Senator Blanche Lincoln, a politician who is staring electoral defeat in the face because she lacks the courage to support something that the majority of her state supports, says that health care reform doesn't need a public option to be effective. Yesterday, Lincoln was a profile in courage by not speaking in the public option debate, and then leaving the room in order to allow Senator Max Baucus to cast her vote for her. Today, Blanche Lincoln released a statement that shows that she thinks that the current health care system actually works, that high executive salaries are something to be celebrated--and subsidized--by the federal government, and that she doesn't care about the people of Arkansas. If Blanche Lincoln wants to know why she's about to lose, maybe she should think about the future without a public option.
The future without a public option is already here. It's called the current American health care system. It's a system where insurance bureaucrats are paid 5 figure bonuses for keeping chemotherapy patients from going to the doctor.
Lincoln says she'll fix this problem by reducing a corporate tax break given to health insurance CEOs:
"In addition, I am working to ensure that requiring Americans to purchase health insurance does not result in a personal windfall for health insurance company executives. My amendment would cut the tax shelter, from $1 million to $500,000, of what businesses are able to deduct for executive compensation. This is a fair policy change aimed at lowering insurance costs to consumers and reassuring them that insurance companies are not receiving excessive tax breaks while at the same time profiting from a government mandate."
Of course, Lincoln's amendment is a total joke. She, like most politicians who have been in Washington too long, thinks she can fool the people with mere words instead of the concrete actions the people of Arkansas sent her to the Senate floor to achieve.
United Health Care paid its CEO $1.5 billion over the period of nine years. That averages out to roughly $150 million a year. How is Lincoln's amendment which reduces the tax break corporations can take for executive pay from $1 million to $500,000 really going to reduce executive salary when most health insurance companies already pay that tax because their CEO makes far more than one million dollars?
Senator Lincoln's amendment would do nothing to stop the rapid premium inflation that is needed to meet Wall Street's expectations of for-profit insurers. Senator Lincoln's amendment would do nothing to stop $500 billion of the American people's money--actually more like 2 trillion when you factor in the amount people will have to pay in their premiums--going directly into the off-shore tax shelters of greedy insurance CEOs. Maybe the insurance CEOS can use the raise they'll get off the back of the American workers to build a third vacation home in Arkansas' Ozarks and host high-end fund-raisers for Senator Lincoln.
Senator Lincoln had the chance to give Americans the right to opt-out of a health care system which puts the greed of CEOs before the needs of American patients. She failed. And now she's trying to convince us that she actually opposes the results such a system would bring. Blanche Lincoln didn't only vote against the American people yesterday; she decided to be condescending to the public today.
Further, without a public option there will be no way to force the insurers to abide by the regulations you claim to support. Insurers have developed a system designed to deny and postpone expensive care. Their hope is that patients will give up before the bill becomes do. This reduces their medical loss ratio, increases their profits, and inflates their stock price. Because many executives are also paid by stock options, this broken system is at the heart of the ridiculous compensation levels of American health insurance executives.
The strong public option which Senator Lincoln killed yesterday would've prevented the horror stories of rescission by creating a system that was responsible to the people, not Wall Street tycoons. It also would've stopped the insurance executive's practice of denying care after an arbitrary amount of services is provided. The public-optionless Finance Committee draft sets the cap at "reasonable levels," while a strong public option would immediately eliminate such an anti-life provision of the bill.
But Senator Lincoln left the room and cast a no by proxy vote. She didn't have the courage or courtesy to talk to the American people and Arkansans who were watching the hearing. She didn't have the courage to explain her baffling vote. Americans want honest, open, and accountable Senators. It's why the people of Arkansas are rightly thinking of replacing Blanche Lincoln next year.