HuffPo is reporting that AP sources say the Senate Finance Committee is planning on dropping the public option from the Senate bill. Of course, the Senate and House bills need to be reconciled before making it to the president. Even if the reporting is accurate, its not quite the end.
But the Senate generally gets its way, so this is a major obstacle.
Someday, I hope to be as much the “commoner” to have Peggy Noonan voice my personal inner dialogue.
Republicans don’t get it. Democrats only barely get it.
According to a new ABC/Washington Post poll, even with a “penalty tax” on health care benefits, a majority of Americans still support a public-option health care system:
Thinking about health care, one proposal to insure nearly everyone would require all Americans to have health insurance or pay a penalty on their income tax, excluding those with lower incomes. It would require most employers to offer health coverage or pay a fee. There would be a government-run plan to compete with private insurers. And income taxes on people earning more than 280-thousand dollars a year would be raised to help fund the program. Taken together, would you support or oppose this plan? Do you feel that way strongly or somewhat?
54% Support, 43% Oppose
I would not call this a ringing endorsement of the benefits taxation plan. It *is* an endorsement for health care reform – and even for the public option – because any proposal that costs money generally drops like a stone in the polls. Any plan that can survive the word “taxes” in a poll and stay above fifty percent is practically immortal.
Other news in that poll is that Obama’s numbers are definitively dropping. Of course they are: he owns the economy and the economy is in the public toilet. My prediction: expect him to get to fifty percent and possibly even lower by the end of the year, followed by an economic recovery and soaring new heights for his poll numbers by mid-terms.
The United States? Bullshit. It’s France. And just because Mitch McConnell thinks that Americans think the best health care in the world is here in the US doesn’t make it so.
Remember when John McCain was running for president? Gosh, it seems like a long time ago. I think these days, he’s standing in for either Sacha Baron Cohen or Andy Kaufmann, I can’t tell which.
Here’s John’s deregulatory theory of Health Care reform, which he predicts will make it work at least as well as the banking industry.
We should hope.
When dissecting John McCain’s anemic health care “plan,” invariably you find that there are some other topics you’ve missed. But this Boston Herald piece – written in support of his plan – actually does a great job of wrapping up some of the absurdities in a couple of opening paragraphs:
His health-care plan also makes most sense – BostonHerald.com
The key salvo is aimed at the central pillar of our health care system – tax-subsidized employer-provided health care. About 70 percent of Americans get their health care where they work.
The McCain plan offers a $5,000 tax credit to families and $2,500 to individuals to purchase health care on their own. This would end the inherent inequity of some getting tax-free health care from their employers, but others having to purchase it with after-tax dollars.
Generally, when you fire a “salvo” at a “central pillar,” of a system, your aim is not to improve said system. And indeed, this plan does not improve the situation one bit. But remarkably Freudian semantics aside, let’s deal with the plan. And while we’re focusing on John McCain’s plan, let’s set aside the zero-sum game of trading “subsidies” for “tax credits,” which are effectively the same thing. Let’s also ignore the fact that $5000 isn’t going to get you the same level of health care you had under your employer’s plan, even if you work at Sutherland.
Rather, I’d like to discuss the obvious misapprehension many Conservatives seem to have about the health insurance industry and the “free market.”
In a Utopian “free market” system, I get a paycheck every week which I then use to buy goods and services at will. I go to my local store and negotiate directly with the owner of the quaint little shop, Mr. Walmart, to get the best deal. No government has any role in the transaction, it’s just mano-a-mano consumer spending, and then we all go down to the fishin’ hole, whistling a happy tune, and catch us a mess of catfish.
However in the current system – and indeed the system John McCain would like to perpetuate – we don’t deal directly with the shopkeeper, the doctor and the hospital, at all. We buy a service from an insurance company and then expect that service to do it’s job when the time is right.
It probably goes without saying that this website is not the most outspoken champion of free market economics in Rochester, but any fool can see that the insurance industry mutates the supposed free market transaction at least as much as any government. There is an expectation of service on the consumer’s part – as the article points out quite correctly, without asking how much it costs – which compels insurance companies to spend without restriction on some things. Hence there is no particular free market control over the price of medicine, medical equipment or services at a hospital. Meanwhile, to control cost and maximize profit, insurance companies have begun saying “no” to many procedures and knocking people off the roles.
Basically, you’ve got giant pharmaceutical companies fed unlimited resources by giant health insurance companies and somewhere in the middle of all that, barely factored into the decision making, are you and your doctor. But the Conservatives want you to believe that you and your doctor are the most important people in the equation.
I know I’ll get a lot of heat from Conservative circles, but if you don’t plan to outlaw health insurance outright, I’ll take programs led by a democratically elected government over those created to maximize profits of everybody in the world but me any day of the week.