President Obama should make it clear to that majority of seniors who

[applegrove]

are against the public option that medicare desperately needs the money young people will put into the public system in insurance premiums for the public health option and not take out until they get old. The public option far from threatening medicare will save the hell out of it.

[elleng]

1. It MUST be explained to seniors who claim to be against public option

are against THEIR OWN HEALTH CARE PLAN!

Reps as usual taking advantage of ignorance and creating MORE AND MORE, with confusion.

[Zenlitened]

2. K&R.

[slipslidingaway]

3. That might kill the public option which must be deficit neutral...

now a Medicare For All, HR 676, most likely would help the future financing of Medicare.

Where is it written that any money paid into a "public option plan" will go to Medicare???

If you look at the original Hacker idea of eventually merging the two plans in the future that could help, but then again the proposed plans are not the original Hacker plan and will have no where near the numbers of enrollees estimated for the Hacker "Health Care For America" plan.


http://www.ourfuture.org/files/documents/evolution-of-the-healthcare-debate.pdf
page 2...

"...My organization, Campaign for America’s Future, will be launching a nationwide effort to discuss and debate how to get good healthcare coverage for all Americans while controlling spiraling health care costs. The best way to start that debate is to put a simple, clear and progressive health care plan on the table. Health Care for America is that plan, and it will be a benchmark by which all other plans can be judged.

How? By creating a Medicare-style system for all Americans under 65. The uninsured and underinsured could buy into the Health Care for America plan, with federal or state government assistance if necessary. Medicare and Health Care for America would then join forces and wield enormous bargaining power, driving down costs and raising the bar on quality..."


THE HISTORY OF THE PUBLIC OPTION...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6456383&mesg_id=6456383

"...it's worthwhile to trace the history of exactly where this idea -- a compromise itself -- came from. The public option was part of a carefully thought out and deliberately funded effort to put all the pieces in place for health reform before the 2008 election -- a brilliant experiment, but one that at this particular moment, looks like it might turn out badly. (Which is not the same as saying it was a mistake.)

One key player was Roger Hickey of the Campaign for America's Future. Hickey took UC Berkley health care expert Jacob Hacker's idea for "a new public insurance pool modeled after Medicare" and went around to the community of single-payer advocates, making the case that this limited "public option" was the best they could hope for. Ideally, it would someday magically turn into single-payer. And then Hickey went to all the presidential candidates, acknowledging that politically, they couldn't support single-payer, but that the "public option" would attract a real progressive constituency. Here's Hickey from a speech to New Jersey Citizen Action in November 2007:


....Starting in January, we began to take Jacob Hacker to see the presidential candidates. We started with John Edwards and his advisers -- who quickly understood the value of Hacker's public plan, and when he announced his health proposal on "Meet The Press," he was very clear that his public plan could become the dominant part of his new health care program, if enough people choose it..."