besides, community rating in the Senate Finance Bill is 7:1, so that means if you’re an elderly person, you could pay seven times what a young person pays.

By the way, Jason Rosenbaum would not approve of the framing here. He does not like the word “block”. It’s so negative.

So what before my wondering eyes should appear but a little ad from google offering ‘view plans & rates online’ & ‘get the coverage you need’… with love from anthem, humana, aetna and UHC, brought to you by http://www.gohealthinsurance.com! Add the non-profit pay-in medicare option to that widget right there and I’m pretty sure any reasonable person would call this a health insurance exchange, yes? Health insurers advertising on FDL, talk about strange bedfellows. Recognize what it looks like Democrats, when you are winning. This is another shred of evidence.

It’s unethical to coerce citizens to subsidize private tyrannies through taxation, therefore I would be opposed to any mandate to purchase private insurance or allocation of funds that supported a top-down for-profit tyranny.

I have a problem with this poll, because it doesn’t come close to any “reality” that is currently under consideration — and doesn’t deal with the costs that implied by the policy statements. (For example, what happens to existing employer based policies that will be more expensive because of “community rating”?)

Glad to see this poll.

I voted no, and it was the point I was trying to make when I suggested “The Pledge” that got members to pledge to vote against a bill without a public option be amended to include “EVEN IF THAT MEANS NO HEALTH CARE BILL PASSES.”

If this poll turns out as I suspect (if it’s truly a poll of progressives), then I hope those members realize we want them to block it even if it has those other “goodies” in it.

At least that’s my opinion.

YMMV.

“NO Ability to negotiate drug prices” is THE main reason Medicare is having problems; Thankfully I’m a vet and and get realy good ‘healthcaare’ from a government takeover of my healthcare.(And I do recognize that many vets are having a problem with the VA).

And why isn’t ‘healthcare’ inclusive of dental and vision coverage? Dental HMO’s are a ripoff from the insurance companies and vision is essential to see where one is going *G*

If a bill is passed that has an individual mandate but no public option, Obama will be a one-termer, simple as that.

Yeah, the individual mandate muddies the water A LOT. That alone is going to skew the poll towards no.

If the poll were the exact same without the individual mandate, I would still vote no. I wonder though what others feelings are.

as jane hamsher has correctly said, “without a public choice, any reform only be another bailout for an industry that caused the problem in the first place – the health care industry.”

as tempted as it would be to pass for the “first option” suggested in this poll, it would not solve the problem. there are two reasons why health care needs and and must be reformed: 1) certain consumer protections and the available for all and 2) the essential need to reduce the cost for our economy, for small businesses, for our budget and for the deficit.

any plan without a means to bring down costs – mainly the public choice, will only be “lipstick on a pig.”

Again, insurance companies win. There used to be a day when auto insurance wasn’t mandated, you could post a bond if an accident occurred. But using courts was so messy, the insurance companies wanted to make all decisions about guilt, payments, etc. So everyone must buy auto insurance, and rates didn’t go down. Go figure.

Now, I’m not currently buying health insurance due to financial reasons. My choice, I thought. But will I now have to prove I’m poor? Or sell the house and car? I’m not making much money, but I do own a couple necessities. Do I have to pay over $4,000 per year for health insurance, when my income is negligible?

I voted “no” on the premise that I am biased in that I favor “open access” to both Indian Health Services or the VA.

As to “cost” or “cost containment” each is a bogus artifice. And in doing so, is to drive down consumer ‘demand’ and consumer ‘alertness’ to what may be ‘newer’ and ‘better’ relative to the status quo.

Take, for example, the $100 billion is a fictional amount and which was pulled out of thin air. However, under my IHS or VA, bringing military base hospitals under either schematic, permits pulling a miniscule $50 billion out of DOD budget for health/economic security for all.

Jaango

The public option isn’t a make or break deal for me as far as policy goes. Of course I’d rather have it than not, but plenty of countries don’t have them nor need them (Japan and Switzerland. In fact, Japan might be spending too little on health care; a lot of their hospitals might go out of business). It is a make or break deal as far as promises go, and I demand to have it on that issue alone.

I think a common trend I’m seeing among all countries is the ability to set rates and then negotiate prices from there; and a board that “rations” care. Of course it’s not rationing, what a horrible word, but they do decide whether or not to cut certain treatments if they’re not getting good results for their dollar value. Like when Japan cut their MRI’s by 35% one year because they were being used too often and driving up costs, or how Britain doesn’t cover the drug Sutent because it costs too much for too little benefit.

Against. An individual mandate without a public option is a license to gouge.

I don’t care about a second term, but I do care about getting a decent healthcare bill passed.

