No Compromise on the Public Plan: Why Weakening the Public Option Would Weaken the Party Responsible

[marmar]

from OurFuture.org:



No Compromise on the Public Plan!: Why Weakening the Public Option Would Weaken the Party Responsible
By Phillip Cryan

June 30, 2009 - 11:56am ET


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Why are all the alternatives to a robust public plan now being floated in the health care reform debate – cooperatives, state or regional plans, a “trigger” for the public plan, a public plan prohibited from bargaining with drug companies – such profoundly bad ideas?

For one simple reason: they would fail to rein in health care costs’ out-of-control growth rate.

And the effects of such a failure would very likely include not just unsustainable public budgets and the eventual collapse of universal health coverage but political calamity for the party that made the reform.

One of the greatest political opportunities in memory could be converted into lasting disaster, if conservative Democrats have their way and we get health care reform without a robust public option. Any concessions made to those Democrats – and to the handful of Republicans still playing nice, just as long as health reform doesn’t bother the insurance industry – on the public plan will prove extraordinarily costly down the road. The cost would be measured first in dollars – as suggested in my previous posts in this series (here, here, and here) – and later in votes.

If sweeping health care reform gets passed this year, irreversibly associated with Barack Obama and the Democratic Party regardless of the number of Republicans voting for it, and if a few years after that reform cost growth in health care continues at its current clip, Democrats will be in serious political trouble for a long time.
Why is the public plan option so crucial, for cost control? Building on my prior three posts about market power in health insurance and health care provider markets, I want to offer a simple, straightforward answer to this question: bargaining power. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009062730/no-compromise-public-plan-why-weakening-public-plan-option-would-imperil-not-j

[quidam56]

1. Health care in America is in critical condition,

clearly in TN & VA PROFIT CARE COMES AHEAD OF PATIENT CARE. http://www.wisecountyissues.com/?p=62 People are dying and the greedy politicians and health care industry keep raking it in. E N O U G H !

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2. A BOGUS reform WILL weaken the Democratic Party by at least one vote forever.

Mine.



"There are forces within the Democratic Party who want us to sound like kinder, gentler Republicans. I want us to compete for that great mass of voters that want a party that will stand up for working Americans, family farmers, and people who haven't felt the benefits of the economic upturn."---Paul Wellstone