They are going to have to be pressured into holding the line by their constituents or the battle is lost.

Which is exactly why Rahm wants you to go away.
Keep up the great work.

That’s change we can believe in! Woopee!

WTF?!?
I am so sick of politicians being fucking liars.

The only powers that be who can keep this from happening are the progressives. Preventing a bad bill is just as much of a success and a triumph as bringing forth a good bill.

Jane,

Co-ops could work if they’re structured correctly and combined with reform and regulation of the for-profit sector. I don’t think they’re the optimal solution by any stretch, though, because I don’t trust the insurance industry to allow them to be structured correctly.

I don’t know what all of the components of correct structure are, but here are some.

(1) Regionally based, with actuarial pools of 10M plus.
(2) All health insurance in the region is based on community actuarial ratings.
(3) No screening of applicants for pre-existing conditions.
(4) Periodic open enrollment (annual? semiannual?)
(5) Portable
(6) Subsidized for low income and seniors.
(7) Medicare Advantage dies.
(8) Not based on a fee-for-service model.

Obama may be willing to sign-off on any bill called health-care reform, but I will continue to voice my opinion that a bad bill does more harm than good. A robust public option is the minimum acceptable compromise.

We should be moving to a single-payer system so the People, who voted for a change they could believe in, can stop giving insurance companies and big pharma the money to pay lobbyists to ’screw the People in the name of the Profit’.

I figured they would spin the “co-ops” as the public option

Who here believes H.R. 3200 as drafted is going to be an improvement on the status quo from the perspective of the average American? This is a sincere question, not a rhetorical one. I ask because it’s not obvious to me that it will be, and I would like to hear from any smart folks who think otherwise.

Nancy Pelosi is laughing. What progressives will vote against “universal health care” when it is brought to the floor, despite being gutted to meet the requirements of the insurance companies?

You haven’t heard any other congresscritters pick up language that the insurance companies are the villains, have you? And you won’t.

You keep playing like these O people are at all interested in doing the right thing.

He has no plan… and constantly shuffles/ capitulates to the right.

This week.

Rahm sold us all further down the river. (See FDL’s fundraiser)
O’s OFA asked his entire email list to help fight for “insurance reform”. With no specifics.
The NYT Obama Pharma sellout article.
And now the whole vague Co-op meme.

Now name one firm good thing the White House has said or done?

I think Weiner had it correct, when he put the “Abolish Medicare” amendment, and forced all Repubs to vote against it. That secured a certain legitimacy for the public option, if not single payer.

So why not go a little further, and into whatever bill happens, go for an amendment that expands medicare to those at 300% of the poverty line?

I mean, just Why Not?

Fuck these Harry and Louise ads on my teevee, by the way. Just fuck ‘em.

I’m repeating myself, but we should continue to focus on getting liberals to promise to vote against anything without a robust public option. We’re gonna have to force Obama and the blue dogs to do what we want.

In other words, keep up the great whipping, Jane. :)

TP – saw the love on the other thread – thanks!

300 percent of the poverty line is just over 30k a year gross for a single individual. Not nearly enough.

Why not present a bill declaring health care to be a human / citizen’s right within 18 months? And then do the rest.

HR3200 is not finished, by any means.

A draft is just that, a draft, and almost impossible to critique as DEALS are yet to be made.

Only the final bill to be sent for Prez Signing matters . . . . and we likely will not see much of it BEFORE it’s signed. Cuz that way, we can’t organize against it pre signing.

However, the howl and holler of we the people is gonna be LOUD post signing if there’s no public option.

If passed and signed without a public option, and without REAL competition for the insurance industry and regulations to REFORM care delivery (doc’s can’t own radiology or specialty services businesses, cuz see, that’s why they OVERUSE services so they make more money) . . . . well, the public is gonna go apeshit.

There won’t be a single dem that’s politically safe, and the GOP has already killed itself.

2010 is going to be REAL INTERESTING come November.

Just throwing a number out there – you think bigger than me!

And that’s a great idea.

So where are we really? Democratic wing of the Democratic party against a bad bill; Blue Dogs against reducing insurance company profits; rump of the GOP militantly against basically any bill at all. If H.R. 3200 and 676 both fail then there will be no bill now.

