While in Washington last week, the fair Montanamaven wangled a full 15 minutes with Tester, haranguing him in support of single payer/Medicare for All. She may have helped Overton-Window him over to Schumerland.

Behind The Scenes, Pelosi Pushing Strong Public Option With House Democrats

Spin or real?

I was gonna be snarky but now am wondering if this means the Senate is actually gonna push this opt-out crap and now that she knows where they’re headed, she can go back to being the progressive’s protector and PO BFF extraordinaire instead of busying herself with so many trial balloons as she has the last few weeks

Even W was smart enough to object to negotiating with himself. Dems apparently can’t get enough of it. Why bother forcing Nelson et al to join a filibuster when you can cave in unilaterally.

I think you’ve pointed out quite effectively that there aren’t any Dem Senators that publicly stand ready to filibuster with the Rs. Why then is additional weakening of the bill necessary? Why are the talking heads and, it would appear, the WH *still* saying “the PO doesn’t have the votes” or “We can’t get 60 votes”

I think Occam’s answer would be that they want a weak bill.

On prior threads I’m guilty of arguing that opt-out is less objectionable to me than other compromises, particularly compromises to the strength of the public option for those states that remain in. I think it’s a very effective way to put the opposition in a very tough spot. If it was truly necessary to compromise, I think it’s better than a lot of other half measures.

Now that the Dems seem to be negotiating with themselves in earnest, what is the strength of the public option that is subject to this theoretical opt-out? Are advocates putting this on top of other hobbles placed on the public option?

We don’t need weasel words right now, we need healthcare. Louisiana is a state with one of the highest percentages of people living in poverty. In response to that the Republican state senator from River Ridge is already planning to have Louisiana opt out of healthcare refrorm.

http://www.statehousecall.org/…..lan-for-us

This so outrageous it is pathetic. We are second in the number of people living in poverty only to our neighbor Mississippi.

The country needs real reform, the whole country not just the blue states. DC Dems, don’t let weasel Republicans with Presidential aspirations take Lousiana’s chance at a public option away.

I guess we need to get back on the phones, and tell our Senators, tell our Representatives:

An opt-out on healthcare means that we will “opt-out” of donating to your campaigns. We will “opt-out” of phone-banking, and envelope stuffing. We will “opt-out” of canvassing the precincts. We will “opt-out” of 2010 entirely, if you are one of the weak-kneed corporate sell outs responsible for us not getting the healthcare that is our right.

Somebody explain to me again why the veal pen is pushing the “opt-out cop-out” that gives the insurance industry such a big happy?

They have to appear to be doing everything they can to earn their bribes.

Nobody knows. The people hailing this as a great idea seem to be doing so on blind faith.

So there are now enough votes to pass a public option in the Senate. It may not be a great public option, but the notion that we “don’t have enough votes” just exploded.

Finally.
And also happening today: David Brooks (’Bobo’) at NYT finally grasps that health care needs to be fundamentally reformed, from the bottom up. And Bobo writes that Wyden’s proposal offers most flexibility, coverage, cost control for Americans.

Worth noting, MSNBC’s “Morning Meeting” has Ron Wyden on today explaining how his amendment would break up healthCo, for-profit monopolies.

Convergence?

$ $ $

That’s why.

I think you’re right about blind faith. More fun with Charlie and Lucy, now it’ll be be opt-out and availability limited to uninsured.

On a whim, I was looking back at what Obama was promising last year about this time. (I can’t say that revisionists haven’t changed the text available online to match the current position…)

OBAMA-BIDEN PLAN TO PROVIDE AFFORDABLE, ACCESSIBLE HEALTH CARE TO ALL

Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s plan strengthens employer–based coverage, makes insurance companies accountable and ensures patient choice of doctor and care without government interference. Under the plan, if you like your current health insurance, nothing changes, except your costs will go down by as much as $2,500 per year. If you don’t have health insurance, you will have a choice of new, affordable health insurance options.

