I supported someone else in the September First special election, but I’ve got to say I like the noise Garamendi is making in this campaign. Asking the GOP if they want to make this election a referendum on health care is particularly smart. I bet they won’t but it’s worth a challenge, since he can then say, “Why not?”

I wish more of the state insurance commissioners would speak up. I don’t know why they don’t, unless the NAIC has decided to stay quiet and let Sebelius (former Commissioner) be their wussy proxy.

Garamendi will be a fine replacement for Ellen Tauscher, who never met a corporation she didn’t like. Head of the Blue Doggies, her primary contribution was carrying the DADT repeal bill, but she couldn’t even get her own candidate over the threshold in the special election.

I have decided that I could support dropping the public option IF AND ONLY IF insurance companies were required to charge one price for insurance to everyone, no one could be excluded or denied coverage for any reason, and the insurance companies were absolutely prohibited from even talking to one another, sharing lobbyists (and lawyers), and there were subsidies for new insurance companies trying to enter the market.

Let’s make some calls to Capitol Hill on Monday

ok, lets !

per Slink’s diary

Call these folks today !

she even gives you a script:

Hi [Representative’s Name]. I want to thank you for supporting the public option, but I don’t want you to support a trigger on the public option! A trigger on the public option would be a surrender to the private insurance companies. Please don’t let the insurance lobbyists win by allowing a trigger on the public option. Also, please STAND TOGETHER as a Member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus to fight for the public option in the final conference bill!

What you are proposing is a regulatory framework rather than a systemic one. A regulatory framework, as we saw with the SEC under Bush to cite only one example among many, is only as good as those who appoint the regulators, fund the regulatory agency, and provide a philosophical framework for regulation.

I prefer a systemic solution — something so popular it can’t be removed under later GOP regimes and so ingrained in our culture that people at demonstrations in the 2020s shout, “Keep your government hands off Public Option” just as they do now about Medicare and Social Security.

Regulations are subject to ebb and flow. We need a new system for health care and, for now, I’m afraid Public Option is the best we can get.

Thanks!

I was hoping there would be a “call” diary by the time this Garamendi post made it to the front page today. He makes very clear that Public Option is in the hands of activist Democrats all across America who need to keep the pressure on.

To the phones!

right on with the right on Teddy !

a kos front pager echoes your sentiments

Imagine if instead of being constituted as government programs, Medicare and Social Security had been constructed as highly regulated insurance and retirement pools, respectively. Is there any doubt they would have been completely destroyed in the 1980s under Reagan or in the 2000s under Bush?

“”I’ve spent eight years of my life regulating those characters, and I know their motivation. It’s not to take care of people, it’s to take care of their profits.”

Money, phone calls, thank you to Garamendi
http://www.garamendi.org/

Teddy !

H.E.L.P. Chairman Harkin says strong public option will pass by Christmas – from rawstory

Not to be complacent … let’s keep the momentum going to blast Congress with thousands of calls, faxes & e-mails until this Bill is signed !

It is certain the for profit health insurers are thinking a few steps ahead regarding the effort to defang any future conversion over to Single Payer Medicare For All reformation.

The shut down of Single Payer discussion this time around pointing to a very real desire to keep Single Payer in the healthcare closet. Now the supposedly compromise fall back position known as the public healthcare coverage option is being suffocated and snuffed out. The co-op concept has been amply shown to be too weak or incapable of the heavy lifting required to compete head on with the big for profit insurers. So why is it being pushed so hard now by Obama WH back channels and lots of weak tea Democrats in Congress?

It is very important to force the public option into law now to create the pathway needed to move to Single Payer.

Barack Obama is wrong to state Americans were not ready for Single Payer or the change over would prove too disruptive. Progressives and liberals need to call BS on that line of thinking Barack Obama seems too comfortable with. When he says stuff like that it is the equal of the Green Bay Packers saying they can’t play the Chicago Bears because the Bears are too rough. What kind of football fans of either team would swallow that line of BS? President Obama — grab the damn ball and run for the end zone! Play the game and go for a touch down! Get in the damn game!

The public option is a poor second choice to Single Payer Plan but it does open the door which is very important action that must happen.

The for profit insurers know this which surely is why so much effort and money is being poured in to kill it,put in a never will see used trigger or contaminate any future reforms with a weak and easily subverted co-op idea.

Barack Obama needs to be called out on who told him Single Payer was too complicated? Who told you that President Obama? Find a spine and stand up!

Stop with the scare talk and play the game to win or lose trying to win.

Thanks

Um, the byline if very misleading to the link that brings one here from the main page. Those of us who follow John’s career and are paranoid about the state of the Democratic party would like a change on the main Firedoglake page linking to this article to more explicitly state John’s >support

Thanx.

I want these words to come from the White House. They will if we make him. And we’ll make him if we get progressives in and out of Congress to say emphatically there’ll be no reform without a strong public option.

DeadLast, if you really think it’d be okay to let the privates get their hands on our privates you don’t know what they can do once they get there. Take it from someone who tried to regulate corporations, like Scarecrow, like Garemendi. For that matter I’ve seen what it means to regulate the electrics. It’s always the same. If you’re not a troll — and I assume you’re not — you’re staring at a pact with the devil. Put your pen down and look up. Listen to the folks who’ve been standing between the devil and you!

Shootthearrow, we have to forget single payer for now. Get friendly. Stand by your principles. Ask the privateers why they’re so scared of a fight over pocketbooks, why they can’t let people vote with their guts. That’s enough for now. What we don’t want — what no one wants — is to sign up for an obligation to buy insurance with no public path. That would be serfdom. That’s the other side of it.

By all means get on the phone. Get representatives to take Jane’s pledge, or if they have, give them bucks and use it to get them to stay there. It’ll work.

Yeah, I see what happened. Perhaps it needs an “If….then” added to the mainpage headline? I think that would make it clearer that John did NOT say “No public option….”

Right?