So… can it be taken up again in a year or so? Over the next year we are likely to see increased economic stress for most Americans, and significant average health insurance premium increases. Also, hate to say, possible widespread H1N1 illnesses and deaths. Would we be more likely to achieve health care / insurance reform later than we are today? Would walking away today defuse the rising (let’s be plain:) fascism, or embolden it?

It is more crap that won’t work. If that is what they are planning, a dysfunctional system complete with today’s corruption and price, this is it.

Medicare for all of us, now.

LOL. I was just thinking that last night when I saw one. For years after the Clintons got creamed on health care reform that’s all we heard about – Harry & Louise. I dunno. This time ’round they are so fucking lame.

Embolden.

Another episode of simple answers.

Next?

*G*

If we don’t know what’s in 3200 then supporting it is deeply irresponsible, isn’t it?

I think the trigger would be used to hold down wages.

Well Harold, I can give you a two thousand dollar raise, but you will have to pay your families insurance to Blue Cross or CIGNA instead of Medicare Platinum.

It’s not a public option unless the entire public has the option.

ok. About co-ops. I get health insurance now ’cause I have a job and work for it. What happens if I lose my job? Am I guaranteed health care in a co-op?

Failure to pass a bill before the midterms would result in a Democratic bloodbath, I fear. Obama needs to get something passed or his presidency will be declared a failure by the Village come this January.

The question is whether we can revisit this and make it better with a bigger majority in 2011.

So what was a kid from Wasilla doing at a health care rally in Denver, anyway?

You don’t think passing a bad bill would be worse? I do.

Didn’t the rapacious Blue Cross begin as a type of coop?

Ted, i don’t think we’re gonna have a bigger majority and even if we did it won’t be big enough. I think that was one of te reasons to get it right now. Can’t revisit it. Don’t know. But don’t think so. Not for awhile.

President Barack Obama may accept nonprofit health-insurance cooperatives in place of a new government-run plan as long as consumers are guaranteed more choice and competition in buying insurance,

Isn’t this kind of like saying You can have dessert as long as you finish your vegetables?

So is Obama going to make HealthCo eat their veggies or just say “oh alright, you can have your dessert…”

Who’s the softie in the family? Michele or Barack? I bet Michele is the enforcer. Maybe we should appeal to her…

You know, I’m not a good journalist, or journalist at all.

I went to that event only to document and support, and I realize now that I need to get some “Mike Stark” on, and have some more purpose as regards story. So…

I didn’t ask the kid where he was from or anything. I just asked him if he had healthcare insurance and why he was so passionate about the issue. He told me about healthcare it was “none of my business” and about the passion thing “because the country is becoming socialist.”

I asked only one follow up, which was “What do you mean by socialist?” and all he said was “look around and wake up” then started the whole yelling thing again “Read the BILL! Read the BILL!”

But I’ll tell you what, there was 2 other guys around his age, that were in a little group and they were all frikking meth heads. They just had that meth body odor and the whole crazy eye thing going on.

Why is Kaiser Permenante, the largest HMO is the US so expensive then?

Yes, BCBS was the largest non-profit in the world.

My Dem rep is in her first term after winning a pretty close race against the R incumbent who was pretty universally acknowledged to be one of the top 5 scumbags in Congress. Nice to flip that seat. The R’s are lining up to run against her. They can’t wait. She’s considered vulnerable. Told her “You vote for a health care bill that doesn’t include a public option, I don’t vote for you again. That simple.” Fucking tired of being taken for granted.

A bad bill is worse than no bill. A pox on their photo op,
and mandatory shitty insurance for all.

Putting the question a different way: Why is HR 3200 not just more Disaster Capitalism? I would dearly love for that not to be the case, but that’s how it’s looking so far. And I would love for some brilliant twist to materialize that would make it a good bill. Not seeing anything on the horizon, though.

anybody see Lamar Alexander (I had forgotten about him. Didn;’t know he was still a senator. maybe I’m confuing him with Frist) saying what we really need to do is start all over from the beginning ?

Exactly!

I’m afraid that a public plan was only barely acceptable as a step to single payer. Not sure how we get there from here any more.

The co-op plan was designed by the insurance industry not to provide competition that would eat into their profits.

Now, I’m confused. There was a report yesterday that directly quoted Ignagni as saying AHIP opposed co-ops.

