Can anybody explain to me the connection between public option and universal care?

I heard today that an end to the public option means no universal care, but I thought they were two separate things, like you could still have some kind of universal catastrophic care plan that covers the uninsured through subsidies to plans they choose. Am I wrong on this?

available to you. That gets us very close to universal coverage.

There are a brazillion details, of course, but that's the gist.

Its not even in the same ballpark, if they are well funded and public plan takes tired poor huddled masses.

If the mission of the public option was to insure those who can't afford private plans.

It would be means-tested, like where they criminalize homelessness / people on welfare and then make them jump thru hoops to prove they can't hack it on their own. If they can afford to purchase a private plan they will be told to do so or be fined.

other than that, no idea

It goes to the House floor on friday!
HR 676 is the real deal if you want universal health care.

Get behind it everyone!
http://healthcareforamericanow.org/

Legislating requiring everyone to BUY insurance = Universal Health Care!?

They think "a plan will be made available to you" if you can't be COMPELLED to buy private care if and only if you meet the means test qualifications (never mind that the plan is supposed to be partially paid for by fining the uninsured who do not meet the cut or do not know how to file the paperwork to "apply" for such a program!)

You won't have to buy into it.
Employers won't have to buy into it.
Everyone is covered.

The House will put it to the floor for a vote on Friday.

You're really talking about two different things....

Universal Care, Universal Coverage, etc means a system where EVERYONE receives at least a basic health coverage. Unlike our current system, universal systems are mandatory in one way or another.

The systems themselves differ though. We're the only major nation without universal coverage, but the ones that do mostly do things in different ways.

The Public Option is one where people are required to purchase insurance, and one of the options is to purchase it through the government, ie the Government would be an insurance provider, just like say Aetna, and would compete directly against them. It's ONE way for the government to keep the costs of insurance down.

You can still have Universal Coverage without a public option. Switzerland does for instance. No public option there, but everyone is required to purchase insurance through private insurance companies, and the governemnt regulates the companies to ensure that nobody can be turned down for preexisting condtion bs, and provides subsidies for low income people, etc. So if you are poor, you get essentially free health coverage through the government.

nt

That's what we've been hoping for, but it seems to have been pushed aside. Single payer means we go like England and Canada. Everybody throws their insurance money into one big pot and everybody gets covered. This works because young people who are healthy are paying in but not taking out much in terms of health care costs. The bigger pool means it costs less on average for everyone.

Public option would put a non-profit, government administrated program on the table alongside the private for-profit insurance companies. Opponents have outright said that they fear the public option would kill the private insurance companies, because they could operate at a lower cost because they can operate at cost. Instead of having to provide obscene profits to shareholders and bonuses to CEO's, as the private companies do. Okay, oponents haven't admitted that much, but it's tacit.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=6270194

Public option is explicitly part of an Insurance Lobby crafted plan called the Massachusetts plan.

Originally advocated by Mitt Romney as a tool for expanding the list of "obligations the individual has to prove he is contributing member of society"

Don't be fooled. The notion that it would put anyone out of business is a briar patch argument. Insurance wrote this plan.

Public option is a fig leaf. You guys should know this stuff already.

The Insurance company wants to force uninsured Americans (like me) to purchase their existing, shitty product (which oddly enough doesn't affect employees with generous large-pool corporate plans where everyone who's a member is fully employed and a good risk, i.e. much of the middle class will not care what happens to the uninsured) by having the Government fine us if we don't comply. And all I hear from insured folks (yes, they are Dems) is how "young people" like me are "deadbeats who are driving up the cost of health care for those of us already paying exorbitant rates for private plans."

Affluent, well-heeled policy wonks won't give a shit, just like they don't give a shit about welfare or public housing.

The "Public option" is designed to be a policy of last resort, run by the insurance industry as a niche service, like HUD controlled housing that is designed not to exceed 10% of the units. It won't be funded to serve increased demand, any more than transit funding goes up when more people ride it (it goes DOWN because the public gets angry with the increased demand and urges their leaders to punish the transit agency.) Imagine if we criminalized homelessness, HUD would fill a similar role (oh wait...)

Canada is more like France in that the government is the single payer, but the hospitals and doctors are private, so the government is the single health insurance company.

England owns the hosptials and the doctors are government workers, so they not only are the insurance company, but the provider as well.

Public Option is a third way where the government offers basically the single payer option to whowever wants to join it, but you can join a private plan if you want to that would cover you.

A fourth way is that of Switzerland, where there is no public option, but the government regulates all the private options to make sure costs stay low, and then provide subsidies for poor people top urchase insurance.

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I'd take any of those, but right now either public option, or swiss option looks more likely in this country. We'll never nationalize the hospitals like they did in England, and I jsut don't see the US going true single payer like in Canada. Plus I think we can do it better than that.

