On why I'm disappointed, but not all that dissapointed or angry, over the Public Option.

[barking_iguana]

More stuff copied from a response to someone on Facebook, in this case, Hank Kalet, whom as I've noted before, I admire.

It's struck me for months that while the public option is a plus, my fellow progressives were making a bigger deal of it for symbolic reasons than its effect as a policy warrants. Folks have been exaggerating both its necessity under a Democratic administration and its effectiveness as a check on private insurers under a Republican administration because they want to be thrown a bone, given that from the start (even before Obama's nomination) we felt let down that not nearly enough of the Democrats in Washington were willing to fight for single-payer.

I think it would have been a reasonable strategy for Obama to fight from the start for a bill he knew would fail, and then appeal to the voters for a better Congress. It was also reasonable for him not to follow that path on this issue. Given that he took the second choice (as he said from the start he would) we'll get a bill that substantially improves the relationship between insurers and the insured.

I still think the public option would probably be another significant incremental improvement. But treating it as a litmus test is making much ado about comparatively little. Little, that is, except our justified insecurity about how much and how effectively Obama will actually be on our side in general. In other words, symbolism, and I just can't get worked up over that kind of symbol.

Comments

[chemoelectric.livejournal.com]

Here is my view, I think.

The public option is John Edwards’s plan, and he is on record about what its purpose would be: to drive the private insurers out of the business of primary insurance. This is how it is represented in the blogoradiosphere, as well, and even Obama has said it, in his slightly weaselly way. But there is nowhere near sufficient support for putting insurers out of the primary insurance business in Congress, and so the question all along has been how easily could Congress be tricked into the Edwards plan.

This really has nothing much to do with the racist rallies at town-hall meetings. It didn’t take racist rallies to make Kent Conrad promise a no vote, and the racist rallies didn’t stop Arlen Specter from promising a yes vote. (TPM understands this, I think.)

IMO this country can go either of two ways, though it may have to go by degrees: (1) Medicare for all (like Canada), or (2) old-fashioned electric-utility-style regulation of private insurers (like the Netherlands?). Choice (1) could be achieved by the Edwards plan, or by gradually lowering the Medicare age while gradually raising reimbursement rates. Choice (2) could be achieved by gradual transformation towards a strong regulatory regime generally (which eventually climate change will force to happen, anyway).

(Choice (3), a National Health System, seems to me a poor fit for this country, although the VA seems to function alright. Even Kristol says so. :) )

[jpmassar.livejournal.com]

Your posts have recently had 'Read More' in the middle of them, resulting in incomplete sentences and thoughts.

[jpmassar.livejournal.com]

I must say that I don't, as yet, understand the real difference between a public plan that gets no subsidies from the government and must therefore be self-sufficient (if not making a profit) and coops, which would, presumably, get no subsidies from the government and must therefore be self-sufficient.

I guess coops would have less negotiating power since they would, presumably, each be smaller than a single public plan.
But if they banded together to negotiate on such things as drug prices that would seem to be reasonable.