I'm trying to find out if this is true. According to a number of sources that I have been reading, none of the plans currently being considered for "healthcare reform" represent any new "options" for anybody other than those currently uninsured or unemployed.
Thats what I have been getting from a critical reading of the last few days news articles. If your or a family member's employer offers insurance, even if you do not currently purchase it, apparently you won't be eligible for public option.
Barring evidence to the contrary, I think that is what people should assume.
Obviously, being able to purchase insurance of any kind would help many people, especially those with pre-existing conditions, it will help those people who are uninsured, and can afford the premiums- but THEN - it will also have a far sicker risk pool than it would if it was open to all, almost dooming it to fail at the start for that reason, AND, it also ..
won't solve a great many of the problems that we have been seeing with woefully inadequate affordability, blacklisting, price increases when an employee gets sick, out of control uncovered costs, high co-pays and deductibles, or bankruptcies of the "insured" due to uncovered costs.
What gives? Why such a timid approach to such a HUGE problem?
If people can post links to any raw data from the various "public option" plans, (so far, I know of FIVE) I'll try to summarize it in tabular form.
Since the public option plans seem to be coming up short, why not CBO score the (AFFORDABLE, COMPREHENSIVE, TIME PROVEN) single payer plans?
I think that whenever you are looking at HEALTH INSURANCE PLANS, you should always assume the worst. (then you can be pleasantly surprised when you are wrong, "but you are not dead"- not trying to be trite, just to emphasize the importance of minimizing the risk of supporting something inadequate - Hopefully you get my point!)
Those who insist that Obama will give people who are employed another option - when the government contradictorily seems- to want very much to see that healthcare "option" (that is ALSO being presented as superior to single payer!)
as a meanstested WELFARE BENEFIT -
They need to at the very least- prove that indeed, the public option WILL be available to all and not designed to have a sicker risk pool- i.e. designed to fail- BEFORE they ask for our support on something seemingly so financially inferior to single payer. Because the sicker risk pool WILL be a huge disadvantage that could easily make public option very expensive. Unbearably expensive, if its supposed to also be self-sustaining.
This is basic common sense that the cheerleaders of public option are trying very hard to conceal.. Their goal is to prevent a dialogue on different kinds of healthcare, and a comparison of the US's BROKEN healthcare system, to those in oter countries, instead, they want to to just be about a bewilderness of public option options, which will conclude in a conclusion that its either not affordable or a abortive stab at a pre-broken plan that is literally designed to fail.
SO, given that RISK, I think the "burden of proof" should be on them. It should be on the cheerleaders of public option to prove public option will try to cover the unaffordably underinsured, (and often, healthy) a larger pool - making it so perhaps it could have a constituency, and with that, political clout that the unemployed, self employed and ill could not muster..
In other words, reducing the risk of it being designed to fail from the start..
Then, IF it could and would cover those currently unaffordably noninsured or unaffordably underinsured also - SINCE THAT is what they insist- THEY should prove it!
If they want the support of those whose real need is not some word, its a THING- TRULY AFFORDABLE, QUALITY HEALTH CARE FOR ALL WITHOUT HUGE GAPS AND UNCOVERED COSTS, they should prove that indeed it will be available to everybody who wants it.
Not just those currently uninsured or unemployed. (a guaranteed far sicker risk pool, also)
... What are they so afraid of? ...
...REAL CHANGE THAT IS KNOWN TO WORK..
Right now there are two dialogues going on. One is between the administration, the Senate committees, Congress and the various lobbying communities, the alleged "stakeholders"- but the BIGGEST stakeholdres, the people are being lied to with half truths and outright lies.
The goal of these lies is to delay people from ACTING to bring single payer out f the shadows AS THE ONLY SOLUTION THAT WOULD BRING US HEALTH CARE WE CAN ALL AFFORD.
They DONT want that for some reason,. obviously. I don't know what it is, but its obvious to me that they don't want it. They would have to be dragged to THAT table.
Without action, we will end up with a program for the uninsured only that will be so heavy with people who are sick that the premiums will start out borderline unaffordable and get worse from there.
In other words, it wont be something we can rely on. It will last a year or two and then DIE. And then, all those people who came forward to get illnesses treated, will have pre-existing conditions. Guess what will happen.
Look, in any situation, the default action is inertia. No change. Without proof that there is going to be change, when lives are on the line, it is saner to assume that there will be no change.
I think most of us would agree that many of the main players have been saying things like the above from the beginning. Even Obama said that healthcare would not be affordable - that why he didnt want a mandate. They are gearing up to either drop public option or make it unavailable to the majority BECAUSE THEY DON'T WANT IT TO SUCCEED.
Again, almost every statement I've heard in the last week seems to be trying to dampen expectations. Wendell Potter on Bill Moyers yesterday came right out and said it, they will probably do what they did in 1994, kill any real healthcare reform.
He should know.
I don't like to bring this up, but if you look at my predictions over the last year, I've actually been one of the most accurate folk here on healthcare issues so far. Many others- especially big Obama backers, have made wildly optimistic predictions and those predictions have been proven to be naive.
Their support of Obama seems to make them blind to his faults and the fact that even Presidents, political parties and governments are FAR less able to stop social changes and the economic forces that drive the decline in incomes and living standards than we would hope.
THATS WHY WE NEED SINGLE PAYER. ITS THE BEST WE CAN DO- really the ONLY thing we can do that works- TO REDUCE MEDICAL COSTS, IMPROVE ACCESS AND SLOW THE MARGINALIZATION OF WORKING PEOPLE.
I wish that I could be wrong but I think that the evidence is overwhelming that AS SHOWN BY ACTIONS, NOT WORDS- the Democratic Party is really out of touch with the needs of the American people..
They are making over optimistic assumptions for recovery that they HAVE TO DO, because they cannot admit that they don't know what to do to turn the economy around- They can't turn back the clock and make the US the only advanced nation in the world again. They can't stop the exponential growth in technology.
We should embrace change, not try to stop it.
These days, I hear daily that the Dems are almost as out of touch with most Americans needs as the GOP party is.
I would LOVE to be proven wrong.
PLEASE do that.