They are unconstitutional in requiring citizens to prove that they have purchased private plans from private entities in support of private health care service, which violates the umbrella right to privacy in personal health decisions in Roe v. Wade.

No opt-out = fascism or at the least, authoritarian state capitalism.

Universal Health Care = a national health service, or nonprofit versions thereof. People are NOT fined if they choose not to participate.

First off, everybody pays a bit for single payer, its just that its morally worth it to do so. Second, I believe the fascist nature of having to pay private corporations was for insurance was shot down in the "State vs. Hippy driving without auto insurance" case... We've all had this for a long time in various forms.

All I'm saying is we should be open minded moving forward. I have good reasons for saying this.

And a national health service, that everyone would be forced to pay for, where the governemnt itself would have records of everyone's health care sounds benign to you?

You can't opt-out of the fire department, or the public schools, or lighthouses.

Certain things in a society you just can't say "fuck it I won't pay for Volcano Monitoring. I don't live near any damn volcanos." Certain things everyone needs to participate in.

emergency services are one of those. Everyone needs to opt in, even saying you're for a national health service says you agree with this. And if you think people wouldn't be fined if they refused to pay their taxes for the health care think again. They'd go to jail.

The plan is explicitly written and intended to increase the profitability of the Health Insurance industry by forcing people onto the rolls... the people who crafted it and ran the numbers for the Massachusetts plan in think tanks said so.

The only reason they do this shit in places like Switzerland is they are Commonwealths. The individual is a subject of the state, and must prove to the state that he is behaving as a good citizen should. Which is of course not Socialism either, but state capitalism. The social contract is entirely different in such countries. The intent is to prove that each individual is complying with the rules for "proper conduct" so that other people's pocketbooks are not infringed on in any way. Like a global Homeowners Association.

When I was younger and didn't have health insurance, I got in an accident and didn't have health insurance. Thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of ER bills I just couldn't pay, because I was poor. So some charitable entity ate up the bulk of it, and I owned almost nothing. Had they not done this, it would have all gone to collections, and still nobody would have gotten blood from the stone, it would have been a wash for all involved because I had no money.

The point is, SOMEBODY ate that cost that didn't deserve it. Was it the hospital? Charitable Christian organization? Taxpayers? Whoever it is, it happens Every time an uninsured person gets in an accident and doesn't have $20,000 laying around to pay for it. SOMEBODY pays for it, not the uninsured person.

Now at that time I was working a little, and I could have afforded $50 a month. If everybody as poor as me was paying $50 a month though, a lot of that would have been covered, just by us with no external influence.

This is about throwing out the fantasy that a civilized society will let bodies pile up outside the ER because they can't afford care, it just doesn't happen. So SOMEBODY is paying for it no matter what. Shouldn't we all just explicitly acknowledge that fact?

Same thing with a fire department. We can't line item our taxes. I can't say "you know what, we'll be carefull. I don't want to pay for my fire insurance."

Because then what happens when my house catches on fire? the fire department would have to come and either put it out, or at least make sure the houses on the left and right of mine don't catch fire as well. If i'm trapped in my burning house, should they not go in to save me, or my children because I didn't pay for my taxes? They should sit outside and watch and laugh?

Or they save me but I can't pay for the service becuase a single fire response costs tens of thousands of dollars, and it goes to colletions, and I either totally lose the house, or more, or it's burned down and I have nothing because I didn't get fire insurance, so then I can't pay the fire department for saving me, so everyone else eats it.

No... everyone pays for certain services whether you use them or not. It's part of the social contract, and health care should be one of them.

<http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/why-not-single-payer/>

Universal coverage is a system with mandates and subsidies that essentially guarantee that no one's health insurance costs exceed a certain percentage of one's income. These subsidies can go towards any health insurance plan.

The public option simply adds an additional plan to the market that is government-run. It is an option that people (with or without subsidies) can choose. The purpose of the public option is to lower costs overall by providing non-profit competition to private plans -- not to expand access.

The defenders of the public option will often misrepresent the public option as the only way to achieve universal healthcare for a variety of reasons. Some want single payer and believe that the public option is the only way to eventually lead there. Some feel morally against paying a private company for health insurance. But in any case, mandates and subsidies provide universal access, while a public option lowers costs, and you don't need one to have the other.

health care if you need it. However, being forced to buy insurance even with a so-called public option isn't that.

If the government bans insurance companies from discriminating on the basis of a pre-existing condition, but there were no mandate, why would anyone buy health insurance until they got sick? The mandate is required to ensure that everyone (sick and healthy) pays into the system. Subsidies are also there to ensure that the amount anyone pays does not exceed a certain percentage of their income.