House and Senate healthcare bills put up firewalls to restrict access to public option

[Better Believe It]

New Wyden health care proposal could be crucial
by snaxattack
Daily Kos
July 16, 2009


I mentioned in a previous diary the importance of the insurance exchange as a tool for enacting real health care reform. Without access to the health insurance exchange, there is no access to the public option and no access to portable health insurance. The House and Senate approaches both restrict access to the insurance exchange through a process called "firewalling", forcing everyone who has employer-based health insurance to keep that insurance. Firewalling is an impediment to real reform and must be stopped!

Jonathan Cohn and Ezra Klein are now reporting that Ron Wyden has come out with a "Free Choice Proposal" that would not only eliminate firewalls; it would force employers to contribute to the cost of health care on the insurance exchange. Wyden, who sits on the Senate Finance Committee, seems to have drawn major ideas from his Healthy Americans Act in order to achieve a happy medium that balances letting people keep what they have with reorganizing the health care system.

The Senate committees are making it hard to even enter the exchange as an individual. In order to prevent insurance companies from seeing real competition and make it more difficult to receive government subsidies, they are creating a "firewall" that puts a barrier between the insurance exchange and employees of companies that offer their own group insurance plan.

We need to start lobbying our congressional representatives for a STRONG insurance exchange, with no firewall to prevent employees of large companies from accessing high quality, portable insurance through the insurance exchange. We need to ask our congresspeople to implement a plan that allows large employers to contract with the insurance exchange, just as small businesses will be able to do.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/7/16/754237/-New...

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/7/9/751637/-The-...

[babylonsister]

1. Why'd you change the title to a negative? nt

[Better Believe It]

3. That's not the title. The title of the comment hasn't been changed I wrote the caption for clarity

It's not in quotation marks and I used excerpts from two different articles (with links) and combined them since they covered the same issue (the firewall) and the first article made reference to the second one.

The main issue in the two comments and contributions is the firewall and I chose to emphasize it in the string caption so DU'ers would know what the excerpts in the OP is about.

And there obviously wasn't room to post both titles of the two comments, "The future of health insurance portability?" and " New Wyden health care proposal could be crucial" in the caption. That would cause unncessary confusion and not focus on the subject matter of the excerpts.

I hope that's clear to you.

If not, oh well!

:)

[babylonsister]

6. I see what you chose to emphasize with your 'caption'. Gotcha. nt

[Better Believe It]

8. Right. Sure. Whatever. Are you an English teacher?

Hope I don't have to stay after school.

:)

[dflprincess]

2. We also need to start lobbying Congress & Obama to slow down

and actually think about what they're doing rather than ramming through a lousy bill that no one has acually worked through.

We've waited this long, we can wait a while longer so that we get a bill that will actually do the people some good rather than protecting the for profits.

[Mass]

4. The firewall is an issue. However, I do not see how Wyden, who does not support a public option, is

solution to this problem. We need a strong public option (with few options) available to all, not a choice between multiple private insurances which contracts will be unreadable for most people (who will choose the lowest price because the lawyer boiler plate will be undecipherable to them, as it is now).

[Better Believe It]

5. Unless he's changed his position on a strong public option I don't know

[davidpdx]

7. I'm not very keen on Wyden's plan

I am a registered voter in Oregon and have let Wyden know I don't agree with him. Right now it seems like we are going to get whatever is rammed through Congress, which might end up being crap.

[dionysus]

9. i like it how you create false headline to attempt to stir up some anger.

pssst, no one buys it....
:rofl:

[Better Believe It]

11. Once again you are absolutely wrong and the caption was absolutely true

Perhaps you should read a post before commenting on it.

My post caption was: "House and Senate healthcare bills put up firewalls to restrict access to public option"

Now what part of that sentence is false?

It accurately sums up the main point of the two articles as any who reads them can see.

So enough of your nonsense.

I just put you on ignore.

[dionysus]

12. the ignore?!!? ELEVENS!1!!!!

[Leo The Cleo]

10. Dumb Punks

Don't they have a party whip? Dems have got to be more like republicans and stop acting like a bunch of little nuanced punks. Jim Coburn better say. "if you don't vote for the Bill we want to pass, then you ship will be sailing on dry land." What is the deal. These folks are just friggin useless.