Robert Reich Says That Lack of Public Option Led to CBO's Projections

Run time: 02:07 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6PbvSnWQwk   Posted on YouTube: June 22, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: June 22, 2009 By DU Member: Joanne98 Views on DU: 854

 

Another thing that makes the CBO's numbers wrong is that if healthy people are allowed to buy into a public option, that will raise revenue for the government and off set the costs. Something noone has even tried to calulate yet.

And believe me, if there is a public option healthy people will buy into it because everybody is tired of getting treated like garbage by insurance companies.

Which "public option" is Reich describing--the one in the dreams of progressive Democrats, or the one Orzag and the insurance cos. are providing, and that Pres. Obama, Pelosi, and insurance lobbyists will whip Congress into passing?

The Administration plan on the table will include Draconian cuts to covered treatments in the name of cost-cutting. These so far sound even worse than most private insurance plan exclusions. The President has said that he wants to fold the public portion of Medicare into Medicaid, and expand it to the near-poor who don't have, and can't afford private health insurance. This raises the specter of means-testing for the public portion of Medicare (destruction of the entitlement), and promises the creation of two drastically disparate health systems--A good one with excellent coverage for those who can pay very high premiums or have "executive" coverage at work, and a charity bare-bones one for the rest of us that lets us die when necessary treatment is no longer "cost-effective". At any rate, nobody who can afford better will want to buy into this plan. The only healthy people who will be there will be those who financially have no choice and need to be largely subsidized.

This will serve only to remove the pressure for the private insurers to offer affordable plans to employers, since uncovered employees can always go into the fully-subsidized wretched "public option", or purchase private insurance with the help of some tax subsidies if they are upper-middle class. Givebacks on insurance coverage will be the norm for union contracts w/o the safety net of decent coverage for all that single payer would provide. This "public option" also removes the blame for the unfairness and deficiencies of the system from private insurers and puts it on government and its dreadful public option, thus killing support for single payer.

This is the sort of public option the insurance industry wants, and this is what the Obama Administration, especially Peter Orzag, who has been consulting with them, is giving us. It's costs may be the final blow on our economy, and will certainly bring on further transfer of wealth from most of us to the ultra-wealthy via a VAT. Don't buy this pig in a poke.

Also, I want single payer, but if we fight against the public option, will we wind up with something worse?

Making Medicare a means-tested charity program will cause mass rebellion by the more influential top third of our society against the payroll deduction, since they will never collect on the benefits of it, and will increase pressure to implement a VAT(national sales tax), which impacts people more the less income they have.

We need to care about the impact on our shaky economy, because a person can also die due to the effects of homelessness.

:shrug:

I follow the facts to the best of my ability. I listen when Orzag, Obama & Sebelius describe the plan that will become the official Democratic Party bill. I see what I see.

over something that has no chance at all. It will keep us from having a very small chance to get real change.