One reason the public option or lack thereof isn't making a difference to me right now

[CreekDog]

The House public option was so watered down that I'm frankly unenthused by it. Worse, I think the sickest patients will be attracted to it and that will benefit the insurance companies.

Faced with that reality, I thought the exchanges, at least on a national level, to be better than the lame public option.

But most of you know me by now, with those things, without them, with a hybrid, I'll still support doing something.

You don't want to know how far I'll go to pass *anything*. I just can't pass up the chance to regulate insurance companies on a national level, to let people who want to buy insurance have their preexisting conditions covered and to make states raise their Medicaid eligibility to 133% of poverty (some states don't even cover at half of poverty --a travesty).

Besides, it should be obvious that waiting for something better is not going to happen. Waiting is killing the current bill through a thousand cuts. It's not going to get better if we try again in June.

[zipplewrath]

1. I see it from the other angle

HCR died a long time ago. This insurance industry stimulus package is pointless and won't solve anything long term. What it will do is to practically codify into law that we have to have insurance companies and they are guaranteed their profits. I fear how a GOP controlled congress will "fix" this system. Regulating insurance companies at the federal level will be as useful as regulating banks. For that, we are being told about all of the things they'll do to make insurance mandatory, but affordable. Things they should be doing, and probably could do, as small increments over what we have.

So passing "anything" has become pointless to me. To a great degree I won't particularly fret if and when this passes because it merely sets up, and potentially accelerates, the next healthcare cost crisis. The only scary thing about that is that it may be the GOP that gets to address that crisis. But since this solution is basically warmed over GOP ideas from 15 years ago, it really won't be all that different.

[denimgirly]

2. One benefit of any PO is it sets a Foundation -- Right now the current Bill is worst.