Jay Rockefeller's vigorous opposition to the Baucus debacle landed him something that no other strong proponent of the public option has gotten so far--a one-on-one sit down with President Obama. Whether it was to have his arm twisted to suppor the bill that the White House put so much energy into
SCHULTZ: ...I know that you're an advocate and have been for a public option for a long time and you've been on record saying you cannot support this bill out of the Senate Finance Committee which you are a member of. Did you tell that to the President?
ROCKEFELLER: I did. I did. And in fact he already knew it. It's probably one of the reasons he asked to talk with me.... There's a number of things beyond the public option that I have problems with and I explained those to him.... I really want to talk about the alternative to the public option because it doesn't exist and I think we ought to have like an Easter Egg hunt for it, somebody trying to find an alternative to doing the right thing, which would be public option.
SCHULTZ: ...What is your biggest problem with the Senate Finance bill?
ROCKEFELLER: Obviously I want the public option, but more importantly I worry about the alternative to it because I don't think it exists. But I want to protect my people in West Virginia, that's what I'm elected for. My coal miners, my seniors. The subsidies for low-income people . . . are insufficent. The fact that the Children's Health Insurance bill which I and John Chafee . . . originally wrote together back in the mid-90s. That's 11 million children at stake now and that's been tossed in the Finance Committee bill into something called the "Exchange" which is the farmers' market, which means it loses all of its defined benefit qualities that children need....
Does this mean that President Obama might still be looking for that elusive alternative, might actually be thinking that the toothless co-ops in the bill are something he's looking at promoting?
If that's the case, hopefully Rockefeller reiterated to the President the points he made in his letter to Baucus (diaried here by TomP and at TPMDC:
Rockefeller, who says he regards the public option as a "must," writes, "there has been no significant research into consumer co-ops as a model for the broad expansion of health insurance. What we do know, however, is that this model was tried in the early part of the 20th century and largely failed."
He adds that "consumer health insurance cooperatives identified by the USDA and NCBA operate and function just like private health insurance companies....This further substantiates my point that health insurance co-ops are not a real alternative to private health insurance and they are not a substitute for a strong public plan option, and we should not suggest to the American people that they would be."
"It seems to me," he scolds, "that, if you are proposing to implement consumer health insurance co-ops on the scale contemplated by the Finance Committee, then you certainly should know what has been the experience with them so far.... I believe it is irresponsible to invest over $6 billion in a concept that has not proven to provide quality, affordable health care, when we know that a public health insurance option will rein in costs and save taxpayers billions of dollars."
There's more to buttress the case against the Baucus co-op, as picked up by Kossack Tax problems and so far not by anyone else. While the CBO "luvs" the bill, they think the co-ops are worthless:
The proposed co-ops had very little effect on the estimates of total enrollment in the exchanges or federal costs because, as they are described in the specifications, they seem unlikely to establish a significant market presence in many areas of the country or to noticeably affect federal subsidy payments.
Even the CBO agrees with Jay Rockefeller: co-ops are no alternative to a strong public option.