I would like to see single payer as a first choice; and I think that the dems should fight for it, force the rethugs and bluedogs to vote against it, then blame them loudly and often until the next election. It’s not that far off. I don’t think we should consider a compromise measure that we will have to live with for the next 40 years.

(For example, what happens to existing employer based policies that will be more expensive because of “community rating”?)

Paul, employee benefit health insurance plans are not affected at all by these regulations, save that the bill will set minimum benefits levels. Large employers will continue to negotiate their coverage packages and prices independently.

As I understand it, the “community rating” insurance price refers only to individual coverage. I expect it will function as a maximum price level, and large corporations will negotiate down from there.

Voted no. This is the kind of bill that big insurance would love. Everyone would be required to buy crap that would inevitably not provide people with the services they need. More profit for the evil entities.

I checked out a plan for myself on this website. It’s only around $100 a month (with $1500-$3500 deductibles), which is close ($102.07) to what I have deducted, pretax, from my paycheck now. I know my employer pays $312.24 a month total, so I’m getting a pretty good deal now by only paying 33% of my premium. The catch is my deductible is only $300 and I have an employer sponsored $900 flexible spending plan (read: I don’t have to pay into it, I get $900 to spend however I want on medical care) that covers that. I’m not sure what my point is other than compared to what is being offered to most companies (I personally oversaw payroll for over 2500 companies in the Puget Sound for ten years) these plans are a joke.

The poll didn’t state that everybody gets No Pony.

It’s hard to write a good poll that accurately reflects views. This poll seems designed to get “no” votes from FDL readers.

Picking and choosing among the bullet points here’s my minimum worth a “yes” vote:
If the final health care bill has:

* Individual mandate (everyone required to buy health insurance)
* Community rating (everyone pays the same premium)
* Guaranteed issue (no denial for pre-existing condition)
* Minimum package of covered treatments
* Public plan
* NO Rates tied to Medicare
* Ability to negotiate drug prices

I’d drop Medicare rates as a necessity. Cost containment has other options besides Medicare rate schedules.

No, absolutely not. I’d consider this worse than the status quo. Individual mandate + no cost controls (or public competition) = insurance company bonanza.

Frankly, I think the progressives hurt the CPC when they willingly walked away from single payer advocacy. CPC doesn’t support improved and enhanced Medicare for All just because they personally like it, it’s a reflections of their constituents preference. And, why wouldn’t it be? It’s an extremely equalizing method of financing health care, unlike Exchanges. But, anyway, when progs walked away from that position at the outset they didn’t give the CPC much cover. I mean, if progs were pushing for that now, then Waxman, for example, could say, man, I’ve got these SP advocates breathing down my neck for improved and enhanced Medicare for All, and they want it right now, if we don’t give them an opt-in to Medicare, or public plan that mirrors Medicare, or some sort of Medicare expansion they are going to kill this thing. Progressives put them in the position of advocating for something vague, that was already to the right of their preferred choice. Now Jane is left with the heavy lifting of trying to define public option, but all over the place I see other advocacy groups and bloggers being far less clear.

Basically, if there is no public option, then there is no functioning method of controlling what is charged for the plans. Everything not in the bill in this poll is what is required to bring the costs of health insurance down to where people can afford to have it.

With a family of four, I can’t get even rudimentary coverage for less than $1000/month, and that doesn’t cover the costs of medications I presently take to the tune of another $750/month. Despite that I am paid pretty well, I certainly can’t afford $21,000/year for medications & coverage “in case”.

The “plan” as currently proposed doesn’t do ANYTHING to help bring those costs down to where I can afford insurance. If there is no public option, there is no hard, ACTUALLY not for profit plan with which private insurers will have to compete to get my business and bring down their costs!

To top it all off, it chaps my hide that the insurance companies are not only sucking billions out of peoples’ & companies’ pockets now, they are also not paying their share in taxes (public charities, doncha know) and are (or appear to be) in collusion with each other (when multiple plans with the same basic features all cost the same from multiple different providers, it looks quite a bit like price fixing to me).

Oh, and FWIW, Kevin Brady last night said that the reason he opposes a public option (assuming all other problems with like “death panels” and shortages of doctors and restrictions on who is covered and so on were removed) is that it creates an unlevel playing field on which the insurers have to compete, because a government run plan wouldn’t have to show a profit. I guess the only thin insurers could possible compete base dupon would be the bottom line price. There’s no such thing as working with doctors to improve care, providing service to your clients, or any of that stuff…

Any kind of mandate with no public plan is a Bonanza for our good friends in the Medical Industrial Complex.

Can anyone stomach the idea of being forced to fork over hundreds of dollars a month, to United Health or Aetna or Kaiser Permanente?

That way lies madness, and we’ve got to find a way to stop it.

