Are we going to get a public option in the health care bill, or not?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
if we don’t the democrats can forget about my support in 2010 and beyond.
strange isn’t it? when it comes to priorities like health care, it’s always “to exepnsive” and “we can’t have a mandate for THAT” and “we’ll have to wait, we’re not ready”.
when it comes to my fucking TV, i get three years to buy a converter box. tv goes dead this friday without it.
god forbid americans don’t have a crystal clear picture on their tv. why, they might go read a book or something.
Gut says yes.
Decades of watching sausage-making in DC says no.
We’ll see. If there’s no public option, we’ll be right back where we are now with this debate in less than a decade. Hell this is just a reprise of the debate we had in the early 90s, but more cartoonish. I guess history really does repeat itself – tragedy then farce.
The real issue is cost-cutting: US healthcare spending as a percentage of GDP has to fall. Simply has to.
I don’t see how any healthcare regime for the US that doesn’t contain a public option (whether it’s gummint proper, or a “body”, or a band of licenced non-profits backed up by a government healthcare board) can deliver that.
So I am quite optimistic. Precisely because the fat years are behind us.
Of course then I catch a glimpse of Ghastly Baucus somewhere and at once an ice-cold shiver runs down my spine…
Yup, book it, Dano.
There will likely be limits and conditions, but the public option will be there, without the so-called “trigger.”
if we don’t, we won’t really have meaningful health care reform.
being a cynic i would guess no. but i’m hoping i’m wrong.
I think we’ll get something which will be touted as a public option by everyone who wants some kind of health care to pass. The big question is what will the “public option” look like? I mean, after all, something called a “public option” is what Obama has stated very plainly has to be included in any health care legislation. It is anyone’s guess on how this thing will be dissected, eviscerated, pounded down, diluted and transmogrified before pen is put to paper on the signature line of any bill.
Anything that creates some kind of health care for the tens of millions of uninsured is worlds better than the ZERO that would have come out of a Republican administration. Whatever we get, I’m sure most of us will feel it is not enough. But it will be an historic moment nonetheless.
We will get a foot in the door, so the door can never be slammed shut.
Then later we will get a leg, then the torso, then eventually the whole body will be in the building.
The reason for that happening is because, besides a few Rand kooks, everyone knows health care is broken. But you cannot have a sudden transformation in a system that has been accepted by most American’s as ‘normal’. So gradual it will be.
nalbar
I wonder if it would be possible for we the people to start a non-profit health co-op that functions like a credit union or other collective operation? Just go around the government and the private health insurers altogether and run a citizen owned-and-managed health care plan….
Hmmmm….let’s see. Might he have a point???
Damn straight Eric! You go man! Those 47 million people are going to be pissed as hell at those damn Democrats when they “jam it through”. Just like those Dem-o-rats to force this onto all those millions of unwilling people. I bet you can convince all the Republicans in that 47 million to stand with you on principle and refuse that Democratic health care millstone they are trying to hang around their necks. They’ll be more than happy to take one for “the team”. Give em a call Eric. Tell them to “Just Say No”. Offer them some teabags or something in return.
l think it’s highly unlikely that we will see a pure, stand alone public option without some kind of trigger, similar to medicare d.
my best guess is that what we might get may resemble the SCHIP and medicare programs…with all the attendant hoops and hurdles, and need tests to qualify. it seems to me to be a no brainer to, in essence, open them up, or combine them to form the basic structure of a public option…which wouldn’t surprise me, since ted kennedy was involved in the drafting of the original SCHIP program; which was patterned after a massachusetts plan, as his newest proposal appears to be…but l suspect that’s too logical for baucus, etal to see.
color me skeptical.
No.
The GOP has to stop it.
If they don’t, they are done for a generation.