Tweet
Harry Reid stood up for America today.
He put a public health insurance option in the Senate bill, the merged version of the two health care bills passed out of committee that will now go to the Senate floor for debate, amendments, and passage.
This is a huge victory. Putting the public health insurance option in the Senate bill that goes to the floor makes it much harder to remove later. Opponents will need 60 votes to amend the Senate bill, meaning a high bar will have to be cleared to take out or change the public health insurance option.
Why did Senator Reid do it? As he said:
I believe that a public option can achieve the goal of bringing meaningful reform to our broken system. It will protect consumers, keep insurers honest and ensure competition and that’s why we intend to include it on the bill that will be submitted to the Senate for consideration.
For these reasons, the public option is what America wants. In poll after poll, in rally after rally, month after month, the American public has spoken. We want a public health insurance option to keep the insurance industry honest, to increase competition, and to give us somewhere to go if we don’t want to be at the mercy of the private insurance industry any longer.
Click here to sign the petition thanking Senator Reid.
When the Washington Post – harbingers of cautious beltway conventional wisdom – has their polls showing 57% of Americans support a public health insurance option, you can be sure that this is a mainstream position.
Senator Reid deserves our thanks today for leading America forward. The fight is far from over, and to be sure, there is plenty in the Senate bill that needs to be fixed. We need:
- To make sure health care is truly affordable to everyone
- Ensure employers are responsible for helping to provide good health benefits to their employees
- Fairly finance reform rather than taxing higher-cost plans
However, Senator Reid stood up for America and he should be encouraged to keep fighting. Sign the petition below to pledge to keep fighting for a public health insurance option and quality, affordable health care for all.
Click here to sign the petition thanking Senator Reid and telling him that as he fights for us, we’ll stand with him.
(also posted at the NOW! blog)
I’m proud to work for Health Care for America Now
17 Comments
Good idea Jason. Credit where due–signed with pleasure. Long way to go yet.
Yep, long way to go, but thanks yous are in order. Thanks!
Jason, thanks for the update.
And I strongly agree that some ‘thank you’s’ are in order.
(Thanks for making it quick and easy to send a ‘thank you’.
That’s what I’m here for!
Who is covered? At what cost?
I don’t like: Reid was an asshole, now he’s not.
I’ll be happy to praise Harry–once he delivers a good bill to Obama’s desk for signature. Until then, I still don’t trust him. We’ve had to call his own constituents just to get him this far; I fully believe that if he feels he has a chance to put gifts to the insurance industry back into the bill, he won’t hesitate. That’s just who he is.
This is definitely not unconditional praise, but he done good today, and he should know we appreciate it, and we’re still fighting for this.
If you want A, don’t vote for B.
Do you agree, Jason?
Hi Jason,
Btw, thanks for promoting my latest diary on “Deficit Hawkism and National Suicide: Part One.”
This petition is clean and minimalist enough that I will sign it.
However, I don’t think:
* To make sure health care is truly affordable to everyone
* Ensure employers are responsible for helping to provide good health benefits to their employees
* Fairly finance reform rather than taxing higher-cost plans
are the only things that have to be fixed, and I also think you should have been more specific about how the above items should be fixed.
Moving on to the other shortfalls, however.
– We need the starting time of the PO and the exchange to be within one year. A 2013 start dates makes the bill unacceptable to me, since if people don’t see benefits from the bill immediately, I think there is a good chance that Democrats will lose at the polls in 2010 and 2012, and they deserve to lose as well
– We need the PO to be available to everyone and not restricted only to the unemployed, and those who can’t get insurance through their employment. Without this, there is a good chance that the PO won’t be able to compete with the private insurers and also won’t lower insurance prices
–We need the PO rates to be tied to Medicare rates. Pelosi’s Medicare + 5% is OK, but we also need careful structuring of Medicare rates so that rural/urban differenecs don’t kill the PO in rural areas
Without these fixes and the ones you mention above, I still don’t think this bill is there yet and I think that progressives ought to vote against any such bill and come back next year.
Ezra Klein’s up with a blog on Reid’s action. Among other things he says:
This a good, brief summary of liberal compromises.
I think they should get the blame for that. This is not about “liberal” or “conservative.” It’s about getting something that will work for the American people. As it stands now, the bill won’t work. It needs the list of things I’ve given above to make it work. Progressives have worked hard to get Reid this far. Now they have to work harder to get him to move still further tio get a real PO. Not the window dressing he’s got now.
