pleasantly surprised to see him do this earlier with Mrs Greenspan. uh Kent, this aint happenin’

thanks for distilling it so clearly Scarecrow.

It’s obvious co-ops won’t do the job. That’s why the insurers like them. It’s a “Don’t throw me in the briar patch” moment for them. They already have a 50-state strategy to deal with local governors, legislative leaders and state oversight boards. Co-ops would be novel, start from scratch, with no track record or trust, and with questionable rules and outcomes. The predictable result will be a mishmash of 50 inconsistent markets vulnerable to the power of the insurers. A sure recipe either for keeping the status quo, or for keeping multiple state markets insulated from reform, perpetuating high profits and poor health care.

Congress has an enormous job to do. So far, it’s still playing around with whether it will do it, not how.

OT – Sen. Dodd has early stage prostate cancer. LINK

Has anyone heard where Senator Dodd will be undergoing treatment?
Canada, UK or France??

I can never resist looking at the interpersonal dynamics of these situations – this is the closest to trash talking we’re ever going to get from Sen Rockefeller – and I enjoyed the hell out of it

it doesn’t hurt that he’s gravitas gangsta with the Villagers either

The only thing I see in the coop proposal is a thinly disguised delay tactic, and I see someone else thinks so too by the looks of that chart.

I really loved it the other day when he said, I’m a millionaire and maybe my taxes go up a little bit. I’m really not going to notice.

Kinda refreshing in a weird way.

Conrad has so far declined to provide more than a vague definition of his co-ops and has yet to explain how such entities could function, let alone pose a significant competitive challenge to the nation’s mega insurance companies.

This would be because all he’s doing is reading the insurance company talking points that are included in the envelopes of unmarked 100 dollar bills being handed out to blue dogs and republicans all over DC.

And since rarely does the media question anything of substance in depth, (unlike, say the beer un-summit at the White House yda) he’s been able to spew this nonsense and not be called on it.

It is simply ridiculous to fight against a public option in the name of being fiscally conservative (and they know it), but they expect enough of us to be too stupid to understand that.

It’s just a nonstarter.

I was anxious as hell at the beginning of the week when Senator Stabenow got all mushmouthed about co-ops, but then Sherrod Brown played fiery ‘bad cop’ – publicly calling them “phony!” to Senator Rockefeller’s civil ‘good cop’

nice choreography guys

Blue Texan’s regularly scheduled post is up on the front page: “House Extends Wildly Successful, Popular “Cash for Clunkers”; Republicans Pout”

Make sure you tell your friends to boycott John Stossel’s hit piece on Canadian health care tonight. Do not give that douche bag any ratings.

Here is an awesome clip of a segment of him and Glenn Beck with subtitles debunking their claims.

http://progressnotcongress.org/p?=2352

Spread the word.

Conrad has waisted months now on backroom negotiations. No committee hearings, debate or bill markup. Now the Senate goes on summer vacation for a month. Sounds like a stall tactic to kill reform.

New Mexico has some experience with a Co-op system. With all due respect to the people I worked with on the project, it is a failure. Everyone involved in the project wanted to make it work. And in fairness, it has worked for some. What it hasn’t done is to address the problem of uninsured persons in our state in a measurable way.

Why didn’t it work? I’m not entirely sure, but I’ll speculate on three components. First, it wasn’t funded adequately. That limited the size of the program. Second, it was full of provisions to avoid crowding out private insurers, although the program was marketed through those same insurers. Finally, it wasn’t promoted properly.

By the way, under “Expect delays”, you should note that in some cases (Texans, I’m talking to you!) the delay is likely to be infinite.

We might want to look at what the CommonWealth fund says about coops. For example, there’s the fact that there used to be a lot more of them and they were doing wonderful stuff back in the 70’s but there are only a couple of survivors. One of the biggest problems with coops is that they had to compete with insurance companies. Their heart was in the right place, still is. But if the market is relatively unfettered capitalism, trying to do the right thing puts you at a sever disadvantage.

By the way, North Dakota is (or was) very close to being a single payer state. BCND has about 70% of the private market and is the fiscal intermediary for Medicare.

The Commonwealth piece on Coops is here. http://tinyurl.com/ls34r7

I helped put together a provider coop under Minnesota law. Last I heard the FTC was lawyering them to death at the request of the health plans.

It’s shameful that co-ops are the Conrad/Baucus solution, and have been for some time, yet they’ve commissioned no research or studies on their effectiveness, reach, competitiveness, or service. Really, if you want something to work, you need to show how it will work. This is a fantasy, and we don’t need fantasy at this late point in the discussion. In all fairness, this looks like a delaying tactic. Get it off the table, please.

There is an important difference between single payer schemes and monopolies. Most states are now in the situation where their health insurance markets are heavily concentrated in the hands of two or three companies. Some, like ND have a single company that has near-monopoly status.

Amen.

For the past two days, I have been emailing members of the Congress and Senate because I found out that we, the tax-payer, are paying a large portion of federal employees health insurance premium.

