The three approaches being discussed are:
–Create a plan that resembles Medicare, administered by the Health and Human Services department.
–Adopt a Medicare-like plan, but pick an outside party to run it. That way government officials would not directly control the day-to-day operations.
–Leave it up to individual states to set up a public insurance plan for their residents.
Wiki:
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), a component of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), administers Medicare…. Since the beginning of the Medicare program, CMS has contracted with private companies to operate as intermediaries between the government and medical providers.[5] These contractors are commonly already in the insurance or health care area. Contracted processes include claims and payment processing, call center services, clinician enrollment, and fraud investigation.
So we’re choosing among a plan resembling Medicare administered by HHS or a Medicare-like plan where government officials don’t directly control day-to-operations.
Perfectly clear.
can’t anyone here play this game?
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In the words of Elvis Costello, “I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused…”, nah, still disgusted although it is sadly hilarious. Thanks, Kirk.
lol! How stupid do they think the American public is? Very..obviously. No middle man insurance companies if you want universal health care coverage for all. It is that simple.
Yeah, perfectly clear. What also occurs to me -anyone else? -that what is quoted about CMS contracting out “claims and payment processing, call center services, clinician enrollment, and fraud investigation.” puts to bed the idea that such a public plan would be ‘hurtful’ to the insurance companies since they are the ones CMS is contracting to (”These contractors are commonly already in the insurance or health care area.”).
BUT I didn’t realize Medicare did such and I’ll bet most others don’t as well.
This may call for a post *g*
Kurt, you do bring an important point to light about the extent of private administrative contracting in Medicare, which in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. Beyond that, though, it’s a little too glib to say that there’s no distinction between options A and B.
The choice is between (A) some expansion and extension of the existing top-level HHS machinery to a “public plan” available to all, or (B) the creation of an entirely separate megabureaucracy controlled at the top level (not just at the contractor level) by an “outside” entity TBD. (I’m not going to dignify option C.)
Here’s my view of what’s going on with the floating of these trial balloons: I believe that Baucus, Schumer, and other Yellow Puddle Democrats are putting out options B and C as straw-man nonstarters so they can pose as heroes to the “robust public option” advocates (and further isolate us single-payer advocates) by supporting option A.
Then, as already demonstrated by Schumer’s recommendations for option A, the Yellow Puddle Democrats will do everything they can to emasculate the public plan while still nominally being able to call it “public.”
The battle lines for horse-trading among insider Democrats (apart from rejectionist Blue Dogs) will be drawn between constructing a public plan institutionally positioned to eventually transition to a single-payer system and one (like Schumer’s) crafted intentionally to mimic the deficiencies of private for-profit insurance and so serve as “fair” competition with same.
More and more, I’m convinced that the only way for Americans to get what they overwhelmingly want and deserve — single-payer and/or true (German-style) nonprofit health care financing — is through massive public demonstrations and civil disobedience on the scale of the civil rights movement. We have justice and — for Chrissakes — even economics on our side.
Just got this from the Pen:
Why Is The Senate Not Even Considering The Only Health Care Plan That Really Works?
Or:
If the GOP can’t stop National healthcare they will underfund it and or make sure its run badly private companies running a government program KBR did a great job installing showers for the army.
The private sector when working on a government contract never seems to do a good job and is always over budget.
Amen.
(Crap; just noticed I called you Kurt. Sorry.)
Thanks Kirk.
Fourth option. Design your own insurance plan. Insure yourself!