Polls showing Americans favor a single payer option are not having much influence. It’s time for our President to come out strong for the middle class on health care and we may have to do the equivalent of a presidential campaign effort to get it passed. That means raising money for the media blitz supporting single payer. The Republican propaganda machine is hammering away on the horrors of the government getting between me and my doctor. Of course the real fear is getting between the insurance companies and their money. So far Ed Shultz is the only media person speaking out every day on this topic. Give him a listen.

I told him I believed voters will be so disappointed if there is, yet again, no real healthcare reform — and it must have a good, effective, comprehensive public plan at the least, but single payer at the best — that I believed the public’s anger would be against the Democrats. Moreover, since Obama is still the shiny new guy in DC, most of the anger will be directed at regular Democrats in the Senate and House, that seats will be lost. Perhaps the majority will be lost….

I stressed that I was deeply disappointed in how this was being managed, that it looked like Dems, both the prez and reps, were kowtowing to Big Insurers and other coporate types. Was the Dem Party losing its brand identity as the party which sided with the people? If it did lose that, and the “reform” was more helpful to corporate profits that to people’s health, would the party survive? Etc.

He told me that DNC has no control over Congress, but they can collect and organize callers’ comments and present them to the Dem leadership and the WH. He recommended making sure my own reps know my concerns (not a big problem, I think, here in NJ, but my House rep has a lifelong Repub sinecure) and then to flood Pelosi and Reid with calls. Calls in great numbers will get attention.

DNC 202 863-8000

Speaker Pelosi 202 225-0100

Majority Leader Reid 202 224-5556

What will help? I don’t know. Leadership from a Democratic president would be a good start.

Comparing ideas involving use of gov’t force:

An individual mandate (to get everyone covered) reaches into everyone’s pockets and as such is THE most coercive forceful use of government. Naturally this is the option the Republicans suggest. How ironic in light of their continual preaching against the over-use of government.

The employer-mandate reaches into a lot of business bank accounts and is about the same as an individual mandate.

Any mandate in my opinion is coercive and should be avoided, though I understand the goal(s).

A public option aims at covering everyone, but worries Republicans because they don’t want it to run private insurers into bankruptcy. I think their fears are overblown, but they have some votes, so they get to kvetch.

Then, there’s the co-op idea.

As far as I can tell the co-op idea is good for bringing people together to get better insurance rates. That’s good. But, in the context of this federal government legislation, it doesn’t particularly guarantee we insure many more people are insured. After all, what is so appealing about individuals joining a co-op except to get a group rate.

There may be a useful way to meld those two: use a public option to tackle the insuring of more people by extending assistance beyond Medicaid (with income level and degree of aid to be determined by consideration of politics and costs) & allow gov’t to define minimal plans for (at least) the larger insurance companies to offer. Those features would automatically cover a lot more of the poor and should entice more people (a lot of whom are young and don’t think about insurance) to get insured of their own accord. And, the Exchange should make it easier for people who might be overwhelmed by the insurance biz to take a look at policies and take part. The second part is to enable group rates to kick-in automatically for virtual groups (of considerable size) who happen to gravitate to the same plan.

There could be a lot of room for insurance companies to use plan construction and pricing (individual & virtual group) to entice many more customers than they would otherwise get.

Another way to reduce prices:

We need also to encourage more doctors to work for salaries and for more not-for-profit facilities to open. It might be tied to a plan where new doctors would work for a time at salary in exchange for debt forgiveness. That would have the immediate benefit to young doctors of being free of debt and to the community who get cheaper service and in the long run it eases pressure on doctors who currently charge very high prices to pay off their debts.

Final words:

It’s not so easy to find just one or two things which generate all the results we want. That’s one reason this kind of huge issue is rarely tackled in it’s entirety. Of course, there are also the political differences which sometimes lead to an impasse. In this go around it’s the public option which is the stickiest issue. But, I think it can be resolved with some negotiations on who is eligible for assistance and by having those people get coverage through the Exchange instead of through a gov’t-run plan. This doesn’t create competition from the government, but enables people to get insurance should be more acceptable to the Republicans.

I supported Hagan and contributed to her campaign.
Just called and her mailbox is full.

I WILL call back.

But to say she is much different from Obama?No. They think of themselves as “Reagan Democrats”. It’s a label they can be comfortable with, particularly Kay and the kind of constituency she has in North Carolina. Now I grant you neither she nor Obama won’t self-apply that label. It’s just understood that Democrats have to be that way if they have any prospect of winning in this State (IMHO).

As for Obama, I believe we should change the title of his book. In his case, he enbraces not the “Audacity of Hope”, but rather “Opacity of Hope”.

And let’s be clear: the only kind of public option that has a chance (even then, only a chance) of constituting genuine health reform would be the sort that Obama has already disavowed: ie, one that could actually transition to single payer barring revolutionary structural readjustments among private insurers.

The current machinations give new legs to the concept of a single-payer trigger.

Bingaman’s office says he is a strong supporter of the public option, they have no idea about reports that he is holding this up, etc. etc. and that the Senator and his staff are working hard on the bill. They refused to clarify the Senator’s stance on co-ops.

How much has the insurance industry paid you (in dollars) to keep us under their thumb?

Sincerely,

Vic

(Is this out of line? Or is it simply cutting to the heart of the matter? Pups?)