Conrad: Public Option "Wasted Effort"...Sebelius: "not essential".....Do you agree with Howard Dean?

But Kent Conrad tells Fox "News" Sunday that the Public Option is a "wasted effort":



(Conrad with Jim DeMint)





And Kathlees Sebelius tells CNN "State of the Union" Sunday that the Public Option is "not the essential element".





What the hell is going on? Is today becoming "kill the Public Option Sunday"?




(The Republican right is impressed: Richard Shelby(R-Ala) tells Fox "News" what he thinks:
"We ought to look at it. I think it's a far cry from the original proposals. . .")









Does Rahm think there is no end to what progressives are willing to compromise away, one piece at a time, just as long as he labels it "reform" in the bill title?







Or do we stand with Howard Dean?









:kick:

code for "bullshit."

when he was hosting olbermann's show.

The HELP bill sets up the infrastrucure for co-ops. Exactly what Sebelius is referring to.

to happen.

.....and that recognizing when some are attempting to sell us down the river is a prerequisite to victory.

They simply let the RW outflank and swiftboat them, and they're in a reactive mode.

“I think there will be a competition to private insurers,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in an interview that aired Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, “that really is the essential part, that you don’t turn over the whole new marketplace (after health care legislation is enacted) to private insurance companies and trust them to do the right thing. We need some choices, we need some competition.”

You're welcome.

:headbang:
rocktivity

....now giving up on the power of the Sec. of HHS to negotiate prices within a true Public Option, we would be creating token competition which will be castrated in its ability to get a handle on out of control, irrational medical pricing.

The insurance syndicate will have succeeded in their goal of not having to compete with an entity which has the negotiating power to bring down prices.

And neither the American people, nor American industry (which is unable to compete with off shore industry because of out of control American healthcare waste), nor the Treasury, can afford such a token, ineffective, pseudo-"reform".

A real Public Option is indeed "essential".

"Gotta keep your powder dry"
"Gotta have consensus"
"Gotta have everyone on board"

At any rate, nothing will go into effect until 2013 anyhow. What a joke.

we need cohesion and he has the loudest voice that comes the closest to what we need

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And do you truly believe that if Medicare had been initially structured as a plan that mandated than the elderly purchase insurance from private companies, and was not set up with structures in place to control costs, that Medicare as we know it would ever have come to pass?

...First it was single payer, now it's a public option. If this last compromise is shot down in favor of keeping the status quo, all we have is an expensive bill with no real change and completely devoid of teeth.

turning it into community insurance industry run options.

BROWN: Well, we have a good bill that came out of the Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee—you know, strong public option, employer mandate, everybody needs to be in the plan, very strong consumer protections for all people who have insurance and for those newcomers that are just getting insurance. The Senate Finance Committee is not coming up as good of a plan, as Senator Rockefeller said.

But we‘re not—we‘re not going to do things like exclude the 11 million children who are now in SCHIP. We‘re not going to accept a weak public option or a non-existing public—existing public option. Those are the president‘s priorities. That‘s what every Democrat on the Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee voted for.

We‘re not going to lay down and come up with some sort of phony co-op that some few number of number of Democrats seem to want.

DEAN: And in fairness to your committee‘s bill, it is a great bill.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32218739

The Senate HELP Committee “public option” will be multiple “options,”

and these will be run by insurance companies

By Kip Sullivan, JD

When the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee passed a bill on July 15 creating an anemic “public option” program, Health Care for America Now (HCAN) and other “public option” proponents were ecstatic. They welcomed the “public option” in the HELP committee bill, proclaiming it “strong” or “robust.” But the actual provisions in the HELP Committee bill call for numerous “community health insurance options,” not the single “Medicare-like” plan promised by “public option” advocates. That means the individual “options” will probably be as small and weak as the co-ops now under discussion in the Senate Finance Committee. More importantly, these “community options” will almost certainly be run by insurance companies.

http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/08/14/the-senate-help-committee-“public-option”-will-be-multiple-“options”-and-these-will-be-run-by-insurance-companies/


So what is a strong public option and what is dean really advocating?