Hey Batman- What would a health care reform bill be without a public option? I haven't really read up on it at all but I thought the whole point of reform was a public option. pre-emptive thx
As I've mentioned a few times before, there are several components to reform that are specific to the private health care industry. Chief among them, in my opinion, is making it illegal to deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions. Another would be removing lifetime caps. Someone else might say tort reform is important. None of these requires a public option. The public option is meant to ensure competition and thus affordable rates and decent care. It's very, very important because we can't trust a greedy industry to regulate itself, but there are many other things that need to be done as well. Right now there are thousands of Americans in jobs they don't want to be in but are afraid to leave for fear of losing their insurance. Right now, no American with a pre-existing condition can leave his or her job because they are guaranteed to lose coverage. I would think that would be something we could all agree needs to change.
No. I want it completely separate. If the public option costs skyrocket or other problem come up, the rest of the system will be blamed because they are linked. If it is in its own system, like the Post Office, costs and problems are easily found and so are the reasons.
How badly is a public option needed? I'm not being facetious but there seem to be public options out there already. In California, we have a Healthy Families and Medi-CAL program where healthcare is essentially free for low income people. I really don't know about other states.
No surprise to me you don't even know what I proposed. The public option will be similar to another company offering coverage. Which puts it right in the middle of our current system. I want it to be a completely different system with its own Doctors and everything. show the government can make it work and work well, and I will want to join it.
Again...THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT HAS BEEN PROPOSED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Those that want a public option want it to compete with the private insurers.
Can you show me where the people on public option will have their own providers? That is not what it is at all.
I know this wasn't addressed to me, but there are a lot things in the healthcare proposal that have nothing to do with a public option. Mandating coverage will spread the risk pool and the subsidies should help to cover people who do not currently have insurance. A national exchange and nonprofit coops should compete with the other insurance companies and hopefully bring prices down. I think a public option would place more pressure on the big insurers, but that is not the be-all end-all of healthcare reform.
That doesn't make a lick of sense at all. Does Aetna have a completely separate and discreet set of providers than United? No. What you are asking for simply cannot be done. It isn't feasible. Let us assume for a moment that they miraculously found a way to do it. The private companies could then jack up (temporarily) their pay scale to providers so that all of the best providers flock to them. That leaves the public option with doctors that are not as good. That is called a rigged experiment.
I am not so sure. You could easily have contracts setup to protect from some theft of providers. Offer medical school tuition breaks for years of service in public providers, whatever. I think the rigged experiment is sticking a public option in the current system and having it possibly mess up the currently screwed system even further and also messing up what the public option is trying to do. I think the public option is the best way to slowly conver to single payer, but not to insure everyone, or lower cost of coverage through competition. I think the biggest issue will be years after the option is in place and if problems arise, those for the option will say it is the rest of the system and those against it will say it is the option. If it is embedded in our system it will be very hard to know the real cause.
This makes no sense. There is absolutely no reason to do this, and the limited quantity of doctors/nurses etc. makes it infeasible, period. The public plan has nothing to do with doctors and nurses as an employer, it is another option for insurance.
I'm not familiar with what's available in CA. But it's apparently not available to the millions without health insurance; the only public option available to them is the emergency room. At any rate, it would only be available to CA residents under the current situation. A public option is extremely important. Without a non-profit option, there will never be real competition and there will never be anything to stop the insurance industry from putting profits above care. In the current situation, insurance companies have every motivation to deny coverage whenever possible. If there's a way to combat that other than the competition that would come from a strong, non-profit, public option, I haven't heard it yet.
That's great...except that you cannot write Federal laws of general applicability that work only in rural areas.
The right to buy private insurance is not violated if you can't afford it - or if none is available. I have the right to buy Green Lantern power rings. That right has never been violated - despite the fact that they are well beyond my purchasing power and quite hard to come by. Now when some proponents claim a universal right to HAVE health care provided for them - that is a different ballgame. That is, in essence, guaranteeing a scarce and limited resource which sets us on a troubling path. (ie. doctors go on strike so we enslave them) Public health care can't be a universal right. No limited resource can. It can, however, be a public service provided by a state that has the resources to do it.
I think we can be pretty sure that was not the inent and meaning of the amendment. If the intent was to publicly fund private health insurance, well then those people aren't conservatives.
