Lots of talk in the last 24 hours about the death of the Public Option and much much talk about Co-ops. Is this necessarily a bad thing? I think not! In fact I would encourage lots and lots more talk about co-ops in the Main Stream Media because it will eventually get us to discussing the real issue behind the Public Option. Hint: It's not just to "keep the HMOs honest". It's about cost control and it about saving the American public untold billions of dollars in premiums. Plain and simple.
The great thing about co-ops for charlatans like Kent Conrad is they can appear to be reasonable compromisers and contend that they are a less offensive alternative to the public option, at least to the big money HMOs that own him and most of the Senate lock, stock, and barrel. But just talking about co-ops at length may actually get us back to where we need to be - the Public Option.
Can anybody deny that the drop in support over the last 2 months in public opinion polls for "Obamacare" has simply been one of fear? If you look at the R2000 poll today, it really doesn't appear to be an increase in the fear of death panels or forced suicide counseling that is the predominant fear.
No, the real fear is what is has been all along: Cost to my pocketbook. The forces of good ceded that high ground many months ago when they let the $1 trillion+ figure become the headline everyday and refused to explain it as a 10 year projection. $100 billion per year might actually have been easier to swallow for those whose primary concern is cost. With 70% of these costs covered by better administration and distribution, we were only talking about $30 billion a year in actual out of pocket increase for the whole country.
If Obama officials had said this entire program will cost about $30 billion more a year and that the super rich can pay for all of it, we would have been 3/4 of the way to winning the battle then and there.
Instead when selling this program our President always starts the pitch with "14,000 a day losing their health insurance". It's a great point but it should always have been the 5th or 6th point to make. It's preaching to the choir. Anybody who is that concerned with that issue already supports health care reform.
The first argument always should have been is COST. The public option saves ALL OF US MONEY. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US SAVES WITH THE PUBLIC OPTION. The only loser is the HMOs gigantic profits.
Whatever the incremental cost of $20-30 billion dollar tax increase on the top 1% to pick up the yearly slack, proponents of the public option need to keep stressing the costs saving for every American consumer of health care if a robust public option is part of the package.
The co-op talk may actually allow the debate to return to what is always should have been. COST SAVINGS. Co-ops save nothing and don't work. Nancy Pelosi should have the CBO score a co-op v. robust public option, not in costs to the taxpayer but in savings of health insurance premium dollars . That's all anybody cares about anyway because there won't be any tax increases on 99% of Americans.
There's a solid 45-50% support for all of this out there. The tipping point involves getting the other 10-15% of the convinceable on board. They were on board earlier this year but they got scared about cost. They don't care about other people losing their health insurance. They don't care about HMOs abusing other consumers. They don't care about other people's problems any more than the average wildebeest in the middle of the herd cares about who's getting eaten by the lions out on the fringe.
Stop appealing to people's better angels and appeal to their pocketbooks. Tell them a public option will save them 1000s of dollars a year over the next few years in lowered premiums, deductibles, and co-pays. That's the only language the unconvinced care about. Stop with the sob stories and focus on the savings.
Co-ops don't save anyone anything. The public option will. That should be the message, and the only message, plain and simple.