Health Care: Public Option Smoke Signals

I don’t buy Mike Allen’s “scoop” at Drudgico. My guess is that nobody knows how close to 218 they are in the house but they either barely will or won’t have the votes.
.
Any grand declaration of where it will end up, is just psychic talk.

Thanks, KT. So the tide is turning? Was most earlier PO coverage forecasting failure? Maybe public polls and steady pressure work after all. I linked this at Jay’s last post (the one with all the Jay-bashing, which I was NOT part of) – http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/10/why-less-pure-public-option-is-possibly.html
…now how about that single payer? Looking up? For Baucus, Snowe, MofO Nelson, etc., I wonder who’s applying the most heat upon them FOR the PO (we can make “insurance bets” on who’s opposing it). A picture of lobbyists literally arm-twisting them would make a great “1000 words”.

Good instincts trifecta-any Mike Allen/Drudge combo should be taken with a grain of salt.

It sounds as if BHO is considering -but not committing to-a few different options.

Thanks for linking to TPM, they have covered HCR as closely as any organization.

KT:

Anything at all on what the details of a “trigger” would look like? The specifics could guarantee either the existence or nonexistence of an actual PO, or set a benchmark of minimum conditions/costs that the public could count on.

Merely saying there’ll be a PO with a trigger is just another way to say “We’re going to let the insurance lobbyists kill the PO in the back room.”

I agree with TPM. death by leaks.
Does the President and congress not know that this legislation is being followed closely by voters? I do not understand why the President would say he would consider a trigger and not say what kind of option he would want.

President, Senators and Representatives know what they have to include to have a good bill. The voters know what is needed. Recent poll said that voters were waiting to see what is in the bill.

I know that what I am looking for is one that benefits main street and not the Health Industries. When they do that then Conservative Democrats do not have to worry about being voted out.

The haggling over something as necessary and critical as the public option makes a case for a dictatorship, and I am not even kidding.

I always admired debate and discourse when I read about the American Legal system but now this same debate and interminable posturing seems to be a major clog in the wheel of rationality or effectiveness. The Health care bill has been tossed every way and yet it has not really moved far from the original starting point.

When the foundational basis for dissent is mired in partisan political positions, it leads me to wonder if a dictatorship- in which someone could make a mass declaration to overrule this seemingly endless debate on Healthcare, would not be the better option.

The Republicans want Obama to fail and killing this bill is a sure fire way to do it. The Blue rat democrats oops, I mean the Blue dog democrats aka “conservative liberals are thinking of the big businesses to whom they are beholden.

In effect, it is wild bacchanalia comprised of massive egos and protection of special interests. Somewhere in the morass we call the legislature “the government by the people for the people” mantra has been lost and forgotten.

Remind me again why we think our form of democracy is best?? If anything it is a monument to bureaucracy and mediocrity.

Kudos to those countries that have leaders at the helm of affairs who say they know what is best for their people, “dictators’ who just do what they think best after listening to advise etc.

And yes, they might not always be right but at least they were spared this interminable quibbling and stalling over something as fundamental as instituting better, cheaper and more effective Heath care for Americans, many of whom cannot afford health coverage or have been treated very poorly by these massive and powerful Insurance companies.

Democracy?? This is “Dem all Crazy”, I mean seriously!

http://theblindspotsofgod.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/criminals-use-technology-to-trackrape-and-kill-innocent-people/

B.O wants the P.O. He campaigned on it and will settle for nothing less. Any bill that passes will mean zip, if it excludes the P.O. He doesn’t want to bring private insurance in line, he wants to abolish it, along with all private business. Especially small business.

You are right. The specific design of a trigger — like the design of a public option — matters a lot. Here’s a description of the Snowe proposal:
.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/09/olympia_snowes_trigger_amendme.html

Anyone want to bet that there aren’t some handsome deals being offered from the corporate suites at WellPoint and Cigna today: “Stick with us on killing the Public Option, Mary, and there will be one sweet gig waiting for you here once your constituents throw you out of your job.”

Thanks. Klein’s explanation highlights what I’d feared – Snowe wants to assure insurance companies of continuing excess rate revenue, thereby turning HCR into insurance company welfare without having any significant effect on costs. If the ratepayers were getting that much benefit from a bill the Repubs would be screaming “Socialism!”

[...] 26, 2009 at 10:24 am Submit a Comment • Trackback (0) The weekend only added to the confusion. Jonathan Cohn attempts to sort it out for [...]

[...] Related Topics: barack obama, congress, harry reid, health care The weekend only added to the confusion. Jonathan Cohn attempts to sort it out for [...]