Tag: public option

The Robust Public Choice Made Simple

Burning the Midnight Oil for the Next American Revolution

crossposted from The Hillbilly Report, also available in orange

From some online dictionary somewhere:

Robustness is the quality of being able to withstand stresses, pressures, or changes in procedure or circumstance

So: (1) Public Choice

“No Taxation without Representation”. Every single person facing an individual mandate must be provided with the choice of a publicly administered plan. Otherwise the government is forcing the citizen to pay without the elected representatives of the citizen controlling the spending.

You want to put a trigger on the public option. Fine, except the exact same trigger applies to the individual mandate.

You want to restrict access to the public option to some smaller group? Fine, except the same restriction applies to the individual mandate.

The system is not politically legitimate if it requires payment to for-profit commercial corporations.

(2) Robust

It cannot be lumbered down with any restrictions not faced by private insurers.

State by state public options? Really? You are really prepared to restrict the corporations to firms with no commercial activity across state lines? If they are free standing state by state public options, it has to be state by state for profit corporations. Oh, not allowing UHC into the exchanges defeats the purpose of lining private pockets at the public expense? Yeah, kind of thought so.

Baucus’s proposal … an Insider Trader move to protect an Industry

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, interviews Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, regarding a Robust Public Option:

AMY GOODMAN: Congress member Grijalva, I also want to ask you about Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus and his close ties to the healthcare industry. […]

REP. RAUL GRIJALVA: I think the product that has come out from his committee and himself, I really believe that it has no legitimacy in this debate. It’s an insider product. It’s there to protect the industry. It is not there to try to look for that middle ground. He is key in holding up deliberations, has been key in trying to work on a consensus, but everything you see in his legislation had to be approved by the industry before it became part of the plan. So I don’t think it’s legitimate.

[…] I consider Senator Baucus’s proposal to be essentially an insider trader move to protect an industry and really doesn’t have validity at all, both political validity or content validity.

For sale: birthrights. Price: one mess of pottage each.

In my last diary, I asked the Progressive Caucus to explain, precisely, what constituted a “robust public option.”  Is a “robust public option” the one currently in HR 3200, or is it the one originally demanded by Jane Hamsher among others?

But I don’t think anyone in the campaign to defend a “robust public option” understood what was at stake, for none of them took the time to define the term for me.  If the “robust public option” is the public option now in HR 3200, then it can be anything one wishes; co-ops, triggers, whatever.

(Crossposted to Orange)

All Groups favor choice of Public Option — in Mid August!

SurveyUSA conducted a Poll in Mid-August — prior to Obama’s well-received Speech in September — and they found that across the spectrum of Demographics Groups, a majority of Americans thought it was Extremely Important to have a Choice of a Public Option!

SurveyUSA Poll

Here is the Question which was asked, in a Survey of 1200 Americans, from all around the Country:

In any health care proposal, how important do you feel it is to give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance — extremely important, quite important, not that important, or not at all important?

All Groups

Margin of Sampling Error: ± 2.9%

Survey by SurveyUSA

Geography: USA 50 States

Data Collected: 08/19/2009

Release Date: 08/20/2009

Sponsor: MoveOn.org PAC

What is a robust public option now?

This diary notes a shift in definitions: A “robust public option” used to mean a public option available to all, on the first day of mandates.

What does it mean now?

(crossposted at Orange)  

Surrealistic Pill-Dough: A Journey into Tea Baggers & Healthcare Brighton MI

Last entry; remember ACTIVISM AND BRAVERY TRUMPS LECTURE. GO OUT AND DO IT! peace, out, D.

Cross posted from my blog, The Wild Wild Left (and I was told WWL & DD were the only 2 mentioned on Detroit’s WWJ radio report! 🙂

We parked at Mexican Jones, a small and empty restaurant I worked for at one time, when it was thriving. In the very back of the lot, there was a neglected trellis that lead to the almost invisible path that follows the waterway along the back of the business district to the Mill Pond where the “festivities” awaited.

We could hear the roar of the crowd, and the speakers a mile out. My 10 year old was nervous. “We have to walk through all that Mom? They’ll kill us,” he said laughing, but with the tinges of fear in his voice. I assured him we would be fine, as we came around the bend into the open where our wet footsteps squeaked on the slippery boardwalk that went over the swampy creek leading to the pond.

I opened my video camera as we neared the crowd, and asked him to hold my hand  in unity. I told him despite my “Liberal” t-shirt, no one would mess with a Mom holding her son’s hand, told him it would make me safer. That appeased his queasiness at being “almost 11” and holding his Mom’s hand. There were thousands there, and as we approached the outskirts, groups of ten here and five there, their wild-eyed glares, almost drugged, hate-filled ecstasy told me I had to keep him close, keep him safe. He fell for it.

Safe, from these self-acclaimed “Real Americans.”

