Like most of us, I've been pretty overwhelmed by the contradictory and perhaps deliberately bewildering barrage of information coming out of the so called "health insurance reform" process in Washington.
I've been looking for any way to understand what they are doing, but there have been a shortage of clearly written pieces that explain what their gyrations mean to US.
Not long ago I found a very clear and concise article "The Public Option: Dead By Pen Strokes In Congressional Committees" by John Geyman, MD, on the PNHP site that lays out the current status of the so called public option.
Its been steadily whittled away at, and now it looks quite unlike the Jacob Hacker-inspired plan that not long ago, was used to sell many Americans on the idea.
Bait and switch...
Here's a bulleted list of changes in the public option from the article..
• Many people with private insurance who want to change will not be able to select the public option
• The public plan may not kick in until 2013 or until such time as private plans have been demonstrated not to save money (a so-called "trigger")
• Whatever new regulations that are imposed by the reform bill will only apply to new private plans; existing plans will be grandfathered in as is
• Private insurers worry that a public plan would crowd them out by undercutting their premium levels, so they lobby to keep the public program small
• The current proposals in Congress do not impose caps on private insurance premiums; nor do they allow the public option to significantly lower its premium rates below private plans
• The public plan will not be "pre-populated" with all Medicaid and SCHIP enrollees from the start, thereby keeping the plan small
• Instead of initial coverage estimates in the range of 120 million enrollees by public plan advocates, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that only 10 million would be enrolled because of the fine-print restrictions now being placed on the plan within Congressional committees. These restrictions are being heavily lobbied by the private insurance industry to ensure that they won’t have any real competition
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And so on.. Read it.
Anyway, I think that those of us who support the public option might want to think seriously about instead, pushing hard for a robust single payer national health plan.
A robust single payer national health plan, has the advantages of being sustainable over the long term, of saving a lot of money that could not be saved under any circumstances under any of the insurer-centric proposals, and it could also cover all Americans for free, for less than we are spending now. In short, it would accomplish our goal of making quality, world class healthcare affordable for all Americans.
What are you waiting for, pick up the phone and call your Senators and Congresspeople today!