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Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Pelosi has a good idea - no kowtowing to autumn Snowes - but help out on detail; e.g., ... plus 5 percent ...; 96% not 100%; when, how, ... .

Links, here and here.

Pelosi has to be given credit for at least still talking the talk.

The bunch of them have yet to walk a walk - and who do YOU trust in that?

When would coverage be available, to whom, how conditioned, those are key details in a final situation, but just more stuff in flux at this point.

But public option is not being totally thrown under the train - yet.

Or so they say. They say a lot. Do you trust a lot?

But the headline questions, from the first linked item, this quote [italics added]:

New CBO numbers may have sealed the deal. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is preparing to move ahead with a "robust" public option--one that reimburses hospitals and providers at Medicare rates, plus five percent--in the House's health care bill. [...]

The [Pelosi proposed healthcare] bill remains nominally more expensive than the Senate Finance Committee proposal, but would cover 96 percent of all Americans, providing greater bang for each federal dollar spent. [...]

The move is sure to make progressives ecstatic, and puts Senate leaders, who have been unable to reach any decisions about their preferences for a public option in their own bill, in an uncomfortable position.

In recent days, Pelosi has insisted that she intends to send House negotiators to a health care conference committee with the maximum possible leverage for the public option. And House health care principals have been working doggedly to keep the price of reform down with the help of the public option--so in a sense, the news of this final push comes as little surprise: Pelosi is, as expected, using the fiscal responsibility of the robust public option to win over enough skeptics in her caucus to pass it. And she is, reportedly, very close to doing that.

By tying reimbursement rates to Medicare, the government would be able to spend less money per individual on subsidies in the health insurance exchanges. One of the major critiques of the Senate Finance bill is that the spending totals are kept low by denying subsidies to middle income Americans, and without providing a systemic corrective to insurance industry waste and abuse. In the House bill, greater subsidies, and the public option address that issue.


Better bang for the buck; that's good, but why a 5% premium beyond Medicare? Why not identical? Etc. Big question - will this be a phased in thing, where nothing helpful to the people in need happens until 2015; if then, since rules and statutes do get amended; and where if you don't like the plan you're with now, you can go public?

The conference situation will be most illuminating, as will how the Blue Dogs in the House and the bipartisan dogs of the Senate try to screw around to help vested interests continue to screw the public. So to speak.

Max and Olympia, and the circus is in town. If there is no truly vital public option, the public, the people, you and me, will be deliberately disadvantaged and lied to. Remember what's-his-name campaigning with "If you like the plan you have you can keep it and if you don't you can have the same plan as mine, as a member of congress."

Ya betcha. He said it then, so you could take it to the bank. (Sure, the bankers would laugh, they probably were laughing then over that and TARP, but try taking it there anyway - if you've the time and inclination.)


At least, thus far, we can recall Pelosi's name ---