I broke my wrist in 10 places back in April. And no, I don’t have health insurance. Thankfully, I qualified for charity care @ Cedars-Sinai. As an office temp on an hourly wage living paycheck-to-paycheck, healthcare is as Joe Biden would say “a big f**king deal” to me. Now get ready for a classic rerun of the Obama/Biden show because the Public Option is back—and the healthcare industry is already working to stop it a 2nd time.
Bernie Sanders threw Joe Biden a lifeline on health care this week. K Street is now trying to cut it away.
A deep-pocketed health care coalition has launched an assault on the public option during the Democratic National Convention, previewing the intense level of industry opposition Biden's health plan will face if he's elected president.
A new six-figure ad campaign from the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future — a group consisting of hospital, insurance and pharma lobbying heavyweights — decries the public option as an expensive quagmire that would undermine private health insurance. The campaign is a reminder that the public option, though more moderate than Sanders’ sweeping “Medicare for All” proposal, still represents a radical change that the health industry detests.
“The public option would become the 3rd most expensive government program, behind only Medicare and Social Security,” a narrator warns in one of two ads the Partnership is running this week. The campaign includes digital ads and spots on television and the streaming service Hulu.
Forgive the Reagan meme. But as one of many HIV+ gay men who survived the Reagan/Bush administration’s indecent and inhumane inaction on AIDS, I find the snarky reference appropriate.
I’m sure most everyone here remembers the long, drawn-out battle in Congress to pass the Affordable Care Act in 2010. The stripping of the Public Option from the ACA bill was a demoralizing defeat. (Thanks a lot, Ben Nelson!) However, its removal probably saved the ACA from failing to pass in Congress.
A decade has passed and now the for-profit healthcare industry is organizing to defeat it all over again…
Biden’s proposal to create a government-run health insurance alternative has grown more robust in recent months, providing an olive branch to progressives. But it also now presents a greater threat to industry profits should Democrats be swept into power this November and rally around the public option.
The Partnership formed in 2018 to fight Medicare for All and other government health care expansions, including the public option. The group supports the Affordable Care Act, which has largely boosted industry profits, and workplace health insurance covering over half of Americans. During the 2018 midterms, when health care fueled Democratic victories, the group ran ads touting the ACA and employer coverage.
Lauren Crawford Shaver, who worked in Barack Obama’s health department and then Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, serves as spokesperson for the Partnership, which is run through the K Street consultancy Forbes Tate Partners.
How lovely to see someone who worked for Barack and Hillary betray the promise of the ACA by taking a job working for the very industry executives who want to profit from driving those of us without insurance into poverty and/or bankruptcy.
Biden campaign spokesperson Rosemary Boeglin characterized the K Street campaign as a sign the industry is worried he can get his health plan enacted.
"They know Joe Biden was instrumental in delivering the ACA, and they are afraid because they know he can once again deliver a plan that will further reduce health care costs while expanding coverage, end practices like surprise billing, lower premiums, and stand up to the abuse of power by prescription drug corporations," she said in a statement.
Biden and the Democratic platform proposes a government-run health plan that will compete with private insurers in the Obamacare marketplaces. While there's still room to hammer out the policy's details, Democrats said a public option would control the nation’s ballooning health care costs by negotiating doctor and hospital rates as Medicare does.
That’s exactly the notion that rattles the health care industry.
I posted this diary because I didn’t see another one talking about this in the middle of all the sturm und drang of DNC highlights and Trump’s tempestuous Twitter-bashing of Barack, Joe and Kamala, etc.
What I find most compelling is that even now with neither Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren on the Presidential ticket—and Medicare For All seemingly on the sidelines—the for-profit healthcare industry is still opposed to any and all measures to lower costs and widen access. I get why.
What I don’t get is how they think Joe, Kamala, Democratic voters and a (hopefully) Democratically-controlled Congress is going to back down this time and not fight them tooth & nail like never before.
The 2010 law gave health coverage to millions but left millions of others uninsured. Biden could finish the job.
Obamacare has not delivered universal health care in America. Medicaid remains only partially expanded; 12 states are still holding out because of Republican opposition to the law. Many people signing up for ACA marketplace plans still have significant deductibles, which means they could end up paying thousands of dollars out of pocket every year on health care. For many of the Americans who make too much money to qualify for the ACA’s tax credits, premiums are unaffordable. The US uninsured rate ticked up to 8.5 percent in 2017, the last year for which census data is available, meaning 27.5 million people still don’t have coverage.
“The quickest, fastest way to do it is build on Obamacare,” Biden said at the first debate of the Democratic Party, back in June 2019. “To build on what we did.”
He would create a new government insurance plan to be sold on the ACA markets. The 2 million or so people currently stuck in the Medicaid expansion gap would be automatically enrolled, for free. Obamacare’s tax credits would be enhanced, pegged to more generous insurance, and eligibility for government assistance would be available to anybody. Nobody would pay more than 8.5 percent of their income on insurance premiums.
“Extending a public option and premium subsidies to people with employer coverage is possibly the most powerful and underappreciated part of Biden’s plan,” Larry Levitt, executive vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told me. “The largest number of Americans get their health insurance through an employer, and this starts to address their affordability concerns in a way the ACA never has.”
The healthcare industry executives and their odious organization seriously underestimate smart, tough and effective legislators like AOC, Liz and several others who weren’t yet in office during the first fight over the ACA.
They also underestimate public sentiment and groups like Indivisible, MoveOn.org and many, many others. They will find the fight to block the Public Option from becoming law to be far, far more difficult the second time around.
Opposition to Version 2.0 of their deceitful ads, obvious greed and gross indifference to the suffering of their patients is now much more entrenched...a lot more powerful...and a whole hell of a lot louder! And the opposition is now definitely better organized, way more media savvy and ready for their disingenuous, bullshit tactics.
I don’t believe for a second they are going to win this fight a 2nd time.
And I don’t think any of us are going to let them win either.
