Grayson: PO -"NOW"- Medicare Expansion Act, with 70-(UPDATE 74)-Co-Sponsors

kpete

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Wed Mar-17-10 01:02 PM
Original message

Grayson: PO -"NOW"- Medicare Expansion Act, with 70-(UPDATE 74)-Co-Sponsors

Edited on Wed Mar-17-10 01:28 PM by kpete

Source: Daily Kos

Grayson's Medicare Expansion Act, with 70-Co-Sponsors
COSPONSORS(74), ALPHABETICAL
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:HR04789:@@@P
by primarydoc

Wed Mar 17, 2010 at 10:24:07 AM PDT

per DemocracyNow

I don't know if the FCC can handle this kind of awesomeness on the intertubes.

Amy Goodman AND Alan Grayson:

*****With the Democrat-led push for healthcare reform in its final stages, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) introduces "The Public Option Act," a measure that would allow people under sixty-five to buy into Medicare. The bill has attracted fifty co-sponsors. Grayson joins us to discuss the measure and healthcare reform overall, his own family’s experience with private insurance companies and more.

Watch the interview yourself (transcript on the same page)
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/17/rep_alan_graysons_medicare_you_can
Oh, and $10 says Rep Grayson posts a diary this afternoon.

....................

Read more: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/3/17/13219/2450

Oh, and $10 says Rep Grayson posts a diary this afternoon.

teaser excerpt:

...........

REP. ALAN GRAYSON: I’ve introduced a simple three-and-a-half-page bill that opens up Medicare to anybody who wants it. If you want it and you pay for it, it’s yours. It’s that simple. It’s open to everybody under the age of sixty-five, whether or not you’re handicapped. And you pay the same amount as other people your age would pay.

And the reason to do this is because we need a public option. We need an option that doesn’t involve putting us at the tender mercies of insurance companies, particularly if there’s a mandate to do so. A lot of people feel that there is a fundamental conflict of interest between themselves and private insurance companies. The private insurance companies make money by denying you the care that you need to be healthy, and sometimes to stay alive. And a lot of people are just sick of it.

So the way to get beyond that is to open up Medicare, which is now available to only one-eighth of the population, to anybody who’s willing to pay for it. And it makes perfect sense when you think about it. I mean, we don’t say the federal highways are only open to senior citizens. And the Medicare provider network is an enormously valuable, expensive thing that we’ve created with federal tax dollars that ought to be open to everyone, not just seniors.

AMY GOODMAN: And how does this fit into the major piece of legislation that will or—I don’t know would even pass—won’t be voted on by the House?

REP. ALAN GRAYSON: My hope was that we would vote not only on the Senate bill, which doesn’t have a public option, not only on the reconciliation amendment, which probably will not have a public option, but that we’d also vote on this, that there’d be three votes instead of two votes. And if we voted on this and we passed it, then it would be presented to the Senate and subject to reconciliation in the Senate, so that we could end up with a public option.

AMY GOODMAN: Now?

REP. ALAN GRAYSON: Now.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/17/rep_alan_graysons_medicare_you_can