I was outraged, because these low-lifes (Blue Dogs and Republicans) are doing everything they can to either stop health care reform, slow it down, or water the legislation down so much that it does hardly anything for the majority of Americans who have out of control premiums, mounting out of pocket expenses, and increasing co-pays and deductibles. The majority of Americans, of course, are the Middle Class.

After emailing them, what does Waxman’s committee do? They rush through a compromised bill that is watered down. Does anyone see a strong public option? Does anyone see anything that resembles Medicare (the government run program for the seniors and disabled)?

I looked at the “Federal Employees Health Benefits Program”. While Congress/Senate are haggling over quality, affordable, (not even comprehensive) health care for Americans, they are getting access to a comprehensive health plan that would make anyone salivate. And, once again, the American tax-payer foots more than half of their premium and we are paying all these federal employees wages and salary.

You will get even madder when you see the entire federal employees benefits program.

I asked these arrogant Blue Dogs and Republicans to reimburse the government (us) for the portion of their benefits that we pay. I also told them to return all or half of the salary that we pay them. I wish everyone on this blog would call these low-lifes and tell them that you pay for most of their benefits and their salary and you want a strong quality, affordable, comprehensive public option or single payer (like Medicare or the VA).

We’ve got to expose these people.

I’m new here guys, but I’ve been posting the following on Huffpo on all healthcare articles. Pls pass on my posts.
Thanks
The basis for any public option should be:
Coverage for EVERYONE who applies
Structured premium payments of not more than 100 per individual, 300 per family
Deductibles capped at $2000 and based on income (means testing every year like the va)
No mandates forcing people to purchase insurance (a windfall for private carriers)
No triggers (also a windfall to private carriers)
No subsidies to private insurance carriers
No taxes on employer provided benefits
If someone has private insurance and wants the public option, they can drop private with no problem and be covered immediately under public.
No mandates on employers to buy into the public option to cover employees. Has to be free choice.
Everyone with coverage gets treated for new or pre-existing conditions.
Fairly negotiated reimbursement to private pracitce, specialty doctors and hospitals
Fairly negotiated prices for medications, even on name brand stuff which has no generic equivalent.
AND IT HAS TO BE EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY. Within 1 month of the above bill passing, Americans must be able to start buying in and using it.
It must be administered by an autonomous federal agency. Monies paid in must not be co-mingled with any other money, does not go into the general fund so it can be looted.
The ONLY payouts from this fund will be for: payments to practicioners, pharmacies and admin. In 5 years if we see significant overages, those overages will be used to suplement medicare and fund medical research.
See my next post on funding

47 million un insured
20 million under insured
Subtract 10 million poor/indigent/mentally ill, etc, who are uninsured and will have to get free care = 37 mill un-insured who can pay.
18.5 million can pay $50/mo = 925,000,000
18.5 mill can pay $100 = $1,850,000,000
20 mill under insured will switch and can pay $100 = 2,000,000,000
That is a grand total of $4,775,000,000
That is FOUR BILLION, SEVEN HUNDRED SEVENTY FIVE MILLION DOLLARS IN PREMIUM PAYMENTS PER MONTH. FIFTY SEVEN BILLION THREE HUNDRED THIRTY MILLION PER YEAR IN PREMIUMS FOR ONE SET OF PEOPLE.
That does’nt count the millions who’ll switch from private companies if they can pay $100 or 200 per month and have their entire family covered even with pre-existing conditions. Repeal bush tax cuts asap another 700 billion.
After thinking about it more, institute a 1 penny federal sales tax on EVERY item. I can hear the opponents shouting about making the poor poorer, but my statement is 1 cent on each item NOT on every dollar or hundred dollars. From candy bars to big screen tv’s to your house. 1 cent on everything. If your grocery bill was $100. for 53 items, your bill would be $100.53. That’s not putting people in the poorhouse especially when we’ve been dealing with price increases. Also, if you’re saving 300-500 per month on insurance, you have that money to spend and put back in the economy, save, or invest

Suggestion: With any free time, get to any Congress Critter’s home office with a big “Medicare for All” sign; walk back and forth for a couple, few hours; rinse, lather, and repeat.

On the back –or on alternate signs– write “HR 676 – Medicare for All: We KNOW it works and HOW it works.” Or, HR 676 –Medicare for All: Bill is 30 pages. You can understand it.”

Or use your imagination (fact-based). What’s being proposed, at least as it’s leaking out, will not work. HR 676 will. And, yeah, any fool who wants to keep private insurance is welcome to do so.

Ms. WinterParkMom, I think the plan is for administrators to adjust up or down premiums based on costs and whether they have had deficits or surpluses the previous year. So, no overages will be fed back to the general fund. Instead the premiums would just decrease a bit the next year and standing surplus would go to payments.

It’s entirely stand alone.

As they say, don’t let the politicians get their hands on my government plan!

thanks for the link.