Call Carper’s Office
Getting good healthcare reform is going to be one helluva fight. The “public option” is one of the most difficult parts of the plan. A good public option will help reduce healthcare costs by bargaining with providers and the for-profit companies are already mobilizing the opposition.
So they’re pulling out all the stops — pushing Democrats and a handful of so-called “moderate” Republicans who say they’re in favor of a public option to support legislation that would include it in name only. One of their proposals is to break up the public option into small pieces under multiple regional third-party administrators that would have little or no bargaining leverage. A second is to give the public option to the states where Big Pharma and Big Insurance can easily buy off legislators and officials, as they’ve been doing for years. A third is bind the public plan to the same rules private insurers have already wangled, thereby making it impossible for the public plan to put competitive pressure on the insurers.
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Enter Olympia Snowe. Her move is important, not because she’s Republican (the Senate needs only 51 votes to pass this) but because she’s well-respected and considered non-partisan, and therefore offers some cover to Democrats who may need it. Last night Snowe hosted a private meeting between members and staffers about a new proposal Pharma and Insurance are floating, and apparently she’s already gained the tentative support of several Democrats (including Ron Wyden and Thomas Carper). Under Snowe’s proposal, the public option would kick in years from now, but it would be triggered only if insurance companies fail to bring down healthcare costs and expand coverage in he meantime.
What’s the catch? First, these conditions are likely to be achieved by other pieces of the emerging legislation; for example, computerized records will bring down costs a tad, and a mandate requiring everyone to have coverage will automatically expand coverage. If it ever comes to it, Pharma and Insurance can argue that their mere participation fulfills their part of the bargain, so no public option will need to be triggered. Second, as Pharma and Insurance well know, “years from now” in legislative terms means never. There will never be a better time than now to enact a public option. If it’s not included, in a few years the public’s attention will be elsewhere.
It’s pretty obvious that some politicians are only too happy to put a band-aid on the status quo (while taking credit for “reform.”) The public option has support of more than 60% of Americans, but the details matter. Pressure from the public has made some lawmakers back down from their opposition to reform (like Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska).
Let’s put pressure on Carper for a real public option.
Washington, DC
Phone: (202) 224-2441
Fax: (202) 228-2190
Wilmington
Phone: (302) 573-6291
Fax: (302) 573-6434
Dover
Phone: (302) 674-3308
Fax: (302) 674-5464
Georgetown
Phone: (302) 856-7690
Fax: (302) 856-3001
Tags: Health Care, Tom Carper
First off, Olympia Snowe is not well respected on any thing of substance. Republicans who vote with Democrats are always “well respected”. Ms Snowe has no core beleiefs on anything except her reelection.
Now for health care. The public option you boast about is a false choice. The only way it will work to to have massive subsidies ( that means huge taxpayer support). It will not create a means to compete against private insurance it will propmt private companies to dump private insurance.
You ask for insurance companies to bring down health care costs. The only way to do that job is to ration care or choke off money to providers. Proof is how HMO’s worked and that is how Medicare and Medicaid keep their record cost increases to high single digits.
Obama wants to reduce health care costs by increasing federal spending by over a trillion dollars in ten years. That is like buying a brand new fule efficient car with a car payment of $400 a month to save $50 a month in gasoline costs.
I support universal care and last year had a plan called DELACARE which had universal care as its hallmark. Obama’s plan and Snowe’s bargaining are terribly misguided.
Mike Protack
We already have healthcare rationing, it’s called uninsured. We also have rationing with insured people. Many, many people with illnesses have had to fight insurance companies to get the treatment they need.
We already have a public option – it’s called Medicare and it’s pretty popular among the people that use it.
Sorry but you are wrong.
Go to http://www.rebuildthedelawaregop.com/ and look at the key elements of Delacare.
Medicare and Medicaid are unsustainable in any form or fashion. They are both very complex programs which cost a lot and produce poor results. The only way Medicare and Medicaid stay intact is buy squeezing providers (Dr’s and Hospitals).
The uninsured are the clarion call for so many liberals but we have SCHIP, Medicaid and Medicare to answer those needs.
Rationing exists because of the cost of chronic disease, inefficiency of health care, defensive medicine and lack of personal responsibility.
Mike Protack
Mr. Shallow Bench is here again with his ignorant talking points.
We have rationing because for-profit insurance companies see their first order of business as extracting shareholder value from premiums paid for care. NOT because they can provide care of such high efficiency that they have money left over because treatment outcomes have been so awesome as to have actually saved money.
If you are uninsured, you aren’t getting rationed care — you show up at the Emergency Room where you get taken care of at a much higher price than if you had gone to a doctor’s office or local clinic. Which means that the cost of Family insurance coverage includes about $1,000/year in the premium you pay to pay for services to the uninsured.
Are we going to impliment the failed Canadian Plan or the failed British Plan?
Failed Canadian plan? I don’t think the Canadians wanna trade their health care plan for private insurers and the “best health care” in the world.
Then why do so many Canadians in Windsor go to hospitals in Detroit? Simple. The U.S. does have the ‘best health care’ in the world.
callerRick misses the point . . . looks like we were disconnected
Cassandra, you show up with zero intelligence or knowledge of health care. You prefer to defend your indefensible position with name calling, god luck. If that is the case, I win and you lose-again.
Insurance companies do not provide one bit of health care, they pay for health care based on negotiated terms and conditions.
It is a fact that most of the emergency room patients are people who do not have any idea of wellness or prevention. Yes, they may or may not have insurance but medical professionals will tell you they seldom take medications as directed, seldom follow up with care instructions and do incredibly injurious things to themselves and others which is why they end up in the emergency room.
What uninformed liberals have to decide is do you hate the profit motive in health care enough to turn health care over to the government which which will destroy health care.
Without some mode of choice,competition and personal responsibility we will never reign in cocts. A government takeover will fail miserably beacause it already has in everything else.
When you respond try to being some logic not tired old emotional liberal rubbish.
Mike Protack
Mr. Shallow Bench — when you show up here with something other than failed talking points and more pie in the sky plans is when you get to be taken seriously. In the meantime — and as long as the only conversation you care about is your own — you get to be treated as an idiot.
You can change that. Although I’ll stipulate that you’ll never do the work — like you didn’t do the work in your campaign(s) for governor — to get there.
Don’t come here thinking you are in any position to lecture anybody.
The RW trolls are distracting us. Call TRC’s office this coming week to make sure he’s not pimped for the Snowe job.
Mike’s health plan happens to be the best offered in Delaware when any independent review looks at it. Don’t dismiss it because he supports it. Look at it closely. It makes a lot of sense.
“— when you show up here with something other than failed talking points and…”
Typical Socialist-Dem talking point.
More reason to call Carper:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/06/get_rewrite.php