Since last Thursday when Sen. Cantwell started calling her “basic health plan” proposal a “public plan,” I have been very troubled. Unfortunately, several media outlets have uncritically repeated her claim that it is a public option.
I don’t dislike Cantwell’s basic health amendment. In fact, I think it has some merit even if it is far too limited. It allows states to use the power of a large purchasing pool to negotiate better prices from private insurance companies. It could help some low income Americans get private health insurance at a better price, but it is in no way a public option. People would still be insured by private insurance companies. Most writers who focus on health care policy agree that it is not a public option (1,2,3).
Given that the issue of a public plan has become a political flash point, it seemed very strange to me that Cantwell would call her proposal a “public plan.” Calling her “basic health plan” proposal a “public plan” should hurt its chances of becoming law. Conservatives will attack it for being a public plan, and progressives will attack it for being woefully insufficient as a public plan.
Now, thanks to a Chicago Tribune article about Obama lobbying conservative Democrats on the issue of a public option, I think I have an explanation:
When Obama spoke by phone recently with Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., he made a point of the breadth of support for the public option, the senator said in an interview. Cantwell authored a proposal to let states set up public plans that Democrats added to the Senate Finance Committee bill on Wednesday.
This is very strange. Obama does not need to tell Cantwell that Americans want a public option. Cantwell strongly supports a public option. She voted for both public option amendments in the Senate Finance Committee hearing.
I think the purpose of the call was to ask Cantwell to try to mislead American into thinking her “basic health plan” is a public option. The evidence is that Obama does not plan to fight for a real public option, but only wants some fig leaf so he can tell the base that there is a public option. It sounds like Obama wants to try to use Cantwell’s proposal as the newest fig leaf.
Expect to see administration officials soon falsely claim that Cantwell’s proposal is a public option. It is the kind of fake “compromise” the health insurance industry is unlikely to really fight. It is not a public health insurance alternative to the private insurance companies. It is only a mechanism to get a better price from private insurance companies. Cantwell’s amendment, without a public option, still means the private health insurance companies will get millions of new consumers without competition from a public entity. The idea is completely unacceptable as an alternative to offering people the choice of a real public option.
I strongly hope Sen. Cantwell will stop calling her proposal a public plan. The American people deserve a serious debate about the public option. Actively trying to muddle a honest policy debate is unacceptable regardless of political affiliation. Don’t let a decent idea be used as a way to trick the American people.
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Take a look at this:
http://politicalwire.com/archi….._line.html
Its’ pretty smarmy so “sensitive” people, including children should be asked to leave the room…or just peek
Cantwell’s amendment only offers the possibility of help to “low income” people. It does nothing for the middle class American. It is basically designed for people that are not poor enough to qualify for medicaid because they might have some modest assets or be above the federal poverty level. It is also designed to offer very limited basic coverage. Does it do some good, yes. But it is a long way from meaningful and each state can mold it all the way from useful to downright crappy. And, worst of all, it still requires dealing with a private insurance company which means the cost will only go up.
It’s just more spin.
I don’t see how anyone could call this a public option.
It is simply a big group that buys private insurance and the premiums are to be subsidized by state and federal money. Washington State’s group has about 100,000 members.
A public option doesn’t use private insurance companies as a middle man. That’s the whole idea of the public option — to get out from under the insurance companies and to eliminate their profit margin from the equation.
not surprising if true. obama is the unctuous opportunist that your parents warn you about. cowardly, and absolutely without shame.
First time poster, longtime reader. Now I’m also an Obama cynic, but I read he called Cantwell after she said she could not vote for a bill without a PO, which was about a week and half ago. Like his call to Rockefeller, it seems he wanted to give assurances that the PO was still alive, thus referencing the breadth of support in congress, but that she may have to pass a bill out of Finance without it. I think the idea that Obama convinced Senator Cantwell to brand her plan a “public plan” so as to sell it is like 11-dimensional chess in reverse, where you think of some scheme that makes it seem Obama’s up to no good. Cantwell’s plan is a plan from her home state that’s called a public plan, its probably only her driving that ship. Of course I could be wrong, but I don’t think so. Now Snowe’s trigger is w hole different animal, I think the WH has tried to push that as a PO because there is tangible evidence of that being the case, and tangible evidence of the WG(at least Rahm) having supported that prior to Snowe proposing it.
