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Sen Tom Harkin (D-IA) has been a strong advocate for the public option. On a recent call with reporters,
Harkin says a so-called “public option” will be in the senate bill. ”And especially if we’re going to have a mandate that everyone has to buy insurance, then certainly it would be bordering on the unconscionable to mandate that you have to buy insurance from a private company,” Harkin says. “At least, then, by having a public option out there, people at least have the choice of a private or a public option.”
Today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a similar connection between the public option and the individual mandate:
Pelosi came closer than any member of the Democratic leadership has thusfar to suggesting that the individual mandate should be conditional on the inclusion of a public option. Pelosi declined to elaborate when pressed by TPMDC on whether Congress would revisit the individual mandate if the public option can’t survive the Senate. But her implication was fairly clear.
The House, she said, “will not force America’s middle income families to negotiate with insurance companies.”
This is a theme I have heard a lot from the left side of this debate. If there is no public option, an individual mandate is completely unacceptable. If Democrats pass a law forcing people to buy expensive insurance from private companies, it could quickly turn into a political disaster. But for supporters of the public option, there is a dangerous flip side to this argument. That is, without an individual mandate, there does not need to be a public option. It is concerning that this might be the “out” for Democrats if they are killing the public option.
It is important to note that Olympia Snowe is both against a public option and an individual mandate. She already got the individual mandate weakened in committee, and might seek to weaken it further, or eliminate it altogether. The White House has already signaled that they are prepared to do almost anything that Snowe wants.
A health care reform bill without a public option and without an individual mandate is the type of bastard arrangement likely to please almost no one outside the Senate. The fear of losing an individual mandate already has the insurance companies freaking out. The hospitals are very concerned because they made a deal to accept payment cuts in exchange for the promise of near universal coverage. Grassroots progressives demand a public option in order to provide viable competition to the for-profit private plans, and the vast majority of Americans favor the idea. Many health care policy experts agree that an individual mandate is needed to achieve universal coverage (although the Senate Finance bill’s insufficient subsidies make anything close to universal coverage impossible regardless of if there is a mandate). But increasingly, I see this set up as a way for Democrats to “justify” their failure to pass a real public option.
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Obviously, failure to pass the PO and a mandate would fall into the category of epic fail. A mandate with no PO with be an epic fail plus teh stupid. Do these representatives talk to real people?
FINALLY! If you look at my first post on FDL, it was that we need to establish a linkage between the IM and the PO or else things are going to get really, really ugly.
If there were neither a IM or a PO, then we could still stick the insurers with business practices controls, THAT EVERYONE SUPPORTS, whether it maintains their profit levels or not. Fuck em.
So if the IM and PO cancel one another out, and all that’s left are the insurance company business practices reforms, which everyone supports, then we win if all we do is force the insurers into honest business practices and don’t deliver them a captive customer base to keep their profits high.
Pelosi’s press briefing Today…Watch
Pelosi’s press briefing…
The American People support the public option “62-31 they support a public option”
Pelosi “they (Americans) know if they are mandated to buy health insurance they don’t want to have to buy it from the same old insurance companies who have not served them well. We are saying rather than force them to buy health insurance from the insurance industry let’s give them the freedom to to do that if they wish or to have a public option. The more you talk mandate the higher the support for a public option becomes “
If mandates increase the size of the risk pool and a growing risk pool is supposed to decrease costs, why then do US health insurance companies –which already have more customers/a bigger risk pool than single-payer programs in other countries– charge their customers more every year as the profits of these companies continues to rise?
The mandate/risk pool/costs argument pitched by the health insurance industry is a cruel joke.
HR 676: Medicare for All is the only antidote to this sick system.
Achieving “Universal Coverage” which to me means Universal Care would be quite simple if it were paid for through progressive income tax…. preferably taxed at each paycheck like FICA etc… for most wage earners.
The explanation Jon provides is excellent… but it’s obvious everyone is still trying to fit the final bill inside the private insurance model… which cannot and should not pass.
I also think that no government subsidy should be allowed to be used towards purchase of anything but a buy into the public plan. It’s simply wasteful and self defeating under any final model currently under consideration.
And add dental and optical care to the Public Plan now!
Keep pushing
That’s what I say Marcos. If in the end we don’t get the public option but we get stringent controls placed on the industry with removal of the antitrust exemption, at least then we could claim actually providing a measureable benefit to people. An individual mandate is just anathema. Why are we going out of our way to protect a parasitic industry?
Passing a bill with no mandate and no PO, but with regulations prohibiting denial of coverage due to preexisting conditions, rescissions, and refusal to cover specific illnesses due to preexisting conditions would be an improvement over the present circumstances. So I see no downside for Democrats in passing it as long as they make it effective immediately.
Passing that would increase pressure on Congress to do something about costs next year, because the insurance companies will immediately jack up rates because they finally have to take care of the really sick people they’ve been leaving to die. That would bring the cost-cutting issues to the forefront, and then we could bring up enhanced Medicare for All, single-payer once again, and also robust PO plans open to the whole population, as cost cutting alternatives.
I think the no PO, and no mandate is a better outcome of the current process that a severely constrained PO with a mandate, or a mandate alone would be.