Rockefeller Says Public Option Legislation Could Return Next Year

Sen Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., discusses the recently-signed health care reform legislation – including the possibility of introducing public option legislation as soon as next year – with constituents at Shoney’s Restaurant in Charleston, W.Va. Watch video at West Virginia Watch Dog... Read More......

Ron Wyden: Public option is a step in the right direction

10/26/2009 - Washington, D.C.-. U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) issued the following statement in response to Senate Majority Leader Reid’s decision to include a public option with an opt-out provision in the Senate health reform legislation:

“I agree with Senator Reid that health reform should give Americans more options. Now, I want to work with him to ensure that all Americans can choose those options. The bottom line is that the public option can’t really hold private insurers accountable if it is only competing for 10 percent of the insurance market, because private insurance companies aren’t going to change their business practices if 90 percent of their customers can’t take their business elsewhere. Real reform means empowering Americans to choose insurance that works well for them and their family, while rejecting plans that don’t. Including a public option is a step in the right direction, now let’s remove the firewalls in this bill that prevent Americans from choosing it.”

Read More......

Hiatt: Shirking cost control

WASHINGTON POST, 10/26/2009 by Fred Hiatt - The "public option" is dangerous not for what it might do but for what it allows the politicians not to do. ∴ From the start, the Obama administration has said that health-care reform has to make health care both more accessible and less costly . If Congress does the first without the second -- guarantees a new entitlement without controlling costs -- it will bankrupt us, because health-care costs are rising faster than the overall economy is growing. ∴ So far, though, that seems to be where Congress is headed, for two reasons: First, no one knows for sure how to control costs; and, second, the reforms that are likeliest to work are politically unpalatable. Read more at Washington Post... Read More......

Hiatt: Shirking cost control

WASHINGTON POST, 10/26/2009 by Fred Hiatt - The "public option" is dangerous not for what it might do but for what it allows the politicians not to do. ∴ From the start, the Obama administration has said that health-care reform has to make health care both more accessible and less costly . If Congress does the first without the second -- guarantees a new entitlement without controlling costs -- it will bankrupt us, because health-care costs are rising faster than the overall economy is growing. ∴ So far, though, that seems to be where Congress is headed, for two reasons: First, no one knows for sure how to control costs; and, second, the reforms that are likeliest to work are politically unpalatable. Read more at Washington Post... Read More......

Health Care: Clear Majority Now Backs Plan

WASHINGTON POST, 10/20/2009 by Dan Balz and Jon Cohen (Hat tip: John H. Detweiler) - Americans still divided on overall packages. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that support for a government-run health-care plan to compete with private insurers has rebounded from its summertime lows and wins clear majority support from the public. Read more at the Washington Post... Read More......

Public Option is Not Dead Yet

HERITAGE FOUNDATION, MORNING BELL, 8/17/2009 (Hat tip: Jean Nelson) - The headlines are encouraging: The AP reports, “White House appears ready to drop ‘public option’.” Politico reads, “White House backs away from public health care option.” And the front page of USA Today says, “Obama may drop public option in health care.” These headers all stem from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ comment on CNN Sunday Morning that the public option “is not the essential element” of President Barack Obama’s health care plan. But by Sunday night the White House was already walking back Sebelius’ statement.

An anonymous administration official told The Atlantic that Sebelius “misspoke” and White House health reform communications director Linda Douglass released a statement explaining: “Nothing has changed. The president has always said that what is essential is that health-insurance reform must lower costs, ensure that there are affordable options for all Americans and it must increase choice and competition in the health-insurance market. He believes the public option is the best way to achieve those goals.”

Obama’s allies on the left are equally emphatic about the non-death of the public option. Democracy for America head Howard Dean told the Washington Post, “I don’t think this bill is worth passing without a public option.” And Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told CNN, “It would be very, very difficult [to pass Obama's plan] without the public option.” But Democrats in the Senate are singing a slightly different story. Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) told Fox News Sunday that “there never have been” enough votes for a public option in the Senate, and that continuing to fight for it would be “just a wasted effort.”

But that does not mean that Americans fighting against government-run health care are out of the woods yet. Conrad insists that the Senate could pass health reform that includes health insurance co-operatives. Co-operatives do have a long and proud tradition in many sectors of the U.S. economy, but details matter. Conrad says these health co-ops will not be “government-run and government-controlled” but instead “membership-run and membership controlled.” But others in Conrad’s caucus have a starkly different co-op goal. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is pushing a vision of co-ops that are: 1) run by the government, preferably the federal government; 2) funded or subsidized by the government; or 3) includes plans chosen by the government.

