Now that the dust is clearing, Ive been thinking a lot about the really ugly scam that has been perpetrated on the American people. "Public Option". Its a classic example of the Big Lie. It worked, it stopped real reform in the form of single payer, which would have cut into profits. People need to understand one VERY important thing. Public Option is a nonsense word made up by the insurance companies. It was absolutely never intended to actually be implemented.
Thats' the ugliest big lie and its amazing that so many bloggers here still don't realize that the whole thing was a diversionary tactic.
People believed in it because the truth, that Americans can't afford unsubsidized healthcare any more, that they haven't been able to afford it for almost a decade- is very unsettling.
But, telling the truth WAS the media's duty, and except for a very short list of real life heroes, the media largely glossed over the huge problems with the health care bill and continues to. Why? Because when politicians, including the President, lie, you can't just say to them:
"You are lying" and get away with it. Or so they feel.
You have to find some "nice way" to say it. So, over the last few months, we've seen a zillion variations on the nice lie. One of the faves is the deceptive headline that says something nice about it, but then the body text says the truth.. But still, they were too nice- and not honest enough about the gaping problems- with the result that many people still don't understand what happened and what will happen, instead, they will depend on something that they shouldn't, not make other plans, and that is really dangerous.
False hope..
So, Obama succeeded with his five- probably ten year detour because he told people what they wanted to hear, not what they needed to hear. The fact that America needs a solution that saves the most money right at the start was suppressed because it leads to cost savings that cut into profits. That solution will have to wait until this house of cards falls apart. Which it will. The easy money will continue for a while.
Easy money is a cornerstone of corporate power.
So, people were told lies. One of the biggest lies was the statement that public option was "like public healthcare", an intentional association that was designed to exploit people's intuitive knowledge that insurance companies would rather have them die than spend the money to have them live.
Unfortunately this intuitive knowledge was used to entrap people into supporting a bait and switch which was against their best interests in every possible way.
The statement that a public option could be profitable was such a crucial part of the anti reform strategy and a colossal lie because of a basic in insurance so basic that its taught on the first day of any course on insurance. Adverse selection is the logical tendancy of people, given any choice at all, to buy or not buy expensive health insurance based on their own knowledge of their health. It will force anything structured similarly into a death spiral of rising premiums and an ever sicker risk pool. This is the fate that is likely for anything similar. high risk pools, which are also nonprofit, and which exist all over America, lose money like crazy. So, the joke was on America, basically, and the politicians were surprised that they were increasingly being asked to make good on their promise, it was not easy to dump it like it was in 1993. But, it was obvious to most of us who follow the issue that they could never let public option actually be implemented because that would expose the big lie.
The minute any of you who still don't get that, realize this, that's when the whole thing starts to make sense. They lied to you, to kill discussion of single payer.
If you read the various critiques of the whole public option proposals you will see lots of gentle explanations to the mathematically illiterate masses of this ugly reality. BUT, very few commentators and journalists came right out and said "they are lying through their teeth" unfortunately, when they really should have. So, in retrospect, thats a really ugly omission, they should have said it louder and with no possibility of misinterpretation, because now the Obama administration is still getting away with pretending they are pro reform because of it.
The media did the same thing in 1993, almost exactly, as they did now. They tried to pretend that the Clinton plan and the Jim Cooper "Clinton-lite" plan were comparable.. when in reality, the Clintons plan though convoluted, would have worked and the Clinton-lite plan would have had the same adverse selection problem that public option would have had, dooming it.
THEY WERE NEVER INTENDED TO WORK.
Neither is the current plan, its WAY TOO EXPENSIVE.