Bait and switch: How the “public option” was sold

Bait and switch: How the “public option” was sold
by Kip Sullivan
July 20, 200

Kip Sullivan belongs to the steering committee of the Minnesota chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program.

The people who brought us the “public option” began their campaign promising one thing but now promote something entirely different. To make matters worse, they have not told the public they have backpedalled. The campaign for the “public option” resembles the classic bait-and-switch scam: tell your customers you’ve got one thing for sale when in fact you’re selling something very different.

When the “public option” campaign began, its leaders promoted a huge “Medicare-like” program that would enroll about 130 million people. Such a program would dwarf even Medicare, which, with its 45 million enrollees, is the nation’s largest health insurer, public or private. But today “public option” advocates sing the praises of tiny “public options” contained in congressional legislation sponsored by leading Democrats that bear no resemblance to the original model.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the “public options” described in the Democrats’ legislation might enroll 10 million people and will have virtually no effect on health care costs, which means the “public options” cannot, by themselves, have any effect on the number of uninsured. But the leaders of the “public option” movement haven’t told the public they have abandoned their original vision. It’s high time they did.

As readers of this blog no doubt know, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and three House committee chairman working jointly, published draft health care “reform” bills in June. (The third committee with bill-writing authority, the Senate Finance Committee, has yet to produce a bill.) According to the Congressional Budget Office, the “public option” proposed in the House “tri-committee” bill might insure 10 million people and would leave 16 to 17 million people uninsured. The “public option” proposed by the Senate HELP committee, again according to the Congressional Budget Office, is unlikely to insure anyone and would hence leave 33 to 34 million uninsured. The CBO said its estimate of 10 million for the House bill was highly uncertain, which is not surprising given how vaguely the House legislation describes the “public option.”

Here is what the CBO had to say about the HELP committee bill:

The new draft also includes provisions regarding a “public plan,” but those provisions did not have a substantial effect on the cost or enrollment projections, largely because the public plan would pay providers of health care at rates comparable to privately negotiated rates – and thus was not projected to have premiums lower than those charged by private insurance plans. (page 3)

Pleae read the complete article at:

http://www.pnhp.org/blog/2009/07/20/bait-and-switch-how-the-%e2%80%9cpublic-option%e2%80%9d-was-sold/

The public plan must be able to negotiate with health providers for lower rates and bargain with PHARMA for cheaper drugs.

We must pay attention when the Senate and House bills go to conference as it could emerge for a final vote fundamentally changed--hopefully for the better.

...plan which is around 6 dollars extra an hour per employee which the corporations pass around 3 dollars off to employee up from around 1 dollar an hour in 99.

The public option wants to take that down to around 2.50 an hour per employee but if you don't have employee coverage it'd equal around 400 bucks a month which is way less than most COBRA payments.

Only about 110 million people will be in the public plan by 2019, the rest of us will be required to buy private health insurance or be fined.

it would be the government price-fixing for the private insurers.

him anymore... i don't want to hear anymore bull shit , i want to see it happen..

why are we letting the Fascist Bastards lie up a storm and say an do ..NOTHING.!!! is that the program, is that how our party can get out of it campaign promises.. what is going on.!!

who broke the system fix the system.

as long as our leaders keep making that one fatal error -- we're fucked.

It was a very general attack on the article, long on rhetoric and extremely short on specifics and hard facts to refute even a single sentence of the entire article!