And this:

as long as consumers are guaranteed more choice and competition in buying insurance

is just more of the non-committal “as long as it meets the principles I outlined” stuff. I smell intentional playing with ambiguity. It’s the insistence on what results and the avoidance of specifying how.

As I’ve said elsewhere, Obama is only relevant for signing or not signing the legislation. The battle is in Congress and the White House will be pushing for honoring the agreements that they have made with the “stakeholders” just to try to hold the dogs at bay a little longer. When it comes time to sign the bill, all those agreements go out the window with a pen stroke. The only question is which stakeholders will be unhappy. And that’s not an easy call because employers might not like the PhRMA deal and the AMA might not like co-ops and AHIP might not like what the AMA likes. And you can bet that AHIP is not pleased with the PhRMA deal.

Pretty interesting & sad article in the local ChiTrib-owned rag today. Not really news – the Sentinel doesn’t print news – but still, interesting. And sad. Largest group of uninured in FL.. 19-29 year olds. Working young people.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com…..0964.story

There you go.

If the public option was the giveaway to Big Insurance and Big Med that so many folks claim, why is UnitedHealth so happy to think that they’ve killed it?

The industry has already accomplished its main goal of at least curbing, and maybe blocking altogether, any new publicly administered insurance program that could grab market share from the corporations that dominate the business. UnitedHealth has distinguished itself by more deftly and aggressively feeding sophisticated pricing and actuarial data to information-starved congressional staff members. With its rivals, the carrier has also achieved a secondary aim of constraining the new benefits that will become available to tens of millions of people who are currently uninsured. That will make the new customers more lucrative to the industry.

But don’t break out the champagne just yet, UnitedHealth:

Could Senate Democrats pissed off at Big Bucks Baucus for usurping their authorities bypass him and get the HELP bill (the Senate bill with the public option in it) onto the Senate floor for a vote? Sherrod Brown thinks so.

Great Idea dosido! Most women are very in-tuned to the needs of the people. After all she does have kids and we all know that having kids changes your life for ever!!

Correct structure?

Correct answer–What American healthcare program has been in effect since the 1960’s and has demonstrable capacity to keep overhead under control-is well understood just the way it stands by many many Americans–is on the shelf and does not need to be puzzled out. This is American Medicare–a program the Federal Government has put well into place in all aspects of administration,access,follow through and understood mechanics of “how does it work” already well established across present American healthcare delivery system(s)

There is no need to create anew a so called public option–it is already here and has been for some forty years plus.

Expand it–incorporate the VA (another Federal run healthcare program that does work quite well) and combine it with some currently well understood Social Security administrative methods already well in place since the 1930’s.

There was– is — no need to create anything new–just take off the shelf available Federal programs and reset/expand/modify them to establish Public Option or the better thing to do from Day One — American Single Payer Plan.

Why not do this? Why would the for profits,big pharma or other current regime players and gamers want to not do this? Oh—maybe–to muddy things up–scare the bejezzus out of lots of Americans–scuttle any real reform or change? Yes? Yes.

So why not just start from the bottom up and work the current number of 40 million plus uninsured into Single Payer. Then work up through the next 30 million plus under insured and move them into Single Payer Plan.

The bottom one third of American population surely deserves a better shake than the current dart board throw scheme.

Yes.

The saga of the Blues should not be of comfort to anyone hoping that co-ops would be a good solution:

http://wonkroom.thinkprogress……mare-coop/

Been there, done that.

OT — Anti-reformist asks TH attendees to bring guns and hurt others.

That’s the trouble with the kids these days. Nobody has any good acid. Give em 18 hours in another dimension. That’ll put the fear o God into em.

So why not just start from the bottom up and work the current number of 40 million plus uninsured into Single Payer. Then work up through the next 30 million plus under insured and move them into Single Payer Plan.

I agree all the current bills do nothing or close to nothing for those at the bottom of the spectrum.
I wonder what the rest of the world thinks of our country which lets so many go without any health Care. What does that say about us a a Nation and People who would let so many suffer unnecessarily?? It is totally against any Religious tenets to let those in need suffer… What have we become as a nation??
This is truly a sorry statement on our Country!!@

Starting to resemble ancient Rome, ain’t it?

Watch out for Nero!! He just may turn on you….

