Public option not dead, never was: Small business speaks up,
Big business lobbyists make fools of themselves
Memo to pundits, reporters, officeholders and candidates for
office who declared the public option “dead”*: Read the letters to the editor
in your local paper. N.b.: Reading them could cause some chagrin or could at least be a bit humbling. The letters often contain some pretty straight
reporting.
Genuine health care reform, including a strong public option
or expanding Medicare, has been supported throughout the past year by local citizens
writing in to their editors. Here is an excerpt from a good letter to NJBIZ (
“I may not be a policy expert on health care, but I deal
with broken health care policies every day in my business. When I first began
offering health care to my employees, it cost about 5 percent of payroll to
provide full coverage for my entire staff. Now, 20 years later, I am paying 20
percent of payroll and can only afford to cover a portion of my employees' health
care premiums. As I face another rate increase of 25 percent, I am struggling
to understand how anyone can say that small businesses are against real,
comprehensive health care reform.
We've got to stop pretending we can escape this cost - it's
a fixed cost. When responsible employers offer coverage and others don't, it
creates an unlevel playing field. We'd be much better off in a system where all
employers contribute a reasonable amount, instead of this game of
cost-shifting. That's why I support a system of shared responsibility, where
employers pitch in a fair share.
Tax credits are not the solution to this problem, and a
private -market "solution" will only bring us more of the same. I
would rather have real health reform that addresses costs, than a tax credit
that will only be consumed by skyrocketing premiums. We don't need to fiddle
with taxes or the tax code; we need policies that stabilize a health care
system in critical condition.
I'm not against private insurance; but we need more options.
As a cabinet maker, I think about it like this: A toolbox holds a variety of
tools, each perfected to perform a task. . . and in my experience, when a
critical tool is missing, things can get ugly. With health care, we've tried to
do everything with a hammer.
The public plan option is a critical tool missing from the
toolbox--the one that could stem rising costs. According to the Commonwealth
Fund, reform with a public option could save employers
$231 billionfrom 2010 to 2020, and $3 trillion for the nation. Without a public
plan, we lose three quarters. Billions for the little guys--imagine what we
could do with that.
Small businesses need relief from this crisis. We need
Congress to enact health reform that works for us and our employees, this year,
so we can do our part for economic recovery.
J. Kelly Conklin, owner
Foley- Waite Associates
Bloomfleld”
*Daily
Re the public option, newspaper archives show a couple of
patterns:
1)
The main opposition to a public option and to any broader
health-care reform comes from the usual suspects in print and on television. In
print, the main opponents include periodicals such as the Washington Times, the Wall
Street Journal, and Investor’s
Business Daily, which as early as last June cited long lines of imaginary
patients in Britain dying as they waited to get into a hospital room (this
canard is a standard in opposing ‘government-run health care’). On television,
you get Fox News and wingnut
commentators Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol, and George Will as reliable
opponents.
2)
Overt opposition, however, was not the only form of media opposition.
As written earlier, the Washington Post
campaigned indirectly against a public option for weeks on end—having ignored
it for previous decades—not just in opinion columns or in editorials but in
reportage.
3)
The flat-footed (false) declarations that the public option
was dead came mostly in August and September, in conjunction with Astroturf
‘tea party’ outbursts. In other words, media outlets attempted to piggyback a
corporate interest on a pseudo-populist moment. It has worked in the past.
4)
There was little mention of a public option at all in the
news media, in the context of health, before Obama’s candidacy.
Delay, Deny, Defend—the three tactics used by insurance
companies to avoid paying claims
--Don’t we see those tactics paralleled by the industry in
the health care discussion? Some further examples, as solicited by
July 29: Michael McAuliff in NY Daily News: “OBAMA'S
PUBLIC HEALTH PLAN DEAD FOR NOW”
Aug. 18: editorial in The
Oregonian:
“Many respected
economists on the left insist that true health care reform is
impossible without the public option. Now that it
appears all but dead, everyone should
hope they’re wrong and that the centrist Democrats’ alternative, health
care cooperatives, could fill the void.”
Aug. 20: Michael Tomasky in the Guardian Unlimited: “Healthcare
expert from
“Because the public
option has stood no realistic chance of being enacted
in the form it was conceived, its main value all along this year has been as a
bargaining chip.”
Aug. 29: Charles Krauthammer in WP: “Health plan won’t be
what it seems now,” reprinted various (sometimes without his byline):
“Obamacare Version 1.0 is dead.
The 1,000-page monstrosity that emerged in various editions from Congress was
done in by widespread national revulsion not just at its expense and
intrusiveness but at the mendacity with which it is being sold . . . But there
is an exit strategy. And a politically clever one, if the Democrats are smart
enough to seize it.
1. Forget the public option. Whatever
the merits, and they are few, it is political poison. As NPR’s Mara Liasson
observed, there are no liberal Democrats who will lose their seats if the public option is left out, while there are many moderate
Democrats who could lose their seats if the public option
is included.”
(Krauthammer, it will be recalled, was one of the main
proponents of invading
Aug. 31: Robert Laszewski, Kaiser Health News, distributed via McClatchy-Tribune:
“Then there is the intriguing story of the
insurance industry. No negative anti-reform "Harry and Louise" ads
from them this time. Why? They know the public option health plan designed to compete with them is all but politically dead out of legitimate fears the government would end up dominating
the market.”
Aug. 31: Sam Friedman, Editor In Chief, National Underwriter: “My Health Reform
Plan”:
“Now that the public
option appears to be dead and buried, how can President Barack Obama and his backers in
Congress guarantee coverage for the millions without health insurance? Why not just mandate that each state create an
assigned risk plan?”
Sept. 6: editorial in the Omaha World-Herald:
“By now it ought to be crystal clear: The
public option is a dead option.”
Sept. 8:
“Nelson, 66, predicted the idea was dead during a visit to
Sept. 17: Donald Lambro in the
“Forget the
so-called "public option," which is as dead
as a door nail, and the fight over who should be taxed to pay for it. New
issues have arisen in the Senate over the
And just for fun, an excerpt transcribed from television:
Sept. 9, the Charlie
Rose Show:
JOSEPH CALIFANO:
Oh, I think the public option is dead.
David Brooks: “Whether you want to think
about the death of the public option, it`s dead. The White House -- the people inside the White House are
completely committed on this. They`d like it in principle . . .”
The public discourse was also filled Aug.-Sept. with media
personnel asking whether the public option was dead, debating whether it was,
suggesting that it was dead temporarily, etc. Then there is the line most
recently parroted, that the public option at one time seemed dead, cf. Boston Globe,
Investor’s Business Daily, Washington Post.
They are all put to shame by The Idaho Statesman,
“Idaho small business owners want real health
reform, are willing to contribute, and want the option of a public health insurance plan, according to a report released Thursday
by an advocacy group.
The report, "Taking the Pulse of
Think, citizens and potential patients. Would
you rather be represented by voices like those in the Idaho Statesman, or by Rick Scott, of ‘Conservatives for Patients
Rights’, who back in July memoed his people that delay would kill Obama’s plan?
“I am very confident, after meetings on Hill this week, that
if Congress does not pass a healthcare bill with the public
option before Labor Day, the public option is dead.”
(reported in the Guardian)
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