So, tell me what you’re supposed to do under his plan if you don’t like your current health insurance?

I think the answer to that question makes clear that opt-out won’t substitute for any other concessions, it will be just added to the pile.

Another sign of ‘convergence’: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…..15567.html”>Bill Moyers and Micheal Winship today at HuffPo regarding the leveraged buyout of democracy, this time by healthCos:

If you’ve been watching the Senate Finance Committee’s markup sessions, maybe you’ve noticed a woman sitting behind Committee Chairman Max Baucus. Her name is Liz Fowler.

Fowler used to work for Wellpoint, the largest health insurer in the country. She was its vice president of public policy. Baucus’ office failed to mention this in the press release announcing her appointment as senior counsel in February 2008, even though it went on at length about her expertise in “health care policy.”

This may be an unpopular thing to say here, but, while my first choice is a “robust” public option, given a choice between weak public option and robust opt out public option I would take the robust opt out public option. And I live in a state that would initially opt out and I would personally be hurt by the choice. The way I see it, the red states would change their tune as soon as their constituents see how much better their neighbor states are doing in healthcare. There are also businesses which would choose to go to an opt in state rather than an opt out state. There are people who will move because of healthcare costs. Real sick people can’t move but people with a few health problems would move. It’s kind of the opposite of cherry picking.

God bless Montanamaven!

I should add this would be only for a robust public option with all the protection we want. States who opt in later should be charged an extra fee. There should be no fiddling around with the option within the states i.e no corporate lobbying to make changes in individual states.

A promulgation for prompt propagation:

A Veal Pen Roster or link thereto is hereby required to be appended to every FDL article that mentions said-same Veal Pen or select denizens thereof.

sincerely,
The Other Management

I don’t, but if anyone wanted to put together a comprehensive list of the veal pen orgs with contact info, they could have all the traffic they could eat.

You can find most all of them on the HCAN board of advisors.

Thank you, Senator Tester!

Well, Harry. I guess you’re out of excuses…

My senator, Tom Udall just assured me he was totally in support of a strong PO.

I had the same English teacher all through high school. I think she started there about 3 days before dirt. Anyhoo, at the beginning of each year she would say about not handing in homework:

“Of all human inventions, the excuse is the most worthless.”

Mrs Cooley

On edit: Jane, you’re not far from where those words were spoken for who knows how many years. Mount Vernon HS in Alexandria, 1 mile from Mount Vernon.

i think the veal pen is praying for some senators to die or fold.

The Schumer PO sucks. If getting it in there w/o the opt-out crap opens the possibility that it is made better in conference perhaps that is the right route but I just don’t trust these guys.

Time to start watering down Public Option: opt-out, longer phase-in, lower subsidies, higher premiums. Anything so that the Liberals can be blamed for scuttling the bill.

Ooooh. That’s cold. Funny, but cold.

Put down your milquetoast and do your job, Harry.

Citizen Teddy Partridge:

Why don’tchu hold yer breath until the administration starts underminin’ the public option since they are now hangin’ out with any product that comes out of this process…that color blue you turn will match yer socks.

You must’ve been here for the Senate Judiciary hearings during the Bush years.

Mistrust of Chuck Schumer pretty much got baked into everyone’s DNA around here at that point.

Citizen realworld:

The first Schumer option is Medicare pls 5% and if the House gets the medicare option in their bill before Reid puts the Senate version together and lines up the first Democratic amendments, a real public option is quite possible.

The lobbyists strategy is going to be:

1. CONFUSE people with nonsensical ideas, bells and whistles
2. DELAY so the lobbyists can work their black magic and the Dems fear the holidays approaching
3. THREATEN to go nuclear and turn the public against any reform

So our strategy has to be: Keep it simple, move thoughtfully but swiftly, and keep the pressure on congress to do the right thing

Citizen allan:

The real deal…Pelosi must know that the CBO is gunna score Medicare plus 5% as the best of the options.