I’m encouraged by the movement to push up the implementation date, though I’m not sure how much earlier physically it can be moved, given the infrastructure that needs to be built.
I don’t share the concerns about the PO competing, but I do think the Medicare rates are important, and I’m glad the House progressives are moving together on the issue.
As always, my question is: What kind of PO bill is weak enough for HCAN to urge progressive Congresspersons and Senators to vote down? Has Reid’s PO bill already passed your threshold, or does he need to improve it more to satisfy you?
We’ve got our principles laid out pretty clearly – national, available on day one, with the clout to set rates.
Jason, I posted a comment about the “option” yesterday that you must have missed. Here it is again. It asks questions about how the “option” programs will be started and administered. I’d appreciate your response.
Kip Sullivan
I agree with you that few entrepreneurs will want to set up co-ops, and of those that try most will fail. But I hold the same opinion of the “options.”
But perhaps I just don’t understand how the “option” insurance plans will be set up. Could you walk us through the process by which the Department of Health and Human Services will set up an “option” plan in any given market, say Boston, under the Senate health bill, HR 3200, or HCAN’s blueprint. Here’s the scenario I believe will occur under both the Senate HELP bill and HR 3200 assuming the “option” actually survives.
* Beginning in 2013, the Secretary of HHS contracts with a “contracting administrator,” that is, a corporation such as Blue Cross Blue Shield, to set up an “option” plan in Boston. The Secretary also loans Blue Cross several hundred million dollars to carry out all the tasks necessary to set up an “option” plan.
* Blue Cross then hires 80-100 people to create an insurance company to serve Boston. These people do the things you’d expect people to do to create a new insurance company, including making cold calls on clinics and hospitals to see if they’d be interested in accepting “option”-insured patients at Medicare rates plus 5% (or about 15% below the insurance industry average).
Question: Do you anticipate that Blue Cross will at some point ask clinics and hospitals to sign contracts with Blue Cross indicating their commitment to be part of the Boston “option” network? Or will contracts be unnecessary?
* After six months of making numerous cold calls, Blue Cross succeeds somehow in inducing a sufficient number of clinics and hospitals to agree to accept “option” enrollees. Now Blue Cross incorporates the Boston Public Option Plan (BPOP) and hires 80 people to staff BPOP.
Question: Does Blue Cross exit the scene now, or do you anticipate Blue Cross will continue to serve as an advisor to BPOP? Obviously, Blue Cross, if it does retire from the project, has to leave in place a contract with BPOP that at minimum ensures BPOP will repay the loan that Blue Cross got from the Secretary of HHS.
* BPOP/Blue Cross now begins advertising heavily and making cold calls on employers seeking to induce tens of thousands of Boston residents to pay their premiums to BPOP in the event that these people are eligible to shop in the MA exchange.
Question: How many people will have to enroll in BPOP in order for BPOP to have sufficient leverage over local providers to get them to accept reimbursement rates even with or below the rates paid by Aetna et al. in the Boston area? I’m not looking for precision, just some evidence that you or someone you know in the “option” movement has thought about this.
* Let’s assume BPOP solves the chicken-and-egg problem of trying to assemble a critical mass of providers and enrollees roughly simultaneously. BPOP formally opens for business. BPOP makes enough money within the next 8 to 9 years that it can repay to Blue Cross the loan it got from the Sec or HHS. Blue Cross in turn repays HHS.
Is this the process you envision?
Thanks.
Kip Sullivan
Sorry Kip, not interested.
kip asks important (and informed) questions that are of wide interest. if you don’t know enough about the topic to respond, i wish you would say so instead of the pretending otherwise. it’s really rude and especially uncalled for given the out of line comments you have made previously (see here for example, and my responses in the same thread @29 and @30).
on the other hand, if kip’s questions reveal a potential weakness to or raise doubts about assertions you have made here, then you have a real responsibility, in the name of intellectual honesty to either address the issue or concede the point.
which reminds me, you owe me a couple of responses re claims you’ve made and i believe where shown to be false. in one case you claimed there was legislative language and have said more than once that you would get back to me with it.
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/8617
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/8746#comment-82143
No doubt. That’s because you have no answer. But then, we would expect a paid lobbyist posing as a blogger to have one. So, we’ll take your silence as assent to Kip’s process.