If the language that comes out of the Senate looks anything like what Schumer is proposing, then there is no real difference between co-ops and the public plan. If, on the other hand, the Senate produces something that; 1) is not funded by the federal government 2) is not “government-run and government-controlled”; but instead 3) is “membership-run and membership controlled” then co-ops would be acceptable.

Of course, the public plan is just one of the more objectionable parts of Obama’s health care plan. The individual and employer mandates, the expansion and federalization of Medicaid, the creation of a new health czar, not to mention the trillion dollar cost of the new plan, are all still intact. If, as Sebelius insists, the White House wants health reform to increase “choice and competition” than there are a number of conservative alternatives in the House and Senate that do just that by pursuing health reform through a “patient-centered” approach. The White House’s rhetoric is rapidly moving away from an expert/government-centered approach to health care and towards a more market/consumer model. Let’s hope their actions start matching their words.

From jean: I want to see torte reform be a basic part of health care reform. Without it, there's no cost control.

Cartoon borrowed from townhall.com - Published in GT-DH Sunday 9/16/2009
Recommended by J. Nelson

Read More......

White House appears ready to drop 'public option'

YAHOO NEWS, 8/16/2009 by Philip Elliott - WASHINGTON (AP): Bowing to Republican pressure and an uneasy public, President Barack Obama's administration signaled Sunday it is ready to abandon the idea of giving Americans the option of government-run insurance as part of a new health care system. ∴ Facing mounting opposition to the overhaul, administration officials left open the chance for a compromise with Republicans that would include health insurance cooperatives instead of a government-run plan. Such a concession probably would enrage Obama's liberal supporters but could deliver a much-needed victory on a top domestic priority opposed by GOP lawmakers. Read more at Yahoo (also see video)... Read More......

Neurosurgeon Questions Obama Care

Hat tip: Lee McLaughlin - Paid for by the League of American Voters and posted by the National Republican Trust.com (NRTPac/GOPTrust.com) Read More......

The Public Option: "It's Not An Option"

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY, 7/15/2009 (Hat tip: Linda Weimer) - "...It didn't take long to run into an "uh-oh" moment when reading the House's "health care for all Americans" bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal." Read more at IBD...

Oregon's U.S. Congressmen

• Blumenauer, Earl (D), Oregon 3rd - DC (202) 225-4811, Portland (503) 231-2300
• DeFazio, Peter (D), Oregon, 4th - DC (202) 225-6416, Eugene (541) 465-6732
• Schrader, Kurt (D), Oregon, 5th - DC (202) 225-5711, Salem (503) 588-9100
• Walden, Greg (R), Oregon, 2nd - DC (202) 225-6730, Medford (541) 776-4646
• Wu, David (D), Oregon, 1st - DC (202) 225-0855, Portland (503) 326-2901

Switchboard: (202) 224-3121 Read More......

Health Care: Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) on Obama's Public Option

The $1.6 trillion price tag of President Obama's healthcare reform continues to be one of the biggest sticking points amongst Republicans. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., shares his criticism of the plan. See Rep. Ryan's CNBC interview... Read More......

Health Care: Is the 'Public Option' Inevitable or Imperiled?

REASON ONLINE, 6/29/2009 by Peter Suderman - Just a few weeks ago, progressive health-care reform looked like a done deal. And the so-called "public plan"—a government-run insurance option beloved by the Democratic Party's most liberal faction—was to be the legislation's centerpiece. ∴ But thanks to some inconvenient analysis from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and increased public worries about government spending in general, reform efforts are now in disarray... Continued at Reason Online... Read More......

What We Talk About When We Talk About Health Care

WASHINGTON POST, 6/24/2009 by Drew Westen (Hat tip: John H. Detweiler) - "Universal health care." "The uninsured." "Public option." These are the buzzwords you often hear from Democrats and proponents of President Obama's plan for health-care reform. But if they want to see that plan enacted, they'd do well to excise those phrases from their vocabulary. ∴ Words send messages, but they're not always the messages we intend. Recent polls show overwhelming support for health-care reform, including the "public option" in Obama's plan. But the reality is that which side prevails in this battle will probably depend as much on which one has its messaging right as on which has its policies right. ∴ Republicans and other opponents of Obama's plan are already operating on this assumption, guided by a memo on "the language of health care" that conservative wordsmith Frank Luntz circulated to GOP members on Capitol Hill last month. In it, he conceded that the American public wants real reform and argued that the only way Republicans can defeat Obama's plan is by co-opting the language of reform, describing the president's plan as a "government takeover" and painting it as a bureaucrat's dream and a patient's nightmare. Read more at the Washington Post... Read More......