Senator Landrieu suggested a few days ago that she was unlikely to support a public option.
Via TPM:
"Asked under what circumstances she would support a public option, Landrieu responded, "[v]ery few, if any. I'd prefer a private market-based approach to any health care reform that would extend coverage," according to the Monroe News Star."
A private market-based approach. She is one of a dozen or so Democratic Senators making similar statements
Now it just so happens that my little company, like most American employers, has been utilizing a private market-based approach in seeking affordable healthcare coverage, too.
Here’s how health insurance premiums have been increasing under the private market-based approach over the last 10 years - for my company, and others as tracked in the annual Kaiser Family Foundation Employer Health Benefits Survey:
Premiums have more than doubled in 10 years.
And there is nothing to suggest this trend will change. I'm speaking from recent personal experience here. We got reemed by our new rates last week after a "competitive" bidding process among the three insurers who dominate our "market" - a process that made the insurance broker audibly snicker when we demanded it.
And this experience is not remotely unique. Tis the season. The KFF 2009 survey should be here in a few weeks. Based on our experience, the premium cost growth number for this year will be right in line with the trend.
Moreover, the premium growth doesn’t even take into account all the additional costs that have also been shifted on to employees - higher copays and coinsurance, deductibles, etc. - over the past few years in the policy fine print.
And its not like health outcomes have improved. We're not paying twice as much for anything better than we paid for 10 years ago.
(By the way, the insurance companies rooking us - yet again - so nonchalantly in the midst of the current debate, is also a small piece of evidence that they do not take the current reform effort seriously. They apparently think they have the Senate bought and paid for.)
Let's Cut to the Chase
The spiraling cost of insurance is really our biggest barrier right now with respect to extending coverage to the uninsured.
It is also the biggest barrier to preserving current coverage for the shrinking number of us who do have insurance, without crushing more and more employers, and more and more families, under the spiraling burden.
Face facts: with respect to this biggest problem, the private market-based approach obviously is not working.
This case is not hard to grasp. In fact, it is impossible to miss.
(Go ahead - lock the lobbyists out in the hallway for a few minutes and take another look at the chart above with fresh eyes and a recalled capacity for shock and outrage.)
So here’s my question Senators:
If the private market-based approach to providing affordable health insurance obviously does not work, why, exactly, is it your preferred approach in extending coverage?
Just what would it take for screamingly obvious, consistently replicated, and universally acknowledged evidence on out-of-control health insurance premium growth to actually influence Senate legislation?
Do our Democratic institutions have any residual capacity left to actually do what is right, despite the opposition of entrenched special interest lobbies?
I guess that's actually three questions.
I am asking, by the way, on behalf of the ~240 million Americans who support a public option along the lines of Medicare - the only hope for providing universal coverage to all Americans without bankrupting us collectively in the long run (and many of us individually in the short-run) and without setting off a political firestorm among those not willing to be rooked by insurance companies year after year after year.