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Progressive Caucus Backs Public Health Insurance Plan |
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While one of the AFL-CIO’s key health care reform principles—a public health insurance option—has been vigorously attacked by the private insurance industry, it received important backing last week from the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC).
The CPC long has backed a single-payer approach for health care reform. But last week, the group said that is not a line in the sand that could not be crossed to win its backing of health care reform legislation.
In a letter to congressional leaders, the CPC said its 77 members could support a public insurance plan option within a reformed health care system that maintained private insurance. But, the group also stressed that it’s the “minimum” needed to win their support for reform legislation.
The private for-profit insurance industry and most congressional Republicans long have opposed a public insurance option. After all, their soaring profits and bonuses are at stake. A public plan also is a central element of President Obama’s reform blueprint.
In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the CPC wrote that caucus members want all Americans to have a choice of securing health insurance coverage under a public plan or through private insurance as part of any comprehensive health care reform legislation.
The diverse CPC is made up of House Democrats with progressive views on health care, the economy, global policy, the environment and other vital working family issues.
The Progressive Caucus co-chairs, Reps. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) and Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), also wrote that while most CPC members prefer a single-payer plan as the best option. According to the letter, a public plan is a “minimum” and the “strong majority” of the 77-member group:
will not support legislation that does not include a public plan option that is supported on a level playing field with private health insurance plans.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said House Democrats are committed to including a public plan option in health reform legislation. But he told The Hill newspaper that although Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) has expressed support for a public plan, Baucus is working on developing bipartisan legislation with committee ranking minority member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who opposes such an option.
Take the 2009 Health Care for America Survey and tell us what you think should be included in comprehensive health care reform. Launched last week, the survey gives you opportunity to make your voice heard and help shape health care reform to meet the needs of working families.
The survey asks specific questions about your household’s health care coverage and costs. It also provides an opportunity to tell your health care story in your own words or in a video.
Take the survey here.
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Are you uninsured in America? You should check out the website http://UninsuredAmerica.blogspot.com - John Mayer, California
“The CPC long has backed a single-payer approach for health care reform. But last week, the group said that is not a line in the sand that could not be crossed to win its backing of health care reform legislation.”
Why isn’t “a single-payer approach” considered “a line in the sand that could not be crossed”? How can you wage a battle for essential health care by already conceding to private for-profit corporate interests.
ANY major continuation of corporate for-profit will mean a continuation of the “genocide of the unprofitable” which is forever waged against working people.
Tens of millions of people are without health insurance because they can’t afford it. Thousands are dying every year in the United States because they could not afford the impossible fees charged by the gansters running the health care racket.
The Democratic Party, Obama and Clinton, have NEVER supported single-payer because they are irrevocably compromised by campaign contributions and political influence of corporte interests.
We have already seen what total control Wall Street, banking and financial interests have over this administration in looting the public treasury. We have already seen how the wars for oil and the profits in the military-industrial complex have continued to loot the economy.
Do you really wonder why the public school system is also being destroyed?
Do you accept the self-serving “explanations” of why millions of working people are facing permanent unemployment and impoverishment?
Where is a voice that speaks for the needs of working people? Not in the mass media. Not in the political process that is utterly corrupted. Many labor unions have come out with equivocation for SINGLE-PAYER insurance.
If “drawing the line” on this single-payer insurance question is not done now, especially at this time, then there is NOTHING that run-amok corporate greed will not destroy. This includes ESSENTIAL programs like SOCIAL SECURITY.
With the defeat of “single-payer” insurance how can you seriously expect EFCA to pass or be enforced? Has the labor movement communicated it’s committment to “draw the line” on EFCA? What will the labor movement do when these essential pieces of legislation are defeated? Absolutely nothing!
The time to serve notice to the Democratic Party, the ruling gangster elite destroying this country, and to the working people of this country. NO MORE!
These truths must be recognized and acted upon.
1. The run-amok gangster capitalist system is dead. It cannot be “bailed out” or reformed. It is forever a tyranny of wealth forever destroying the lives of us all.
2. Establish mass-media to explain this fact of life. No voice of labor appears anywhere in the corporate controlled mass media.
3. Dump the captialist controlled Democratic (and of course the Republican) parties. Call for the founding convention of a new socialist political party dedicated to peace, to representing and empowering the needs of working people in society.
4. Establish a political platform that reflects the needs of the people, recruit candidates to run at every level of government to end the dictatorship of big business, wall street and the military.
There is no reform of the tyranny of capitalism possible. It must be ended.
Read the World Socialist Web Site http://www.wsws.org.
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We already have a “public option”–it’s called Medicare. The government pays to cover the costliest section of the population to insure, so the private companies don’t have to do it. As Obama noted recently, its costs are rapidly becoming an unsustainable burden on the federal budget, becasue private insurers have “skimmed off the cream” and deprived the public plan of its best avenue for reducing costs, namely, by spreading the risk around.
I understand the thinking of the Progressive Caucus–as a negotiating strategy, they’re laying out the bare minimum they will accept. Problem is, it just puts off the day of reckoning. Even witgh a public option, we’re still going to be throwing away something like 30% of our health care dollars on administrative waste and a fragmented risk pool. How much longer can we afford to keep doing this?
Congressional negotiators can lay out their “minimum terms,” but its up to us to lay out what it is we actually want.
Obviously no one in the “progressive” caucus has ever sat at a negotiating table. you don’t give away your position before you sit down with the opposition!
And if they feel they need incremental positions in lieu of getting single payer for now, what they should be standing for are reforms and improvements that cover more people but do not further embed the private insurance companies into the system (S-CHIP, expansion of medicare/medicaid, etc). A public health option will only end up covering those with the highest costs, preventing the public plan from the benefits of distributed risk.
All of the supposed “reforms” being discussed now will only entrench the insurance industry even further into our system of health care, making it even more difficult to ever get rid of them. That is the REAL reason the insurance industry has come to jesus and wants to “reform” healthcare. They want to solidify their place in it for a long time to come.
This health care survey is ridiculous. It doesn’t even provide the option of a single payer system. It’s all designed around supporting some nebulous idea of “reform” when every economic study has shown that single-payer is the ONLY one that will cover everyone and cost less money. But because the AFL-CIO is in bed with the Democrats, you won’t even let that issue on the table. Shame on you! Have you forgotten who you represent? I’ll tell you. It’s the working class, not the ruling class. Grow a damn backbone and take leadership on the issue instead of lying there like an obedient lapdog of the established powers.