Busy today….. watch the links… Even Obama abandoning Obamacare
Since I’m neck deep in work stuff today, there will likely be light posting. One thing to note – the anti-spam software will kick in if you have more than one link in a comment, leaving me to un-spam it when I get to it. So, keep that in mind when making your points.
And lots of points are being made lately over Obamacare, which has been the hot topic for days at the SDWC. Traffic is up, and so are the comments, with the country openly rejecting the Obamacare public option.
Speaking of that, it looks like even Obama is abandoning the Obamacare public option:
Former Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean, a leading figure in the liberal wing of his party, said Monday he doubts there can be meaningful health care reform without a direct government role.
Dean urged the Obama administration to stand by statements made early on in the debate in which it steadfastly insisted that such a public option was indispensable to genuine change, saying that Medicare and the Veterans Administration are “two very good programs that have been around for a long time.”
Dean appeared on morning news shows Monday amid increasing indications the Obama White House is retreating from the public option in the face of vocal opposition from Republicans and some vocal participants at a town-hall-style meetings around the country.
The former Vermont governor was asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” about President Barack Obama’s statement over the weekend that the public option for insurance coverage was “just a sliver” of the overall proposal. Obama’s health and human services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, advanced that line, telling CNN Sunday that a direct government role in a system intended to provide virtually universal coverage was “not the essential element.”
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Comments
“with the country openly rejecting the Obamacare public option.” I really don’t think that’s happening. Polls have shown that a majority in this country still supports a public option for health insurance.
I don’t know about that John. Here are come polls. Can you point us to the info you’re referencing, or is there another poll somewhere? (I just glanced at them quickly… sorry. Kind of rushed this a.m.)
I saw this discussed on FNS yesterday. Our Democratic friend from North Dakota, Kent Conrad, was a guest and was discussing a compromise allowing for a non-profit member-run cooperative instead of a gov option. He described it as having no government control what-so-ever once it is established. The gov would provide seed money to get it up to the necessary level of cash reserves which may or not be paid back – no decision yet there, but then the gov would have no control. It would essentially be a private coop.
One thing we know in SD are cooperatives, and this is actually an option I can get behind if he accurately portrayed it.
I am smiling broadly at how my Republican friends
here seem to like and understand co-ops.
Hey, it’s the SD way, right?
Jeff:
I am skeptical about the coop idea. As I understand a coop, members get together and pool their resources to be able to conduct some sort of business. This idea sounds like it has government behind it. For example, there is a start-up of $4 billion. The coop is not allowed to have an operating profit, right? What happens if it loses money? Will the fed pump more money in?
Also, what about the board that decides what kind of coverage everyone has to have? Is that going by the wayside? It sounds to me like the coop is a public option with a differnt name.
I like the ideas expressed in the two links Bill had in another post earlier. Those are free-market solutions that get to the bottom of the real problem.
duggersd – Very good points, and why I indicated that I support it IF it is as advertised by Conrad yesterday. He unequivically said no government control or activity at all once it is started up (seed money provided). The second they intimate that maybe the gov will have a say in management decisions or what the plans look like, they’ll lose me.
As far as non-profit co-ops (for-profit co-ops can make money) it is true that they cannot make a profit, but that doesn’t mean they cannot fund a reserve, improve services with earnings, etc. By non-profit, it just means that shareholders would not see their shares increase in price, could not be paid dividends, etc. Keep in mind that Sanford, Regional, and many other healthcare providers are non-profit. Doesn’t meant they don’t pay their people well and expand operations, have a reserve (for instance, a co-op can have billions in the bank as a reserve in case they run into trouble), etc. Many co-ops, when properly run, are healthier business-wise than standard for-profit corporations.
Good point if they do have money trouble though, they should have to get themselves out of trouble just like anyone else. I would not support additional gov support once they begin.
That’s my initial assessment. Like everything, the devil’s in the details though. As far as the solutions discussed in the previous posts, I’m all for them, long before I’m for the co-op idea, but I realize that we probably can’t get to them in a compromise. The co-op we can. That’s the pragmatist in me coming out 
Every once in a while he shows up.
Bill, I was talking about Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight.com. Recently, he said that the favorability for a general public insurance option is still strong, even though polls have slid for President Obama’s plan. I’ll look through that site to see if I can find a link.
Conrad & JeffJ’s co-ops are milk toast and worthless – a 2000 General Accounting Office study showed co-ops won’t save money or administrative costs.
http://www.gao.gov/archive/2000/he00049.pdf
The crazies are now clinging to their assault rifles outside of presidential events. This is probably going to end badly.
http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2009/08/17/20090817obama-scene.html
Ok, John, I think maybe I see it. Is it this one?
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/08/are-health-care-protests-working-and.html
You beat me to it, Bill. Yes, that’s the post I was thinking of, particularly this point:
“We’re in a somewhat peculiar situation in that the idea of health care reform overall remains popular, and moreover, the views toward most of the particular elements that are actually contained within the health care packages (like the public option or the surtax on the wealthy) are also pretty popular. And yet, when you ask people about the “plan” being contemplated by the Congress and/or the President, it is not very popular.”
The house passed the bill with the public option, the Senate will pass one without it (60) votes. When the bills are reconciled the public option will be put back in. then it will pass in the senate because it take less (50) votes.
We need to SAY NO to this entire bill. There is NOTHING good in it.
We need tort reform! In the now famous words of Tom Daschle. “The trial lawyers will stand by you and you must stand by them”-to members of congress.
We need portability
We need tax breaks for those who buy their own plan–and not one from an employer.
We need healthcare coverage to not be the responsibiliy of employers or government–but of citizens.
The Foxes running the coop?
So, all the selling without knowing what’s in the plan, all the demonizing of people who were afraid for the lives of their families, all the you don’t know what’s in the bill…and they’re just going to say – we’ll just take out the ‘Death Panel’ and ‘public option’ stuff -
Can you call yourself intelligent and not see they are telling the public what they want to hear, so they can get back to business?
How ineffective the US Constitution would have been if Health Care would have been a RIGHT!
Yes, you see, PP?
That’s why it was kind of dumb to call it “ObamaCare” in the first place.
I’m just sayin’.
Try this idea on for size:
http://decorumforum.blogspot.com/2009/08/ok-i-dont-have-health-plan-together.html