Sen Wyden gives a very insightful interview with Cohn. He wont reveal his vote on the bill still but boy is he unhappy. He calls this not reform. He doesn’t think it will help lower premiums. ....
Wyden once again hammers home a point missing in t his debate: the public option everyone wants will be walled off to nearly all Americans. He says people are starting to figure out the public option wont be open to them. He gets it- the public wont support mandates if they can have choice including a public option.
Im not sure how the discussion went from "you can choose to keep what you have or opt into another including a government option" to : "you get to keep the plan you have." Im not sure how Wyden will vote, but his leverage I think would increase should he say NO. Every paper and talk show will want to interview him on his NO vote and why he did so. This would be a great way to get the word of truth out- the public option is a joke and wont be able to lower premiums if it is a walled off dumping ground for the chronically ill and others. We shall very soon see today...
Cohn Interview with Wyden-
JC: Is this still a stage when you can actually make arguments about substance, citing studies or projections, and change people’s minds?
RW: Yes, absolutely. There are a lot of people who, during these last few months, didn’t really get the whole story.
For example, one of the discussions I’ve had with some of the public option supporters, here in the Senate, is this reality that almost everybody carrying public option signs in America over the past few months would not get to choose a public option. Hardly anyone’s picked up on this.
In the New York Times survey on the public option, which is what everybody quotes to say there’s tremendous support for the idea, the question is framed this way: Would you support a public option that all Americans would have access to? But CBO said, I think, that just 12 or 13 million out of several hundred million could get into the plan. And the Senate’s not talking about much more. So, yes, people are starting to kind of come around to realizing exactly what the choices are going to be.
JC: What do you say to your friends in organized labor who are not happy--who are going after your choice proposal?
RW: I say, folks, we’re very eager to work with you in various ways to address your concerns. We’ve pointed out that the bill already has robust risk adjustment and reinsurance [which would help address the worry of hurting older workes] and that we’re open to other ways of addressing their problems.
But you get the feeling there’s a bit of a control issue here--that when people have choices, when people have these additional options, they’re going to hold the people who are controlling the money, the benefits managers, for companies and for labor, they’re going to hold them accountable.
Now I would hope that those benefits managers, be they union folks or company people, would say let’s think about the long view here. This could really strengthen our hand. If our people have more choices we can go to our insurer and say look folks, you better give us a better deal. We want to stand up for our folks, we want them to have the relationship with us, not head off with a voucher to the exchange.
JC: Are there still opportunities to change the bill? As the saying goes, how much is getting baked into the cake now?
RW: I think this cake is far, far from baked. And I say that primarily because of what’s coming on the cost issue. I think you’re going to see, in the next couple of weeks in particular, some powerful evidence that this bill does not cut it when it comes to holding down premiums and containing costs, which is what most Americans see as the essence of health reform.
http://www.tnr.com/...