Even in Montana, voters want single payer
ANACONDA - In a packed meeting room Wednesday at Anaconda's hospital, state worker and Butte resident Anna Dockter asked U.S. Sen. Max Baucus' chief of staff the question on everyone's mind: Why is national, public health insurance for all not being considered as a reform option?
"We're all recounting our experiences with private health insurance," she said. "We have pretty good insurance, and we're still paying thousands of dollars" for medical care.
John Selib, Baucus' chief of staff in Washington, D.C., gave the same answer he gave four hours earlier at a similar meeting in Dillon: A national "single-payer" health plan won't pass Congress.
"There is a single-payer bill introduced in the Senate," Selib said. "It does not have a single co-sponsor. There's some pretty simple arithmetic you need to do. ... It takes 60 votes to pass something in the Senate."
It's still not on the table, but the public pressure for it doesn mean one critical thing for health care reform: support is strengthening for a public option, as witnessed by what Selib told Montanans in that town meeting:
Ideas and principals supported by Baucus include health insurance reforms that will make it easier for the uninsured to buy private insurance and a "public option" insurance plan offered by the government as competition for private insurers, he said.
"If you think your insurance company is screwing you ... then you'd have the option of going to the public plan," Selib said. "Senator Baucus is fighting tooth and nail to include that in any final deal."
Matt Singer, who has been doing fantastic work on holding Baucus's feet to the fire back home in Montana, reports on one of the reasons Montanans in particular want to dump private health insurers:
Our friends at Health Care for America NOW! released a report today looking at health insurance competition in Montana, perhaps unsurprisingly they conclude:
In Montana, rural and most urban areas are considered "highly concentrated" under U.S. Department of Justice guidelines. This kind of concentration means that an insurer can, without fear of consequences, raise premiums and/or reduce the variety of plans or quality of services offered to customers.
Just Blue Cross Blue Shield controls 75% of the insurance market in Montana. Add in New West and you're looking at 85% of the market.
That's the reality of health care not just in Montana, but in many rural and underserved areas. It's for these populations particularly that a public option is so important. Without Baucus, a public option would be a non-starter, it being his committee that controls the legislation and him being the lead negotiator. So this is great news, in large part thanks to consistent and ongoing pressure from local groups like Generation H. It's also a promise that we need to hold him to.
But the good news gets even better: HuffPo is reporting that Ben Nelson is now "open" to a public option, again the result of a great deal of pressure from grassroots at home.
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) backed off his opposition to a public option in a meeting with health care advocates on Wednesday in Nebraska.
Nelson, according to three people in the room, told the group that he was open to a public option, the primary Democratic goal of reform and anathema to conservatives.
"The good news for all sides involved is that he's open minded," said Barry Rubin, the former Executive Director for the Nebraska Democratic Party, who was in the meeting. "He's not closed minded about a public option."
Jane Kleeb, a top Democratic powerbroker in Nebraska, said Nelson's openness to a public option was the biggest takeaway from the meeting.
"He made it clear that he is open to the public option. That's not a line in the sand where he says it must be off the table for him to move forward on health care reform," she said.
The fight remains to make sure that implementation of a public option isn't delayed or treated as a fallback plan if private insurers fail to adequately provide universal care in a few years, as Nelson, Baucus, and Snowe have previously argued for. It's got to happen, and it's got to happen now.