care bill, Merkley actively supported a government-option as the best way to maintain costs and provide greater choice. Merkley said in an interview Monday that he would press for any public option to be broadly available along the lines of an amendment he successfully offered in July when the bill was in committee.
Merkley's amendment is designed to give small businesses access to newly created health insurance exchanges that, in theory, breed competition by pooling the number of customers in a specific region. Merkley estimated that his amendment would allow nearly 25,000 more businesses – employing 485,000 workers – to enter the exchanges and 32 million people nationwide.
...That amendment would increase the size of small businesses eligible for enter the national exchange that includes a public options. He also supports giving states the right expand the size of eligible businesses even more.
"What sense does it make to keep companies from going into the exchange?" he said.
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"Get on the phones and let your congress creatures know you're behind it:"
I'm on it! Calling now
"What sense does it make to keep companies from going into the exchange?"
(sounds like another Grayson - just the simple truth)
companies want you to do and just shut up about it. If you don't, we'll fine you and if you don't pay the fines, we'll have
yourour government put you in jail until you comply. If you don't like it, we don't care.... and I'm likin' it.
I am really proud to be an Oregonian right now.
to make insurance companies go away and force a national health care system from our tax dollars.
Please, please, please - STOP BUYING THE PRODUCT.
If this American capitalism machine really works, and we actually have the power to influence it, let's do it.
Stop fucking whining about it.
Stop relying on bought and paid for politicians to "do what's best for America".
Do it ourselves.
Stop buying the product.
There are more of them than sick ones. Maybe there should be a large number of people (everyone in the country who has a preexisting medical condition) should apply for Social Security Disability and seek to be added to the Medicare rolls. That might work out for us. As the "electeds" are not doing anything for us, it seems like the time for self-help has begun. Let me wave the starting flag. GO!
for something. Congress isn't.
People burned draft cards and refused the draft during Vietnam why not now?
do not buy the product.
The healthcare system is not bound by anti trust laws. Ponder that thought as this bill is tossed around the media. What would happen if the existing insurance and healthcare industries suddenly had a strong competitor as the government. Chances are since they are not bound by the anti trust laws they could merge to one large conglomeration and really put the screws to us.
into "regions" for their use. Google the concept. And it is the insurance industry that is not bound. Not the health care system.
It's a simple theory of risk exposure and economic relativity. This will never work if only a limited number of individuals are allowed to participate.
If this claim is correct, it would be like attempting to extinguish a forest fire with a squirt gun. :-/ Who the hell thinks a constricted risk exposure pool can compete in such a lopsided situation. What is it about power in numbers, that they fail to understand? Doo Doo heads :P
You better hurry before our "representatives" and their extortionist thugs in the Health Insurance racket force you to buy it.
corporation to provide low cost comprehensive health insurance (dental and drugs included) allowing anyone to enroll, can we put the for-profit insurance companies and Big Pharma out of business? I think we can!
That's a co-op I can believe in.
It's called the US government.
But the Get Sick & Die Quick Corps of USA don't want you to realize it.
Now hush with that filthy Commie talk of yours!
.
This will be the next market WalMart will venture into...
clinics. Have you noticed one of Wal-Mart's current commercials on TV says that they have the lowest prices any where and you don't have to check for yourself. They actually say that in the commercial. I am soooo sure that is true.
concept would work fine----if you never get sick. But if you do get sick, do as Grayson said, die quickly. And that is what Reid's 10% opt-in proposal seems to signify.
A republican hobbled public option is destined to fail - all by republican design! Can you really imagine a republican being cooperative in anything going into the future.
The Republicans are like Lucy and the Democrats are like Charlie.
We have put Lucy in charge and expect Charlie to make things better again.
So is their only two political parties?
Don't let the Republicans create an impotent public option. They probably have several Trojan Horses in their many amendments so i hope like hell everyone is actually reading the whole thing, in particular the amendments - trash the thing and give medicare to everybody.
The answer is Medicare for all. Anything less is a Republican plot.
to the anger. Rejection before there is anything actually there.
These are my Senators, and I appreciate both of them being on the correct side of this issue, but Ron's plan keeps the employer-health insurance paradigm intact. And there, as they say, is the rub.
Until that relationship is discarded and the notion that health care must be earned through employment, we aren't "reforming" anything.
Don't get me wrong, I thank the Unions of 100 years ago for standing up to the corporations (in too many cases suffering beatings and even death) and getting health insurance for people in general. Without them, we would have Less Than Zero, but in this day and age it is an outmoded concept. There needs to be a split between the two.
I don't see the "victory" here. I see a "At least we're getting a bill through, even if it is a joke and inadequate" scenario being played out yet again. It's a shame so many people are willing to accept this as the BEST we can do. Makes me very sad.
It's a territorial war.
The teamsters are self-insured, and they cover their members with the best coverage. They have less than 2 million members. Someone needs to start a not-for-profit insurance corporation for anyone who wants to join it. We can put private insurance out of business that way. If the government is too cowardly or crooked to do single payer, we should do it.
This is going almost exactly the way insurance companies want it to.
If this passes and Obama signs it, we are screwed like we've never been screwed before. You'll HAVE to buy insurance, and there are NO cost controls on premiums. There are 1500 pages of reasons written by insurance lobbyists NOT to pass this POS.
The smoke and mirrors the industry has thrown up with $1.5 million per day on 6 lobbyists per congressman and a full blown marketing campaign to a conservative and supportive corporate media has a lot of people thinking that ANY so-called public-option will be a huge victory.
If Traitor Joe is instrumental in derailing this legislation he'd actually be doing us a favor. The BEST possible scenario is that this fails in the senate, we clear out some deadwood in the midterms, and try again next winter.
I was beginning to think there were only two of us who saw through this scam. Now there are at least three, Noah, that I know of.
I am constantly advised to call my Congress critter. But is it worth it? My Congressman is John Culberson. If there is a more knuckle-dragging Neanderthal in all of the U.S. Congress, I do not know who it is (aside from Michelle Bachmann, of course). He is so proud of his opposition to "Obama care," as he calls it, that he pastes his stupidity all over his web site. The guy is truly tone deaf to anything progressive, egalitarian, or . . . well, intellectually sensible. So should I really call him? I live in a 70% Repugnant district, meaning this moron is safe. Surely, there must be something more worth while I can do.
If the Bill in the Senate should pass without a Public Option and the House Bill has a public Option when the two bills are combined the Public Option could be in the final Bill.
That would dodge the Republicans Filibuster and only require 51 votes to pass in the Senate.
Will that happen?????????????????????
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