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Health Care Reform Backers Out in Force as Support for Public Option Remains High |
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While TV news reports continue to focus on the loud, angry and sometimes just plain bizarre antics of health care reform opponents, union members are mobilizing to counter the big lies, at town hall meetings and forums around the country.
Just yesterday, some 100 union members brought their voices to a Clovis, N.M., town hall meeting with Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D) as did another 100 at Democratic Rep. Vic Snyder’s Little Rock, Ark., meeting. More than two dozen union members met AFSCME’s Highway to Health Care tour bus when it pulled into Shreveport, La., yesterday.
Over the weekend, hundreds of people in Rutland, Vt., carrying red placards and wearing T-shirts stating “Healthcare Is a Human Right, took part in a health care town hall, shifting the debate 180 degrees from a similar event less than two months ago. The members of the Vermont Workers’ Center/Jobs with Justice made sure lawmakers at the town hall heard their voices this time, a sharp contrast with the 200-person “Tea Party” event pushed by extremist radio shows weeks before.
In a column on Huffington Post, Stewart Acuff, special assistant to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, writes that the radical right is attempting to shut down health care reform and change by intimidation and force and the power of the Big Lies. He says union members and their allies are fighting for “a healthcare system that ensures quality healthcare for all and checks the insane greed of the insurance industry.”
When I say “fight,” I don’t mean the thuggishness being used by the right. I mean peaceful, nonviolent mobilization that counters the Big Lies of the right, gives cover to weak Democrats and demonstrates convincingly that our ideas and policies are in the interests of a stronger, healthier, freer and fairer America.
Last night, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) showed he doesn’t need much help to shut down the loud and bizarre disrupters spouting the biggest lies about health care reform. When one women in a Dartmouth, Mass., town hall meeting—waving a photo of President Obama with a Hitler moustache—claimed the health care reform proposals that Obama supports are “Nazi policy,” Frank replied, to cheers from many in the crowd:
On what planet do you spend most of your time? Ma’am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.
Meanwhile, several recent polls show support for a public health insurance plan option remains high.
Celinda Lake, president of Lake Research Partners, says:
Poll after poll shows that large majorities of Americans support reform that offers a choice of a public health insurance plan or private insurance. In fact, Americans strongly support having that choice rather than access to only private insurance. Choice is a key value.
In a late July and early August survey, Quinnipiac found 62 percent of respondents backed a public option that would allow working families to choose between a private plan or a public plan. In a late July poll, 66 percent told New York Times/CBS pollsters they supported a public plan and 56 percent told a Time poll the same thing.
Yesterday, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) reiterated its research that shows a public plan would help lower health care costs in the long run while providing coverage to millions of the uninsured.
In the policy memo, Why a Public Insurance Plan Is Essential for Health Reform, EPI researcher Alexander Hertel-Fernandez writes that a public plan option would inject some badly needed competition into the system and “force private insurers to compete on efficiency and quality,” rather than the way they currently compete for business: Enrolling the lowest-cost workers and businesses.
Find out more about a public plan option from EPI here, here and here.
The co-called health care “co-op” alterative is severely flawed and unworkable, says Rick Bender, president of the Washington State Labor Council (WSLC).
Creating a patchwork of state or regional cooperatives where none exist just seems like an extremely costly and very bad idea. What you end up with, if you could even create it, would be a series of fragmented risk pools and duplicative administrative structures around the country
As Sweeney said on Monday, “The only way to force real competition on the insurance companies is a strong public plan option.”
11 Comments
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Rick Bender of WSLC says co-ops would mean “fragmented risk pools and duplicative administrative structures.” He’s right. Unfortunately the public option has the same problem. We don’t need more competition for private insurers. We need to cut them out of the health care field altogether, where they contribute nothing and do much harm.
It’s important to protest, loudly, at Obama’s suggestion that the public option be dropped from health reform proposals. Without it, they’re no longer reform proposals, they’re simply a giveaway to the insurance industry. If hte government is going to reqm reform prou
unfortunately, this dose not apply to Hemet California where the only hospital is non-accredited. Hence, no reform of health Care will affect Riverside County. This is Mary Buono Mac’s district and Congressman Lewis who opposes health care reform, also Congressman Lewis is closing Hemet-Ryan Airport for houses and ending the Fire Base for the wildfires.
