And who cannot afford private insurance? Those with real health issues who private insurers deem are “high risk.” Their premiums will be jacked up so much that they will not be able to afford private insurance. Enter Uncle Sam’s public option, the dumping ground for customers the private insurers do not want.

A public option must be for everyone and anyone who wants it.

76% support having Uncle Sam used SOLELY to provide coverage for those whose health issues make private insurance unaffordable, while private insurers sign up millions of healthy folks required by law to buy their product? That’s whacked. My support for the public option goes away if it is based on affordability.

A public option for everyone and anyone who wants makes sense. Alternatively, a provision outlawing discrimination in the price of monthly premiums. Affordability requirements for the public option is nothing but a huge subsidy for the private insurance industry. It facilitates private insurers, who stand to gain millions of new customers from the bill’s mandates, moving their high risk customers to Uncle Sam.

It’s like wanting a bike for Christmas, and getting a hot wheels car instead.

and being told it’s a Trek Madone SSLx

Then there won’t really be a public option. A public option that small will fail. The fight now is to tie it to Medicare rates and open it up to all non-Medicare eligible Americans. Not even the House bills had what can be called a “robust” public option meeting the FDL criteria. The merged House bill will have to be amended, and when passed, it will have to be shoved down the Senate’s throat politically.

There’s a long way to go.

remarkable message discipline on FDL, even being outside the veal pen, and all.

still in the paddock, though.

also good commentary on this at Corrente who I think is safe for most Firepups to read.

It’s like wanting a bike for Christmas, and getting a hot wheels car instead.

The New York Times reported on Saturday, October 17, that Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) is warning his constituents that the “public option” is not going to be available to the great majority of Americans. No one who has actually read the Senate health committee’s “reform” bill or the House “reform” bill (HR 3200) disputes this. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the “option” will be available only to about 30 million people, or about one American in ten. As the Times put it (slightly inaccurately), the “option” in the Democrats’ legislation “would be out of bounds to the approximately 160 million people already covered through employers.”

Does the public understand this? According to Wyden, they don’t. Wyden says his constituents are shocked when they are told the “option” will not be available to the vast majority of Americans. When he began informing his constituents about this truth last summer, “They nearly fell out of the bleachers,” he said (“And the public option is….,” New York Times, October 17, 2009, A10).

Oh well. The “bait and switch” was a “noble lie,” I suppose….

Oh, you mean like ALL that Bi-Partisanship we saw when “W” was President. (do it my way all the time or I’ll send Cheney after you)