We know the public option can have enough people in it to be effective. We don’t know for sure any co-ops would. So, we need the public option and we can live with ALSO having state or regional co-ops if people want to try that.

If you want choice you start with the public option. Add state-regional single-payer or co-ops, but only as extra choices AFTER the public option.

For a more extreme solution to work it usually requires a more extreme problem. So, you wait and see how the reform works and if things get much worse the public will be more amenable to the more extreme solution.

Shootthatarrow-I so agree with you- this is so reasonable and so doable.
Also, the “low-paid government workers” are so good that no “private enterprise” takeovers can touch them. I was one-welfare worker-and no one can get the work done that we did not even close on the money much less on service.

Because they are business people. Do you have an education in business? It’s a fascinating world. They are vultures. They would rather kill anything in the cradle that comes near their health finance monopoly, particularly when they are in the process of making a real good deal for themselves(yay! Captive market of several more million Americans). It doesn’t mean it was a terrible threat, certainly it was NOT as written in any of the bills to come out of any committee. But vultures don’t leave any meat on the bones, if they can help it.

Fox News calling TH’s “gladiatorial” now. Couldn’t write this stuff.

Change You Can Believe In ™

I am so thoroughly disgusted with the way the administration has been hedging single payer options with co-opts in order to pass a bill, any bill it seems, rather than none. The ignominy will be in the constantly renovated bill’s imminent failure to provide more equitable, universally effective alternatives to multi-payer insurance conglomerates. These co-opts will be based on regional participation. In order to attract the largest number of clients, they have to offer low prices. Low premiums might translate to more people yet might still lack the necessary collective dollar power to negotiate and cap prices for services with providers and pharmaceutical companies. The administration states that these co-opts will have the same ability to bargain as does Medicare. But Medicare is federally-funded and ginormous whereas the co-opts will be small and underfunded in comparison. I believe there can be NO compromise on the single-payer option. I’d rather the current bill be scrapped until we can secure a more direct-to-the-consumer benefits package. Right now, I call this “reform” deformed.

I too want the current bill to be scrapped. If not scrapped, then I want it to go down in flames. This whole business is a disgrace. I have never been so disillusioned by the Democrats in my life. Leaving everything up to Congress was a terrible mistake, and to hell with all of them. BOTH PARTIES are nothing but corporate whores.

The oligarchy lets us vote. That’s all.

Progressives need to vote down a bad bill. Unless they hold Obama’s feet to the fire, he’ll rhetorically transform some sell-out piece of crap into miraculous reform. He needs a bill, any fucking bill to use Rahm’s colorful language, that he can tout as “change” to help with his re-election. Don’t give it to him unless it meets progressive standards. The electorate is not going to move right. The memory of GOP incompetence and greed remains too fresh. The potential punishment is that he gets challenged from the Left in 2012. The public is hungry for a candidate who is not a corporate whore and professional weasel.

This POS legislation is turning into the Bailout of Wall Street Part 2. So everybody agreed to the bailout but we didn’t include the thing we really really needed which was the re-regulation of wall street. Now the criminals on wall street are running amock and no one can stop them, oh and they are doing it with our tax dollars.

So Health care bill…dems no better than the criminal Bush administration because they are not going to make them negotiate for drugs….WTF. Are you kidding me. We cannot afford this. Period.

I thought from the beginning that the place to start this debate was single payer. If we started there we may have gotten the public option. Since the flacid Dems started the negotiation with a public option we are going to get robbed. No one is going to get the cost savings we need. No one is going to get access for people with pre-existing conditions.

Seriously, why bother at this point. At least keeping the status quo means we may get another crack at this. A bad bill means we will be paying to bankrupt oursleves as a nation and also not get the healthcare we so desparately need.

Hats off to Jane for seeing where this was going from the very beginning and whipping the public option.

I left a message for my Senator I asked him to explain to me if we need cost control and we are so enamorned with the “market” how are we going to get competition needed to reign in costs when NYT is reporting that 65% of insurance markets are dominated by one or two companies. Newsflash this is an oligopoly, one step down from a monopoly one or two players. So few players means they can easily collude and charge whatever they want. How are we going to foster competition without a public option? Tell me that. While we are at it which fiscally responsible reps are going to vote against a giant give-away to the PHARMA industry? Hmmmm????? Hypocrites every single one of them. Disgusting corrupt hypocrites.