Was she the one who left her name on the Mad Max plan, pdf file.

Deep thought:
How about Medicare plus 8%. And airdrop Doug Elmendorf into North Korea.
Would that get any more people on board?

I just received an email from Congressman Grayson stating his support for real health care reform and asking Americans to sign his petition to Senator Harry Reid.

Click here to see the email, which I’ve posted at FDL, and sign his petition.

Reading through the comments from this and other posts, I’m convinced that not only is OPT-OUT a bad idea, it’s an overly-complex, immoral idea and it has the potential to be a legislative quagmire.

I started out thinking, “What the Hell! Let the Red states opt out, then the people will elect progressives that will OPT-IN!”

But the more I read everyones comments, I realize that there are SO MANY DETAILS that would have to be worked out that there may have to whole other bill passed to deal with potential problems.

NO OPT-OUT

You first.

For me it got baked in during the Lamont campaign. Was that before or after?

I trust you know what I mean.

Schumer: DSCC Won’t Commit Unconditional Support for CT-Sen Nominee

51+ votes, no filibuster

This is what victory looks like.

In other interesting news, the American Hospital Association says that the Baucus bill doesn’t cover enough people, so it’s reconsidering its commitment of $155 billion in savings over 10 years.

That was an interesting and somewhat unexpected shot across Bad Max’s bow.

“That was an interesting and somewhat unexpected shot across Bad Max’s bow.”

Er… what’s so unexpected about corporations demanding even more federally mandated victims for their extortion rackets?

For further discussion of how far some progressives are willing to bend over in support of the proposal for states to opt out of the public option see the Huffington Post: “AMERICA-STAN: The Progressive Movement Neuters Itself by Supporting ‘States Rights” to Opt out of the Public Option”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…..16030.html

The article also discusses how the Public Option has been turned into the “Public Option in Name Only.

congratulations – w00t!

An aspect of the current debate pertaining to the PO , the single payer scheme and the private insurance scheme should be established. This is that if the PO is to function at all it will ultimately lead directly to a single payer scheme, and ultimately necessarily to supplant the private insurers. There is but one condition that the PO needs to satisfy, that it offer lower premiums than the private insurers.

The polemic between those that argue for a PO plan now or a single payer scheme now becomes mute. The real polemic is between the private insurers and those aspiring to make the PO viable, because the two can not coexist.

The argument is simple. For the PO to succeed it must offer premiums that are continually lower than private firms, As long as this holds there is no need for private insurance firm to exist and once this ceases to hold there is no need for the PO to exist. Stated differently, the PO exists if and only if the private insurers do not exist.

Why do we need Jon Tester, or any other Senator designated as vote 51?

The last time I heard, Joe Biden was still Vice President, and I believe he is on board as supporting Health Care Reform. So, as long as HRC gets 50 votes in favor, and on the off-chance that there are 50 votes opposed, Joe gets to break the tie.

I think that’s not the choice. POs in the current bills are already weak. So weak that the bills ought to be defeated without an opt-out. Addition of the opt-out makes no difference to me, except that it signifies that the Dems suggesting it didn’t even have the guts to ask for a strong PO in return.

Yes, but does his definition of “strong PO” correspond to yours?

There’s no way Progressives can accept this “opt out” idea. We have 51 Senators on record in support of at least the 50-state negotiated rates public option. Settling for “opt out” does not get us to 60, if it even gets any votes at all. So who needs it…

At some point the public option becomes so diluted that it doesn’t help anyone. We may already be there, in fact. But that means everybody has to be on board for fixing it. Those Senators who sabotaged the plan can’t just turn around in a few years and say, “This plan requires too much fixing. We’re opting out and if you ever get it fixed, maybe we’ll take another look.”

No, that’s not how it works. It’s our plan. We ALL work together to make it work.

Yup – good memory you have there ;-))

And that was located by EW reader/commenter and all-around genius ‘William Ockham’. EW had quite a droll post about it.