The public will never stand for it and there will be lots of action if that happened.

Without a public option, I would ask them to vote against it.

The two parts of the poll address very different issues. The “does have” is about who gets covered. The “no” part is about cost control. It rather looks the way things are trending that everyone will have access to some kind of healthcare but that there will be no cost control.

That’s how I read it too.

Public option seems to be the only option under discussion that has hope of controlling costs.

I imagine everyone here has read Atul Gawande’s article in the New Yorker this year on Medicare cost in El Paso and McAllen Texas. I was impressed by an earlier article by him on ICU deaths and how to reduce them.

How do you get things like this into a statute though? There’s no doubt in my estimation that ICU costs would plummet if Doctor Pronovost’s prescription for ICU doctors were adopted. How do we fund and implement similar research elsewhere in medical care?

It’s a boondoggle. It doesn’t do a thing to control costs. Paper, profit and promotion are all costs to be past down to the policy holder. NO. If they could force the automotives to restructure, they sure as hell can force the industry industry to do the same. They will still have lines of insurance for homes, rentors, autos, life, disability, etc. Losing health care is just tough shit.

If Democrats do this, I promise I will vote against them. If I put all Republicans back in power, so what, who cares, there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference to me.

I have no interest whatsoever in paying money to unethical, evil health insurance corporations. It’s like saying, “You must send your child to one of these three overpriced day-care centers — oh, and they’re all staffed by sex offenders.”

If there is no public option, I am considering very seriously just paying whatever fine there is.

Didn’t Obama specifically campaign against a mandate in the primaries against Hillary Clinton???

Or is my old memory failing me again? Or maybe it was the other way around??? Dammit, getting old and good memory seem to be mutually exclusive.

From various things that I’ve read about Obama and the democrats having made a deal of some sort with health insurance companies and drug companies I am thinking that health reform with at least a strong public option isn’t possible. I keep thinking to myself that, if Obama really wanted all out support for single payer or strong public option, all he has to do is pick up the phone and rally the people who got him elected. If he did that people would come out and demonstrate and give him full support and drown out the opposition. I am completely devastated and discouraged and feeling that there is no change I can believe in. Is there really any hope at all? Can anyone give me any reason to believe in my American government doing what it was elected to do?

Frankly, I think Progessives should/would block any of the current proposals – public option or not.

“I think Progessives should/would block any of the current proposals – public option or not.”

WHY would you think that?

Obama is working within a broken system to repair it. I think it is a wise strategy to slowly implement change, otherwise, the fruit bats really would be rioting and trying to overthrow the government… their emotional opposition to change is that strong and they are driven by dangerous, raw hate– nothing else. Take heart and be patient. It took eight years to destroy this country’s values with fear and deceit. It will take at least that long to clean up Bush’s messes and fix the machine.

If they got rid of preexisting condition exclusions and some of that other stuff without any mandates, I’d be okay with it passing without a public option. That would still help a significant number of people. It would also bug the crap out of insurance companies to have to take preexisting conditions without mandates. The rise in rates would make Obama a one-termer, most likely, but would also make people fear insurance companies more than government. Won’t happen, though, because the lobbies won’t allow it.

Get out in the streets and demonstrate against it, then. If they don’t have to listen to you and can have their cash and your votes, too, of course they will. Mad as hell doctors are doing a tour for single payer, why not see if you can hook up with that at one of its stopping points? They have a great video on their site that I have sent to all of the wingnuts in my family. Yes, I was raised a Reaganite, sorry to say. At least I’m proof that it can be cured.

Those arguing for a public option need to clearly define what they want in a government plan rather than reflexively supporting a generic phrase that can mean anything or nothing at all.

The public option as defined by HR 3200 is NOT an option available to any member of the American public and it is NOT –despite Howard Dean– Medicare for anyone under 65 who chooses to enroll in the government’s plan. Maybe that will change, but only if those arguing for a government insurance plan specify their demands.

You’re kidding right? Eight years? Try about 40 years. The Republicans have done all they can to transform the U.S. into their twisted vision of utopia. Rich donors first created “belief tanks” that twist research into pretzels to justify their bankrupt ideology. Next they co-opted the legitimate media by crying “liberal” media over and over and over. Once they neutered the legitimate media they went about creating their own media dedicated to propaganda and indoctrination. With most people only having access to right wing hate mongers on the public airwaves is it any wonder that their poison infected large swaths of the American public? The corruption of American “values” didn’t start 8 years ago. It started much, much earlier.

Click on the route tab, leaving Portland on 9/8, arriving in DC 10/1 or there abouts.

