Kent Conrad (D-Health Insurance) claims that co-opts should be the alternative to private insurance. But will they bring down costs?
On Sunday, we were treated to the worse display of messaging I ever seen. The HHS secretary Sebelius implied that the public option was not an important part of health care reform while the Press Secretary Gibbs said that nothing has changed concerning the public option. Contrast these two dialogs:
John King: "So the public option is not a deal-breaker from the president's standpoint?"
Sebelius: "Well, I think there will be a competitor to private insurers. That's really the essential part, is you don't turn over the whole new marketplace to private insurance companies and trust them to do the right thing. We need some choices, we need some competition."
Here's the Press Secretary Gibbs:
GIBBS: Well, Harry, what the president has always talked about is that we inject some choice and competition into the private insurance market. There are places in this country, unfortunately, where if you don't get insurance through your job and you are seeking it on the private insurance market, you don't have any choice but one health insurance company. What the president has said, in order to inject choice and competition, which will drive down costs and improve quality, that people ought to be able to have some competitor in that market. There ought to be a choice that they have. The president has thus far sided with the notion that that can best be done through a public option.
SMITH: ... a hedge?
GIBBS: No, no, no. What I am saying is the bottom line for this for the president is, what we have to have is choice and competition in the insurance market. Again, if you are in a place in this country where you only get one choice, how in the world are you going to be able to convince anybody that you are driving down costs when you don't have to compete against anything?
Good grief, can we ever get our message straight? Either a public option is an essential part of the plan or it's not.
Then, along comes Kent Conrad (D - Health Insurance) on Fake News no less to say:
"The fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the United States Senate for the public option, there never have been, so to continue to chase that rabbit is just a wasted effort,".
Sweet! So what does Conrad want instead? He says co-opts are the answer but do they reduce costs? Let's get it from the horse's mouth:
http://thinkprogress.org/...
ROBERTS: What would they do to reduce costs? Because that is one of the central issues of health care reform.
CONRAD: Well, the important thing is they’d provide more competition. ... Beyond that, I think it’s very important not to over-promise here. [...]
ROBERTS: So nothing really in driving down the costs of service then?
CONRAD: Uhhh, no. If you believe competition helps drive down costs, then they would certainly contribute to holding down costs.
Roll that tape back:
Uhhh, no.
Hey Kent what rabbit are you chasing? Is it a big white one named Harvey?
Sam Stein in Huffington Post reported on a 2000 GAO study that shows co-opts do NOT save money:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
So exactly why is co-opts on the table when no one believes they will bring down costs?