You just said, “Does it do some good, yes.”
and you also said,
“It’s just more spin.”
So, spin is good, or what are you saying? Asking with a perfectly serious look on my face.
Sounds like everyone’s decided Public Option is inevitable. Now they need to shape Public Option to the insurance companies’ liking. Or pass something that isn’t a public option, and call it Public Option.
Didn’t Jane Hamsher predict this back in, what, May?
Welcome to commenting!
Obama needs to own up to not supporting the PO. To continue these manipulations is really irritating me.
My question from the previous thread still stands. If Wyden and Rocky vote against the Baucus bill and the HELP bill is brought to a vote on the senate floor, it will be almost impossible to get 60 votes for cloture.
So, don’t we need the crappy Baucus bill to pass out of committee so that the PO can be added in reconciliation and only subjected to the 51 vote requirement?
Oh, btw, my comment was to xargaw…forgot to hit reply. But, I thought you’d figure it out.
So, ???
This sounds like idle speculation.
Is there another kind?
Sure- there’s “idol” speculation in which one guesses which idiot is going to win the singing competition.
I So almost replied that. :) I guess I owe you one.
I’ll enter it as a “receivable”
Sorry Mr. President but, if there is anything less than a stron public option you can start packing your bags right now! We liberals and progressives have made it clear. We’re not going for any bullshit. If you can’t get your 60 senators to pass a real health care bill, you can call it what you like but, we’ll see it and you as an epic failure. That bastard Baucus took single payer off the table early on and we didn’t hear a peep out of you. You can’t get away with this ambiguity shit. It simply won’t flush. We’ve got our eye on every Dem who screws with this process and we’re going to come after all of you if you cave.
Is this diary about Obama or Cantwell?
Both suck.
Runnin him outa town on a rail are ya?
Can someone tell me why Obama opposes the Public Option? I had never even heard of a Public Option until I read about the idea on Obama’s website during the campaign. He was the one, as far as I know, to introduce the subject into our discourse. Why has he turned on it? And us?
Maybe there’s a bigger question: Why does Obama seem almost phobically opposed to liberal & progressive policy on all levels? War & Peace? Civil liberties? The rule of law? Transparency in government? Climate change & global warming? Gays in the military? He’s beginning to seem like someone who really, truly, deeply, does not have core liberal convictions.
I don’t think Obama opposes the PO. If he did, he wouldn’t have raised its profile by pushing for it in letters to Chris Dodd and Max Baucus, as well as strongly making the arguments FOR a public option in June/July, particularly in his press conference. The problem with Obama is he thinks it can be bargained away, while he would prefer it, he doesn’t prefer it nearly as much as Olympia Snowe’s vote. This isn’t some large scheme of bailing out the insurance companies, its about simple politics and finding the path that gives the WH a victory. Up until now, they thought that path included getting rid of the PO, it’s our job to convince them otherwise.
Obama doesn’t oppose the PO he just don’t have the backbone to stand up to the Corp Insurers.
The Public option was proposed by Jacob Hacker. It was taken up by Edwards and than Clinton. Obama know there was no way to win the primary if he also did not support a public option. It was not Obama’s idea.
Seems to me like he’s calling the “wrong” people. Shouldn’t he be calling the Senators who DON’T support the PO in an effort to change their minds? I believe he’s making calls to Senators he perceives as troublemakers, i.e. Rockefeller, Cantwell. I don’t believe for an instant Obama supports the PO– his actions and Gibbs’ persistent equivocation on the question speak volumes.