I absolutely agree with 1 and 3, but why tie rates to Medicare? I still believe that this will only work if rates are set on a schedule to decline over time, forcing margin compression on the private ensurers and hence create the pressure for underlying unit service pricing reform. There can be absolutely no floor on PO rates.

If the rates aren’t tied (or strongly regulated to keep them down) and the drug prices can’t be negotiated (or won’t be), then it isn’t reform, it’s just more of the same crap we already have.

That is not acceptable.
I’d suggest that it be time for pitchforks and torches.

Jane, I know you don’t control which ads appear on your site, but I’ve now seen TWO urging folks to “support the Republican Bill of Rights for Seniors” [otherwise known as the “public option” or Medicare, although they don’t seem to realize this].

If I click on this travesty, will it mean they have to pay you more? That’s the only circumstance under which I’d do so.

Unless they invite snarky comments and insults.

I strongly support the public option being tied to Medicare payment rates, but I think it not being tied to Medicare payment rates should be a deal breaker.

After all Ted Kennedy’s public option in the HELP committee was not tied to Medicare’s payment rates.

As long as the public option is a single national entity I believe it should develope the size to negotiate very good rates.

I voted yes, but after thinking about it for a few minutes I’d vote no.

If they also allowed Doctors to take cash payments equal to the amount they actually receive from insurance companies, without penalizing them by lowering the prevailing rate, I’d be back in the yes column.

Progressives put them in the position of advocating for something vague, that was already to the right of their preferred choice.

yerp, sometimes ‘pragmatic’ least worstism isn’t so pragmatic after all.

masslib, I don’t know that it was the progressives who walked away so much as some major progressive organizations who decided to go with what Obama thought was practical. I guess that suggests that our organizations need to maintain a little distance from any Administration, so that they don’t end up representing it, rather than us.

The HR 3200 PO can’t control costs because not enough people are eligible to join it and it doesn’t start until 2013 anyway. By 2013 costs will be up by roughly 25% anyway.

I voted no, because there were no cost controls in the bill, and I really don’t believe that we can’t bring this up again in 2010 if we keep the pressure up, and force them to confront it in an election year. They’d hate to do that, but they would if there are demonstrations in the streets. I also think we can get a lot of this done in stages and have written that up here. What I’ve suggested isn’t perfect; but it’s a helluva lot better than HR 3200.

Finally, my own preference in all this is Medicare for All. In my view the insurance companies are only middlemen who serve no useful social purpose that the Government can’t perform more efficiently, since even the most efficient insurance industry imaginable can’t deliver insurance with a mark-up of only 3%. the marketing costs alone would greatly exceed that.

Anthem Blue Cross (Wellpoint) sent out an email today to their consumers encouraging them to contact their legislators because none of the health care bills in committee are, to use their words, “sustainable” and “responsible” health care reform. They went on to say that the current bills will result in diminished services and higher premiums for those who are insured through private insurers.

I find it both ironic and insulting that they would have the balls to send this out to their consumers who pay as much for health care as they do a mortgage payment and think that we are so stupid as to buy their load of crap.

What will not be “sustainable” if we have an a public option will be their profits. They will no longer set the standard for who is allowed to be insured due to wealth or health.

Anything less than a public option will keep the for profit insurance companies in the drivers seat.

We need Obama to find his balls and get out in front of this thing NOW. Its the least he can do for all of us that stood behind him and believed in CHANGE. Senator Kennedy certainly did and it is time for Obama to draw his line in the sand and make this happen.

Just what does non-negotiatable drug pricing have to do with this health care bill? Are these people nuts? Millions unemployed, losing their homes, in bankruptcy, and these asses want to continue to give big pharma a blank check on our credit card? Gee, maybe they want to trade off for a third war or maybe another trillion for the banks along with this boondoggle. How much of the tax payer money can they steal and/or waste. NO, NO DEAL.

Well this is an easy one. 76% of the public wants a public option, so if a public option is not in the bill, congressmorons shouldn’t vote for it. Regardless of what other shit they tack on to make it more palatable.

•NO Public plan
•NO Rates tied to Medicare
•NO Ability to negotiate drug prices

I voted to block its passage without the three points above, but I’m struggling with the bolded second point. I’d like to see some real data concerning Medicare reimbursement rates and if they cover doctors and hospitals costs in treating patients (notwithstanding excess administrative fees) as I keep hearing about physicians who will not take Medicare patients. (Which seems suspicious since there must be very few folks over 65 who can afford private insurance if they are retired.)

If this the wrong place to ask for such information?

“NO Ability to negotiate drug prices” is THE main reason Medicare is having problems;… “

Isn’t Medicare (dis)Advantage another large cause of Medicare’s woes? Wasn’t that passed when the Republicans were in charge (thus it’s intended effect is to harm Medicare financially) ?