“Don’t run your mouth, we’re here to report, not fight, Jake,” I warned him. He heard, but couldn’t help but say, “Unbelievable!” when we passed a black woman standing with a sign, standing and cheering the toward the stage from the bridge, not 15 feet from a middle aged businessman, whose sign read, “We don’t want no BaLack Obama.” “Mom why would she support these Republicans, they hate people like her, they’re racists,” his voice rising in the pitch of a distraught youth, whose voice has not yet changed. I saved the explanation that Brighton was chosen for a reason for a later date. Making it in Howell, the National Seat of the Klan for many years was too overt, so they made it 8 miles away in Brighton. They knew what base they were tapping. Hard core racists.

Then we entered the crush, the belly of the beast, circling to the right across from the roped off stage area to our left. A swarm of middle-aged whiteness, dotted with the elderly and swaddled in flags, crosses, fear and rage. A smattering of hard-core skinheads rubbed elbows with them, and were accepted in every quarter like family.

I felt like my Liberal shirt was a Star of David and I was pushing my way through a Hitler Youth rally. Yet somehow, I found myself smiling, and laughing aloud at them. At the sheer fallacy of them.

A Grateful Dead concert could not have been weirder, with the costumes and chanting, yet this was the antithesis of the vibe. These people wanted blood, not elevated consciousness.  

Axelrod: Government by Consent of the Corporation

crossposted from The Hillbilly Report, now up at Agent Orange

David Axelrod made the case for insisting on the public option if there is an individual mandate to buy from health insurance exchanges, on the Rachel Maddow show last night (segment page). Of course, he thought he was making a different case:

And there is an incentive for the insurance industry to go along and not try to fight these, and that is that there is going to be a larger insurance market, and they have to make that calculation, but we are prepared to do it easy or do it hard, we want to make it work for consumers.

One reading of Axelrod is:

“M’lords, the peasants are getting restive, and if you want to avoid a revolt or other crisis – say, a majority of the House of Representatives elected without being beholden to your largesses – you have to make concessions. However, make the calculation – in some versions of this reform, because of the greater number of peasants you will be taxing in your domains, you will be better off.”

Update: Also see: crossposts at ProgressiveBlue and MyLeftWing, and a response to Nicholas Beaudrot drinking the Axelrod cool-aid that the Public Option will “the Public Option will only affect a small number of people”, in a comment at Donkelylicious.

We Can’t Afford to Wait



We Can’t Afford to Wait

copyright © 2009 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

Only today Cable News Network aired a report that suggests most of those who want a public option health care plan are African Americans,  Persons in this population are more likely to be uninsured.  Statistics show dark skinned individuals also seem  predisposed to poor health.  News broadcaster Kyra Phillips continues.  Black people, when surveyed, say they think Mister Obama has performed well in office.  In contrast, far fewer white Americans approve of what the Obama Administration has done on the job.  Subtly, Ms Phillips reminds the audience, the current President of the United States is the nation’s first Black Commander-In-Chief.  The implication is obvious.

Yet, the tale is not necessarily as told.  Witness the stories shared in a MoveOn.org video, study the faces, and consider the situation of those who say they cannot afford to wait for health care reform,  Mostly white faces fill the screen.  

Do You Want the AIG Option, Or The Public Option?

This is a follow up to dday’s excellent diary, which talks about the Baucus bill and Trojan Horse of “allowing people to buy insurance across state lines”: http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

While they didn’t realize it, the Republicans and their Big Insurance enablers have actually given us a rhetorical sledge hammer. “Allowing people to buy insurance across state lines” is code for insurance deregulation, and what just happened the last time when an insurance company was allowed to do business in a deregulated environment?

Is Health Care a Commodity, or a basic Human Right? with Poll

Well according to this former HMO Medical Director, she traded Necessary Patients Care, for Career Advancement and a 6-figure Salary:

Linda Peeno MD, testifies



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

Question: Are the Patients, who are Denied Care, to save the Insurance Companies Money — DO those Patients have a RIGHT to their Health Care?

Or are Those Patients simply a Commodity — a “Cost Center” — that must be constantly constrained?  

No Captive Markets: No Public Choice = No Mandate


     NO CAPTIVE MARKETS!

   WE ARE NO CORPORATE PLAYING FIELD:
      LEVEL US AT YOUR PERIL

   NO GOVERNMENT MANDATED
      CORPORATE MURDER BY SPREADSHEET

     HEALTH INSURANCE BOARDS ARE THE REAL DEATH PANELS

     NO WELFARE FOR INSURANCE CORPORATIONS

     NO CAPTIVE MARKETS!

Is There A Fair Trade For Giving Up The Public Option?

To achieve anything in politics or anything else in life one critical factor is to have a clearly defined end state. Without this you can not know when you have actually crossed the finish line. We all know, either from watching politics or being involved directly, how easy it is to get so focused on the fight you lose track of the over all goals. It seems to the Dog this has become the case with Health Care Reform in general and the Public Option in particular. Over the last few months the Netroots has been strongly engaged in trying to get a version of the public option enacted as part of the over all health care reform.

Originally posted at Squarestate.net

Load more