Senate's No-Public-Option "co-ops" looking like Zeke Emanuel's roadmap to PRIVATIZED MEDICARE:

Last summer, Rahm Emanueal remarkably told Charlie Rose that his brother Zeke's health "reform"/Medicare privatization plan a "game-changer", that is was politically unfeasible politically unfeasible because it would "scare a good portion of the American people."





The Emanuel-Fuchs "Guaranteed Healthcare Access" plan that Zeke has been peddling is a corporate lobbyisty's wet dream:
a private-insurance-only scheme that mandates all Americans purchase private insurance, with taxpayer subsidies/vouchers, and absolutely no Public Option (since Zeke's stated ultimate goal is to phase out and PRIVATIZE MEDICARE).



It also, by fossilizing, expanding, and sanctioning (with a federal mandate) our wasteful, high administrative fee insurance-based corporate medical system it will be the death knell for true reform. By not addressing the underlying problem of wasteful and exorbitant healthcare costs, Americans and American industry (who cannot compete with offshore industry because of healthcare costs) will continue to suffer.



. . . . .



Unfortunately, the Senate plan which seems to be taking shape seems to be steadily devolving into a no-public-option plan which incorporates Zeke's central concepts of all private, subsidized corporate medicine.



If the corporatists succeed in destroying a Public Option, and substitute private insurance "co-ops", does anyone think they will be satisfied to stop there?



Or will those whose ultimate goals have been to PRIVATIZE MEDICARE itself see these private "co-ops" as the ideal vehicle for the feds to divest themselves of Medicare (as not only Dick Armey, but Zeke Emanuel himself, explicitly desires)?





But Rahm knows he can count on us to be distracted by the issues of the moment, so I guess that means we don't have to "scare a good portion of the American people", as Rahm put it, quite yet.....Or does it?












:kick:

Immediately <0, as expected.

Have we gone from single payer to the public option and now to co-ops?

Unbelievable. And we accuse of our reps of having no spine.

Coops failed after 15 years in California so why will they all of a sudden be the solution now?

I am genuinely interested in this. I have been e-mailing Feinstein about my opposition to co-ops, and I know a lot about the horrible tactics that the private insurers used in grabbing the non-profit money in the former non-profits here, but I don't know about co-ops. Are you referring to the non-profit institutions such as Queenscare and Downey Community Hospital and, of course Blue Shield. Those are a few that I know about.

It was known as the Health Insurance Plan of California.

http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/reprint/19/5/158?ijkey=RNb2CIHmXfivg&keytype=ref&siteid=healthaff

And here is the GAO study saying coops do not lower costs.

http://www.gao.gov/archive/2000/he00049.pdf

I can see that co-ops were more expensive than other plans in California. So co-ops bring no savings whatsoever. Interesting and compelling argument against co-ops.

by the Cobb EMC. That is our eclectic coop. Now google that and tell me how that is better than a public option? Coops failed in California after 15 years. Read the facts don't run your mouth "troll". Is anybody that has facts and disagrees with yo9u a troll? You sound just like the right wing noise machine trying to shut off debate. We have coops. NFIB. Try getting you insurance through groups (coops) like that.

He said that they haven't been studied for sustainability. So, providing them as the means of health care for millions of Americans is ridiculous.

Before I heard him speak about co-ops I thought they sounded like a reasonable choice to investigate. But after JR put forth his case it made me realize how dicey it would be. There just isn't enough known about how they could compete against the large insurance companies.

I agree with you about not supporting co-ops for medical care. They're fine for buying groceries and perhaps other small scale efforts to purchase. But large scale medical care for millions of Americans sounds like folly - especially of this would be the place for people with pre existing conditions all need to be folded into. That sounds like a recipe for failure.

Btw, I hope you didn't think that I was calling you a troll. I was just referring to how many there are around here these days unrecing threads right and left that seem like good topics to discuss. In fact, yesterday there was another thread started by a person who got tombstoned pretty quickly who was advocating similar "reforms". This health care debate has brought quite a few out of the woodwork. So, no, not everyone who disagrees with me is a troll. But when they advocate unDemocratic ideas I'll call bs.

I agree the trolls do come out probably sent my Dick Armey and Freedomworks.

The GAO studied coops in 2002 or so and said there did nothing to control costs and would still just be a middle man to the insurance companies.

:think:

as long as they get to see pictures of the president eating ice cream with Bo.

My remark was directed at those who unrecced this very good topic.

Calling it a "Strong Public Option".

Privatizing Medicare and Medicaid must mean Social Security is just down the tracks.

Rahm is a zionist FASCIST!

The senate HELP bill would put the same ins. companies in charge of servicing parts of medicare with creating and running community health "centers" aka co-ops. Laying down the organization and infrastructure to privatize medicare to absorb baby boomers who have begun moving into medicare en masse.

This reform isn't just about new customers to replace the baby boomers, it's new customers and absorb the baby boomers too.

"The requirement that the contracting insurers be able to “promote high quality clinical care” is a tip-off that the HELP Committee wants the insurance companies that will run the “community options” to use managed care cost-control tactics. A second tip-off is that Section 3106 does not guarantee patients the right to choose their own clinic and hospital. Instead the bill only requires that a ”community” insurer will be one that “offers a wide choice of providers.” In short, an entity that meets the MAC standards plus the additional criteria in Section 3106 amounts to your basic, non-profit managed care insurance company. The big ones these days include many Blue Cross Blue Shield companies and the nonprofit HMOs such as Kaiser Permanente, Group Heath of Puget Sound, and HealthPartners."

http://pnhp.org/blog/

....problems we face, and that exorbitant, wasteful private administrative costs, and overpriced services, are at the root of the problem.

Obama's weekly address of 17 July 2009
Quote from the address:

"<...> That's why any plan I sign must include an insurance exchange; a one-stop shopping marketplace where you can compare the benefits, costs and track records of a variety of plans - including a public option to increase competition and keep insurance companies honest, and choose what's best for your family. <...>"

:kick:

I did not work so hard for Democrats only to find them engage in the same crony capitalism that the Rs did and this is the first solid example I've seen given of it in practice thus far within the administration. Means we hammer Rahm a bit.

Their insurance industry puppet masters will tell them it's good and before you know it their pundits will be calling it MediSCARE.

"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power."

Benito Mussolini (1883 - 1945) was a founding figure in the rise of 20th Century fascism. He was the son of an anarchist blacksmith, worked as a journalist and early in his career was one of Italy's most notable socialists. Mussolini moved toward "The Third Way," which was fascism, after concluding in World War I's wake that socialism was a failure. Mussolini rose to power in 1922, and was much admired by Adolf Hitler. Unlike German fascism, however, the Italian version was not at its roots anti-Semitic, although Mussolini later followed Hitler's and the Nazi's lead against Jews. You can read more about him here, here, and here.

http://blogs.roanoke.com/rtblogs/dancasey/2009/08/05/quote-of-the-day-benito-mussolini-on-corporatism/

I don't want a CO-OP. Doctors will disappear faster then you can count.

could go to China.

It seems only a Democrat can kill Medicare.

if he were serious he would be a neoliberal piece of trash



http://www.globalissues.org/article/39/a-primer-on-neoliberalism