Lobbyists are working behind the scenes to kill the public option in the healthcare bill. And they're succeeding.
I poked around Washington Friday, talking with friends on the Hill who confirmed the worst: Big Pharma and Big Insurance are gaining ground in their campaign to kill the public option in the emerging healthcare bill.
You know why, of course. They don't want a public option that would compete with private insurers and use its bargaining power to negotiate better rates with drug companies. They argue that would be unfair. Unfair? Unfair to give more people better healthcare at lower cost? To Pharma and Insurance, "unfair" is anything that undermines their profits.
So they're pulling out all the stops -- pushing Democrats and a handful of so-called moderate Republicans who say they're in favor of a public option to support legislation that would include it in name only. One of their proposals is to break up the public option into small pieces under multiple regional third-party administrators that would have little or no bargaining leverage. A second is to give the public option to states where Big Pharma and Big Insurance can easily buy off legislators and officials, as they've been doing for years. A third is to bind the public plan to the same rules that private insurers have already wangled, thereby making it impossible for the public plan to put competitive pressure on the insurers.
Max Baucus, chair of Senate Finance (now exactly why does the Senate Finance Committee have so much say over healthcare?) hasn't shown his cards, but staffers tell me he's more than happy to sign on to any one of those. But Baucus is waiting for more support from his colleagues, and none of the three proposals has emerged as the leading candidate for those who want to kill the public option without showing they're killing it. Meanwhile, Ted Kennedy and his staff are still pushing for a full public option, but with Kennedy ailing, he might not be able to round up the votes. (Kennedy's health committee just released a draft of a bill, which contains the full public option.)
Enter Olympia Snowe. Her move is important, not because she's Republican (the Senate needs only 51 votes to pass this) but because she's well-respected and considered nonpartisan, and therefore offers some cover to Democrats who may need it. Thursday night Snowe hosted a private meeting between members and staffers about a new proposal that Pharma and Insurance are floating, and apparently she's already gained the tentative support of several Democrats (including Ron Wyden and Thomas Carper). Under Snowe's proposal, the public option would kick in years from now, but it would be triggered only if insurance companies fail to bring down healthcare costs and expand coverage in the meantime.
What's the catch? First, these conditions are likely to be achieved by other pieces of the emerging legislation; for example, computerized records will bring down costs a tad, and a mandate requiring everyone to have coverage will automatically expand coverage. If it ever comes to it, Pharma and Insurance can argue that their mere participation fulfills their part of the bargain, so no public option will need to be triggered. Second, as Pharma and Insurance well know, "years from now" in legislative terms means never. There will never be a better time than now to enact a public option. If it's not included, in a few years the public's attention will be elsewhere.
Much the same dynamic is occurring in the House. Two members who had originally supported single-payer healthcare told me that Pharma and Insurance have launched the same strategy there, and many House members are looking to see what happens in the Senate. Snowe's "trigger" is already buzzing among members.
All this will be decided within days or weeks. And once those who want to kill the public option without their fingerprints on the murder weapon begin to agree on a proposal -- Snowe's "trigger" or any other -- the public option will be very hard to revive. The White House must now insist on a genuine public option. And you, dear reader, must insist as well.
This is it, folks. The concrete is being mixed and about to be poured. And after it's poured and hardens, universal healthcare will be with us for years to come in whatever form it now takes. Let your representative and senators know you want a public option without conditions or triggers -- one that gives the public insurer bargaining leverage over drug companies and that pushes insurers to do what they've promised to do. Don't wait until the concrete hardens and we've lost this battle.
Just another example of barbarian mind-set of "profits before people."
The sad thing is that taxpayers and their representatives buy into this. That they believe the propaganda of Big Pharma. That they do not see that Health Care Reform does not = government control of their personal health care, that the proposal is "you keep what you like."
Don't taxpayers realize that the larger the pool of people applying for a Health Care Plan the cheaper the cost?
Just an example; if the 44,831,390 Medicare Beneficiaries (2008) were able to bargain as a single group, they would command cheaper rates from whichever private provider chosen. This is what Big Pharma is afraid of, lower profits because of lower rates they would have to provide.
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"Government-Run Health Care?" FackCheck.org 4/30/2009
Excerpt
A conservative group's ad implies Congress is on its way to instituting a British- or Canadian-style health system.
Summary
A group called Conservatives for Patients' Rights began airing a television ad this week that criticizes government-run health care and falsely suggests Congress wants a British-style system here in the U.S.:
•The ad neglects to mention that President Obama hasn't proposed a government-run plan and, in fact, has rejected the idea.
•It claims that a research council created by the stimulus bill is "the first step in government control over your health care choices." The legislation actually says the council isn't permitted to "mandate coverage, reimbursement, or other policies."
•The ad quotes a Canadian doctor who has been critical of his country's system, but leaves out the fact that the doctor has praised other government-funded systems, such as those in Austria and France.
Analysis
Conservatives for Patients’ Rights is, as its name indicates, a conservative group, and it’s also quite obviously not a proponent of government-run health care. Its minute-long ad was launched April 27 with what the group said was a month-long $1 million buy. (We've seen it on CNN several times this week.) CPR was launched this year and is led by Rick Scott, former head of Columbia/Hospital Corporation of America.
The ad states that government-run health care systems, in particular those in Britain and Canada, take control away from patients and ration health care. CPR is certainly entitled to state its own view. But the ad implies that the U.S. Congress wants to implement a health system like those in Britain and Canada. That's contrary to what President Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress have said.
Obama hasn’t called for such a government-run plan, also called a “single-payer" plan. In fact, he has flatly rejected it. The administration has said on the White House’s “Health Care” Web page (and previously on its transition site) that “President Obama and Vice President Biden believe” that government-run health care is “wrong.” And they also believe, the administration says, that the other extreme, “letting the insurance companies operate without rules,” is wrong. (The White House redesigned its health care page on April 30; a cached page with the quoted language is attached to this article.)
Obama has long said he would allow individuals or small businesses to buy insurance through a public plan – like the one now available to members of Congress. But nobody would be forced to drop his or her current insurance, and private plans would exist as they do now. This was the health care plan he promoted as a presidential candidate.
As we pointed out several times during the campaign, Obama's proposal was mischaracterized as a Canadian-style plan by his opponents. In Canada and Britain, all citizens have health care coverage, provided by the government and paid for with taxes. Only two Democrats ran for president on a single-payer platform: Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who called for "Medicare for all," and former Sen. Mike Gravel. Clarification, May 1: Gravel has called his plan a “single-payer Health Care Voucher plan,” paid for by the government. But advocates have said it’s not a true single-payer plan, since private insurance would still play a role.
More recently, single-payer advocates have felt shunned by the White House and Congress as the debate over changing the U.S. system has begun. In early March, no single-payer advocate was invited to a White House summit on health care, leading reporter Russell Mokhiber to suggest that Obama's message to such groups was to "drop dead." A day before the summit, the White House extended invitations to the president of Physicians for a National Health Program (which had been planning to protest the event), and government-health-care-backer Rep. John Conyers. The Wall Street Journal noted that they were but two out of more than 100 attendees.
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