No More Compromise! Keep Your Grubby Hands Off My Public Option!

Well, ladies and gents, we may have just lost our best chance we have ever had for healthcare reform. Over this past weekend a combination of statements made from members of the Obama Administration suggested that it is backing away from its push for a public insurance option. President Obama said that the public option is not the "entirety or healthcare reform." Robert Gibbs, a white house spokesperson, commented that the president could be satisfied with a bill that did not include the public option. In an interview Health and Human Service Secretary Kathleen Sebelius stated that the public option is not essential. While none of these officials ever said that they were giving up public health insurance, their statements seemed odd for people who have been putting a public option at the forefront of this debate since it began. Adding to the uncertainty about the matter was Senate Finance Committee member Kent Conrad of North Dakota who said that a bill with a public option would never make its way through both houses of Congress.

The thought that the White House could even be considering dropping the one thing that will make any real difference for healthcare reform is a deeply disappointing one. I doubt that the bill would even be worth passing without the public option. While it might serve to reform some of the corrupt practices that private insurers use, we would not get the sweeping changes in our infrastructure that we so desperately need. I am in complete agreement with what Howard Dean said on the "Today Show" on Monday. Other parts of the bill might be about enacting "insurance reform." This could lower costs and improve terms for some people who are already insured. However, real healthcare reform will not be likely to happen without the public option because it is the only way to expand coverage to everyone.

As I stated in a previous post, public healthcare clearly makes the most sense. Statistics show that Canadian and European single-payer systems are cheaper, more efficient, and result in higher quality healthcare than the system we now have. They are not perfect. People in these countries have a complaint from time to time, but by and large, they are satisfied with their healthcare. They have far fewer worries because they know they are guaranteed basic care. These are simple facts. What I find so frustrating is that in the United States so many of our decisions are not based on reason and pragmatism. Pragmatism means looking at what has worked someplace else and trying it for ourselves.

So what is keeping us from using logic and common sense to make these important healthcare decisions? These two things: fear and profit.

The greatest fear is of the great, evil socialist machine. Some how any government involvement in our daily lives is going to take us on the path toward totalitarianism. If you think about this in any kind of rational way, this is the worst of slippery slopes. All my life I have lived in a country with public schools, a public post office, public emergency systems, medicare, and social security. I have yet to see a representative from the government wearing a swastika and beating down anyone's door. That isn't to say that we haven't witnessed some things that are reminiscent of this type of behavior. Let's see. I don't know...How about our government's invasion of a foreign country for reasons that were completely fabricated? How about the torturing war prisoners in a complete violation of the Geneva Convention? How about the government spying on it's own citizens? These things do not have the mark of totalitarianism, but try saving lives by giving everyone more affordable health care and people are suddenly terrified of becoming victims of the next Third Reich?

The other fear I hear time and again is the fear of being taxed. We are already so burdened with taxes, and the government wants us to pay more? How is it going to pay for this high priced healthcare option? The Administration can't explain this. The truth is that President Obama has explained this over and over again. The tax revenue will come from those making over $250 thousand dollars per year. Remember them? That's right. They are the ones who have been getting all the tax breaks for the last eight years or so. The rest will be paid for through streamlining and by eliminating inefficiency and waste. It couldn't be that simple, could it? How do we know when we haven't ever tried it? Even if the average person's taxes were expanded, healthcare would likely still end up being cheaper than it is under the current system.

Now we come to what is, perhaps, the most motivating fear of all. The private insurance companies are terrified of losing their precious profits. Who wouldn't feel sorry for those poor little corporations that won't be able to compete with such a brutal, totalitarian government? Numerous commentators have predicted that a public option will result in a death spiral for the private insurers. Well, in the first place I don't know if this would be such a bad thing. I am someone who has had the experience of having a very large medical expense, and who spent years trying to iron it out while insurance companies tried to screw me over. Secondly, this isn't necessarily the truth at all. Insurance companies could compete easily if they made the necessary adjustments in cost and services. If they are not willing to do so, then I say the same thing they would say to their competitors. C'est la vie. Survival of the fittest. Finally, we have recently seen what corporate greediness did to the world's economy. Why would we want to leave decisions that could determine whether we live or die solely in the hands of those who want to make a buck off of us?

There is another option that the Senate Finance committee has been kicking around in order to make the bill more palatable to the House. This is the idea of government subsidized co-ops. Using government seed money, consumers get together and produce their own companies. Because they are non-profit, this takes out the big, fat CEO paycheck as the primary motivation. This sounds like a great compromise, right? This has been tried before on a limited basis, so it does give us some real facts to look at unlike the emotional arguments the people have been screaming about in the recent town hall debates. Well, here is the problem. A 2000 study conducted by the U.S. General Accounting Office has already evaluated the effectiveness of such programs. The study found that the co-ops were not able to substantially lower costs. Thus far there is no evidence to indicate that expanding co-ops would make any real change in the current health insurance market. So this is not really a viable compromise. Besides, as one citizen so succinctly put it on NPR this week, we have already compromised. Many of us would prefer a fully government-funded, single-payer healthcare system. Having a public option that competes as one among many is already a compromise.

Linda Douglass, a different White House aide recently said that Obama still very much favors a public option. I hope this is true, or real healthcare reform will die and the president will be complicit in its death even if spineless Democrats in the House accept some kind of bill without the public option.

I am one angry liberal, and I know I am not alone. We are as pissed off as Howard Beale. (If you are too young to remember Network, look it up.) We could try screaming out of the window, but I don't know that it would accomplish anything. Then again....maybe it would. Maybe we should disrupt town hall meetings and scream ourselves hoarse. Isn't that the tactic being used by the squeaky wheels who object to the public option?

It would still make a lot more sense to me if such decision could be based on proven results, statistics, and sound reasoning instead of the unsubstantiated fears of the uninformed.