Battle over the Public Option
Much debate has ensued over the public option in health care reform. Even Obama has a documented history of inconsistency on his stated goals for reforming the health care system from supporting a single-payer system, to insisting on a public option and denying support for a single-payer system, to not requiring a public option and being open to a co-op plan. It has been argued, however, that even the Co-op plan is a disguised version of the public option leading eventually to all the elements highlighted by opponents of the public option and that the public option itself is just a slippery slope to a single-payer system.
I have alluded to the gradual elimination of private insurers before in a previous post. H.R. 3200 may, in fact, accomplish Obama’s longstanding goal of a single payer system. At Section 102(A) “Limitation on New Enrollment”, it prohibits any health insurer, other than the “public option” insurer, from adding any new people after the bill’s effective date. This will potentially squeeze out private insurers.
OBAMA SAYS HE IS FOR A SINGLE-PAYER SYSTEM
Obama 2003:
“I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.”
Senator Obama, March 24, 2007:
On March 24, 2007, U.S. Senator Obama told the Service Employees International Union: “[A]s I indicated before, my commitment is to make sure that we’ve got universal health care for all Americans by the end of my first term as president. …I don’t think we’re going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There’s going to be potentially some transition process.”
OBAMA DENYS THAT HE EVER SAID HE IS FOR SINGLE-PAYER SYSTEM
President Obama, August 11, 2009
“I have not said that I was a single-payer supporter, because, frankly, we historically have had a employer-based system in this country, with private insurers, and for us to transition to a system like that, I believe would be too disruptive. …So, I’m not promoting a single-payer plan.”
OBAMA SAYS PUBLIC OPTION IS NECESSARY
President Obama, June 23, 2009:
“Any plan I sign must include an insurance exchange…including a public option to increase competition and keep insurance companies honest,” Obama said on June 23.
OBAMA SAYS PUBLIC OPTION IS OPTIONAL
President Obama, August 15, 2009:
All I’m saying is, though, that the public option, whether we have it or we don’t have it, is not the entirety of health care reform. This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it. And by the way, it’s both the right and the left that have become so fixated on this that they forget everything else.
SECRETARY SEBELIUS SAYS PUBLIC OPTION IS OPTIONAL
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, August 16, 2009:
Echoing Mr. Obama’s Saturday comments, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius also told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King that “what’s important is choice and competition.” A public option “is not an essential element,” the Cabinet secretary said Sunday.
SENATOR CONRAD SAYS PUBLIC OPTION IS WASTED EFFORT
Senator Kent Conrad (D - ND)
On the Sunday interview show circuit, Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., declared little chance left for the public option.
“There are not the votes in the United States Senate for the public option, there never have been,” Conrad said on Fox News Sunday. “So to continue to chase that rabbit, I think, is a wasted effort.”
OBAMA OPEN TO INSURANCE CO-OPERATIVES
White House Official Director Nancy-Ann DeParle
President Barack Obama may accept nonprofit health-insurance cooperatives in place of a new government-run plan as long as consumers are guaranteed more choice and competition in buying insurance, a top aide said.
“We would be interested in that” if those conditions are met, Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s “Conversations with Judy Woodruff” airing today.
Politics Daily has interesting ideas on what a Health Care Co-Op might look like.
INSURANCE CO-OP: LIPSTICK ON A PIG
Michael Cannon at the Cato Institute argues that a government-chartered co-op would become just another Fannie Med
Having Congress charter a health insurance “cooperative” is just another way of creating a new government-run program that would drive private insurers out of business.
References