Rick Bender’s point about co-ops creating “frangmented risk pools and duplicative administrative structure” is right on the mark. Unfortunately the same criticism could be made of the public option. We don’t need “more competition” for private insurers, we need for them to get out of the health care business altogether and stick to cars and houses.
We should fight to keep the public option from being dropped from the reform billl, because without it the bill is nothing more than a blatant giveaway to the health insurance industry. (Bailing out the banks was bad enough.) But we should be under no illusions that the public option will come close to resolving our health care crisis.
Rick Bender’s point about co-ops creating “frangmented risk pools and duplicative administrative structure” is right on the mark. Unfortunately the same criticism could be made of the public option. We don’t need “more competition” for private insurers, we need for them to get out of the health care business altogether and stick to cars and houses.
We should fight to keep the public option from being dropped from the reform billl, because without it the bill is nothing more than a blatant giveaway to the health insurance industry. (Bailing out the banks was bad enough.) But we should be under no illusions that the public option will come close to resolving our health care crisis. Sooner or later, we’re going to have to get serious about single payer, or costs will keep soaring, people will keep going bankrupt because of doctor bills, and people will keep dying because they couldn’t afford care.
Why does the right wing people not understand soc. sec. and medicare they enjoy is so different than a health care reform we all need to get the insurance companies into \lowering health care cost for all of us.
Sorry, this will not happen in California.
There are two basic visions at work here. Why does it seem like most on the right don’t trust this thing, and most on the left do? The right is ready to condemn it before they know even the basic facts; the left is ready to accept it before they know all the facts. The right doesn’t trust what Obama is doing; the left fawns over him.
But now the best polls are saying 53% of voting Americans are against the whole idea. Is it just because the right and big biz has done a better job of propaganda, or is this simply the easiest scarecrow for the left to blame?
Bottom line is it appears no one, including the politicians, really knows what is in this, what it will really cost, or what it will really do. But it seems 47% of voting Americans are still fine with that.
Many books will be written about this epic battle . . . interesting to watch . . . let’s hope it doesn’t get too far out of hand.
Neither Demograt or Republican is truly behind health care reform,tell a lie on the left,tell a lie on the right and tell the ones in the middle nothing.It’s called divide and conquer the people will lose and the parties will blame each other again.We the the American People are a bunch of fools,every 4 years or so we buy the lies and send them all back to Washington or our state legislatures.None of our elected representives are listening to us.Eight months into the adminstration of CHANGE there has been none.No Employee free choice,no new jobs,no help on foreclosures,credit is still tight,bail out money is non-existant,hell they can’t even pay the dealers on the cash for clunkers program.But the Banks got theirs and kept it,we don’t even know what they did with it.What a deal the AFL-CIO led us into now we’re going to threaten them with with holding our votes the next election cycle.What makes us think any polictican gives a damn what we do.The AFL -CIO will give them our money again without asking us and we’ll get more promises and they’ll smile all the way back to Congress.
Yes, regarding the previous poster’s comments. Sometimes it occurs to me that the system being broken is actually a good thing. At least they can’t get themselves together to ram some unwanted thing through too fast. But, then again, that’s what the balance of power is supposed to do for us. We could certainly do without all the corruption and incompetance!
Obama’s numbers are sliding so much because moderates and independants are afraid of what he’s doing, and the more liberal ones are getting disillusioned with the lack of change and displays of incompetance.
But even as his approval rating slides, keep in mind the congress’s numbers are much, much lower. Even when Bush was at his all time low, congress was at least 10% below him.
I love my country but distrust my government!
I’ll agree Congress has very low numbers and getting lower,but they were very low last election and the people re-elected the majority of them again.You can’t have change with the same old same old.We can’t get them to pass term limits the people must do it.I too love my country but I no longer trust any politcian.I very badly want health care reform but I’m scared to death of anything these people do.Like I said they can’t even get money out to car dealers that sorely need it to pay the banks.
Ditto. “Scared to death of anything these people might do” says it all! It seems to me that some simple things can be done with healthcare without creating something that has 1,200 pages which nobody has a good understanding.
And wasn’t term limits struck down by the Supremes as being unconstitutional a while back? So I think there would have to be an amendment to that effect.