(3) No screening of applicants for pre-existing conditions.

If one has to take all regardless of conditions, and the other rejects who it wants, how can the first continue to operate in open competition.

I don’t see how that is possible.

You could stop and read the bill or a summary of the proposed bill:
http://waysandmeans.house.gov/…..ys3200.pdf

If one has to take all regardless of conditions, and the other rejects who it wants, how can the first continue to operate in open competition.

I don’t see how that is possible.

In the case of auto insurance, there is the assigned-risk system, e.g.: http://www.aipso.com/ca/

The CALIFORNIA AUTOMOBILE ASSIGNED RISK PLAN (CAARP) was created in 1947 by the state legislature with the essential purpose to provide automobile liability insurance to those who “in good faith” are entitled to but are unable to procure such insurance through ordinary methods. The statute indicates a legislative intent to encourage drivers to seek insurance in the voluntary market using the assigned risk plan only as a last resort.

What is the Assigned Risk Plan? It is a processing center by which people who have trouble buying automobile insurance are put in touch with an insurance company which will insure them. From then on, the person and the certified producer communicate with the insurance company as if they had chosen the company. As part of the initial processing, the Plan makes financial responsibility filings with the Department of Motor Vehicles if requested on the application. If the insured or producer is having difficulty in getting the attention of the insurance company, we attempt to assist. When appropriate we will also assist insurance companies in communicating with insured and certified producers.

The assigned risk plan is not an insurance company. Its rates are recommended by CAARP’s Advisory Committee and approved by the Department of Insurance. It is the Advisory Committee’s obligation to propose rates and run the Plan on a self-sustaining basis. The financial backing necessary to assume the risk comes from companies who are required by law to participate in the plan.

Applicants to the plan are divided among these insurance companies in proportion to the amount of automobile insurance business each company writes in the state. For example, a company which insures 10 percent of the cars in California’s regular market insures 10 percent of the applicants to the assigned risk plan.

[…]

Competition is BS. The insurance mafia knows it. They can’t afford competition. They set their prices among each other and that is against the law.
It has to be public, and it has to be non profit. Medicare for all of us, and right now.

Isn’t this a great opportunity to use a signing statement? Obama could just create a federal co-op as his interpretation of the law.

Wow…and people wonder why this country can’t pass any healthcare reform legislation. This is a trip. The right and the blue cross democrats are fucking useless and corporate whores, and the progressive side of the isle is willing to throw everything out of the window because we are consumed with getting “single payer” which we won’t get! We don’t have the unity or the money to beat back these spoiled, fat, greedy executives and their racist redneck goons. I am not willing to give up on President Obama that easily, and I believe that he is trying to move this process along so that we can get to “single payer” in the future. This process was not easy for all of the “white” presidents, so I have no idea why the hell people think Obama could get this done with the swipe of his hand. Are you buying into the “Barack the magic negro” meme that the fat ass radio idiot started? The man doesn’t even have the progressive community watching his back, as witnessed by much of the chatter that I read on progressive sites. People of color realize that change doesn’t come in 7 months because we are still dealing with crap from hundreds of years ago. While we are moving at warp speed in terms of social change now, we have learned the fine art of patience, determination and finesse. It makes me fucking crazy when people act like this man could have gone into office like some H.Rap Brown radical and beaten entrenched interests into a pulp. He is moving cautiously now, and people are trying to get their nut job supporters to rise up against him and possibly destroy him! What do you think it would be like if he just rams all of this through? Personally, I am scared shitless now that he might end up like JFK…who knows what evil forces are planning behind the scenes. It is stunning to see how fellow progressives are so pissed off that he isn’t more progressive. Do you think Hillary would have had a cake walk on healthcare? Really? She supported the fucking war….till the end of her campaign. Stubbornly. Yes, why don’t we all just get whipped up and walk away from the table. Let’s not support the man. After all, it’s been a long, long, presidential term. Why, he has been in there for what? 7&1/2 months? He hasn’t done a damn thing…by comparison…we have all been so extremely helpful. I’m for holding his feet to the fire, but I don’t live in post-racial 100% progressive America! Not yet. We waited through 8 years of the Bush horror. I think I can wait a few more weeks. Until then, I will do my part to make my voice heard in a constructive and realistic way.