Our president understands what hell will be like if he doesn’t get a real public health care reform action passed. But he may not care. You have to wonder what could destroy this country faster? His ambivalence to the needs of the people, or the actual will of the people?
If these leaks are true about what he is going to do, he won’t last the term. We have never recalled a president before, but I feel there will be a vote of no confidence. Since their oh so effective handling of cheney’s war economy, the bailout of all the folks that never required it except to hide our insolvency, and their refusal to demand the only thing that will save our country from abject poverty and collapse, they must be getting what they want.
It just doesn’t happen to be what we want.
We should get rid of the exchanges and use Cantwell’s plan for anyone who doesn’t have employer-based insurance. If you don’t like the “Basic Health Plan” you could buy supplemental coverage.
It is not a public option, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea. And if everyone from Frist to Bloomberg to the Academy of Pediatrics is going to come out of the woodwork to support a public option-less plan we may not be able to stop it.
This is the third time in 2 days an article about Obama supporting and working for a public option has been used as “evidence” he is working against it. Strange.
Oldgold you wrote: “This is the third time in 2 days an article about Obama supporting and working for a public option has been used as “evidence” he is working against it. Strange.”
Why strange? Look at Obama’s history. He has steadfastly run AWAY from the public option. Recall that in February or so he called a White House conference on health care reform and failed to invite even one speaker in favor of a single option. He also wanted Tom Daschle as his head of HHS (until it turned out Daschle hadn’t paid his taxes properly). Daschle has been bought and paid for by insurers for years and is opposed to single payer. Obama selected Max Baucus as his spearcarrier for health care reform and he was the guy who had doctors and nurses arrested for talking about single payer before his committee. Obama then met in secret and behind closed doors (breaking a campaign pledge to hold all healtcare reform talks in public and to televise them live on C-SPAN). He even denied the meetings had taken place until the NYTimes blew the whistle on them. After these secret talks with insurers, Obama began talking about health “insurance reform” (not healtcare reform). He then made a speech in Colorado in which he called the public option “only a sliver” and not essential to his overall plans. And indeed, when addressed Congress after the Colorado speech, he again downplayed the public option and instead focused on a mandated insurance plan. Dennis Kucinich rightly diagnosed this as “the wrong approach” and a “sellout to the insurance companies.” Obama needs the money that insurance companies and BigPharma can provide to his (and other Democratic) campaigns. He is a Chicago politician. He has never been a progressive or even a liberal Democrat. Instead, like Rahm Emanuel, whom he chose as his COS, Obama is a DLCer. The only position that he fought strongly for was: huge bank and Wall St. bailouts, thereby rewarding one of his biggest sponsors, Goldman Sachs. Obama does NOT favor the public option and is only trying to finesse around the issue because he and Rahm know that most of the country supports it and especially the liberal-progressive wing of his party (which he seems to despise). Look at Obama’s actions, not his words.
The Liberals would only consider ‘runnin him outa town on a LIGHT rail’!
Green Revolution and all, don’tcha know?
Why is it strange? Because an artcle reporting Obama supports the public option is being used to argue he doesn’t. The title of the news story is:
I would recommend that folks read it. http://www.chicagotribune.com/…..ory?page=1
Nope. Happy to report that I’ve checked this out and Maria has never called this anything but a complement to a public option, which she is still fighting for.
Your misinformation was evidently picked up from NWPI (Northwest Progressive Institute) last week which they have since corrected. You need to correct this posting as well.
You don’t have to take my word for it. Call Maria’s office and confirm for yourself.
As Gertrude Stein once said, “There is no there there.”
I wish just once one of you people would explain to me why, if Obama supports a real PO, he doesn’t publicly proclaim that, publicly demand it. (Obviously the grudging mention of a phony, gutted PO in the speech before congress doesn’t qualify. He was clearly more happy and at ease when he referred to gangsters as good people.)
I’ve been waiting since last spring for a coherent answer to that question.
Today I’m still waiting.
Me, too.