Firstly being on a personal level. I am one of the lucky majority who have health insurance, my real father is an independent contractor for the DoD and so I am on his insurance, under Blue Cross, Blue Shield of Tennessee. It is a shitty insurance, which recently didn't allow me to get my prescription for a leg (I have degenerative arthritis in my right knee, and it causes a Baker Cyst to come up on the back of my knee, and because the last surgery I had to fix it cost me around $600, I have to just keep going back every time it busts inside of my leg to get it looked at,and get a new prescription to bring the swelling down in my leg). The reason why? Because they only covered if it was to be taking only once a day, and my doctor prescribed twice a day, so I had to drive back and forth from the doctors and the pharmacy to get the doctors to sign the new prescription, and then I had to set in CVS for three hours, waiting on my doctor, who was the only one at the clinic and was terribly busy, to fax over the new prescription, so I could finally get my medicine. So to say that I am lucky to have that shitty insurance is shows how bad being without insurance really is.
I know for a fact how bad it is, my mother, step-father, and brother do not have health insurance, and it has destroyed my mothers health. She is diabetic, with two bulging disks in his lower back, and teeth that are messed up because of his childhood (a story that would take an entire diary to explain), and she can hardly afford to get her diabetic strips to test her sugar, and because of the problems with her health, she has now become a germaphob and also has been diagnosed with nervous condition, that makes it impossible for her to drive farther than five minutes down the road before she starts to freak out, and has to pull over because she feels trapped. My brother has bad knees from years of playing catcher in baseball, and has acid reflex, with forces him to take antacids every time he even smells spicy food, he is 18 years old and he already has major issues that he can not attend to because of lack of insurance. My step-father is lucky, in a sense, most of the time he just gets sick, colds, sinuses, etc. But he also chews tobacco, so he has never had his gums looked at, because of lack of insurance.
This is the people that the opt-out will effect. Yes of course, the red states will eventually fold in and be forced to accept the Public Option, but at what costs. It is is not about lives, because we all know people will die because of the opt-out system, it is about what the Public Option was suppose to stand for. The Public Option was suppose to be great fighter for the middle-class, those who can't afford insurance, and it is suppose to also be the great competitor, the one thing that will bring costs down, and give the insurance companies competition so that they can't do the awful things they do. But without all states participating, it will fail on several levels.
We have to look at it in a state to state level, and not national, because if you look at this argument in a national perspective, then you will miss the back-draft coming from the states that do not accept the Public Option. With there being a bigger majority of states that will accept the Public Option, than opt-out of it, there will be dramatic costs drops in all of those states. With dramatic cost drops, comes less profit for the insurance companies, and they can't have that, so they will go into states like mine, which I am 100% sure will opt-out, and jack prices up, higher and higher, until it can level out it's profit, and it will kick more and more sick people off the rolls, and deny more and more coverage to more and more people. Now instead of me being denied a prescription, they will deny me the right to see my doctor, then they will kick me off the rolls. So now instead of me going to the clinic to get my leg looked at, I will wait until I can not walk and go to the Emergency room, which will be left to be paid for by tax payers in my state. And I won't be the only one, this will be seen across my state, and other red states like mine.
Now some will say this is where the pressure comes in, and the sight of other states succeeding with the Public Option, will push red states to accept it, and be forced to accept that they were wrong. This may be true to an extend, but the question is, how long can it take? A parallel example of how stubborn the right can be, and how stupid the people who subscribe to their incoherent rambling are, happened right in my state, and we had even had states around us, that share a border with us, doing the exact thing my state congress voted down, and a majority of my state disapproved of. During the spring, my state was working on proposals to install casinos through the state, and put a tax on winnings, and on the building, etc. This would have created jobs, made some dry countries wet, which would have expanded some new businesses to those counties, and would have brought an end to our outrageous state debt.
The proposal died in committee, since the state congress is controlled by a huge majority of republicans, and they had all the people in my state screaming that we (Pro-casino) were trying to move this state further from God, and we were sinners, etc. Not one of those against the argument ever brought any new ideas, and said it was better for us to raise taxes on cigarettes and alcohol, while dramatically cutting student aid money for college students. They didn't care that my generation is now in trouble with trying to find money for college, they didn't care that even with all that our debt is still outrageous, they didn't care that it would have created jobs, they didn't care about anything, because the GOP got to them before commonsense could. Now the state above us, Ohio has casinos, in fact they love their casinos so much, that they are trying to make every casino in Ohio stay in Ohio and try to bring new ones in it. Ohio is still in bad debt, but they are still making money of their casinos, and making more than all the tax increases, and the cut to student funding we did down here.
Now this is how bad my state is, there was a proposal to put video poker machines in the HORSE TRACKS, and that didn't even make it past any committee. So you ask me to believe that a state so far right, will some how bow to the factors in front of them quick? No of course not. And it won't be toxic to them, because the republicans in this state are stupid. The support for casinos were never there, and even now with all the new taxes, etc. they still are not there. It will take years for my state to see how backward we are on this issue, and it will costs us. The same thing will happen with the Public Option.
The states that opt-out of the Public Option will be similar to my state, and it will cause grave problems for the reforms in other states. While states are saving money because of the public options, the other opt-out states will be gaining more and more spending, so much so that it will almost eclipse any savings the Pro-PO states have. The insurance companies will not loose a dime, and the only thing being lost will be life savings of people, homes, cars, valuables, and more importantly lives.
Then if you throw in the Baucus Tax on top of all of this, and families like mine will be bankrupt, and quick, and it will cause the mortgage problems in those states to grow even higher, credit card debit will grow even higher, and it will be such a factor on the state economy, that it will cause state level depressions, which will have repercussions throughout this country. So you will have more sick people, higher insurance prices, and a new wave of foreclosures and debt problems, and all so we can have just a few spineless Democrats vote our way.
DAMMIT WE DO NOT NEED A COMPROMISE!!
We need the Democrats to either vote with the people or get the HELL OUT OF MY CONGRESS. We have 60 votes already, what is the deal? I will not sit by and watch as my family, my state, and my country become under the grip of the insurance companies and not have a PUBLIC OPTION to combat them. WE DON'T NEED AN OPT-OUT we just need reform. And I am very angry towards this. With this opt-out we will watch as the people in this country suffer, and yes eventually states will go for the Public Option, and yes it will change the minds of the GOP, and yes without it the GOP can blame every little thing on the Public Option, but the thing is simply, is that political gain, that may take years for it to work, worth the life of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people, the complete collapse of several state economies, and a longer recession? No, not in my book. Also the fact is, even though the right in this country are dumb enough to listen to the hogwash coming out of the mouths of republicans, they aren't dumb enough not to see success. Once the prices go down, and the Public Option works, then the right-wing nut jobs will accept it, kind of like Medicare, they support it, they won't kill it, but they don't really like it. We have to do that, rather then suffer the wrath that will follow if states are given the option to opt-out, and the people are still forced to buy insurance.
So instead of compromising even more than we already have, let's instead do some arm twisting, let the Blue Cross, I mean Dog, Democrats know that if they like insurance companies' money so much, then they better vote for the Public Option, or else they will not have a job no more, and they will no longer get those nice fat checks from the insurance companies. So the opt-out should not be states, but for Congress. Either you VOTE FOR US or you can opt-out of HAVING A JOB.