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How the Dems and "progressives" are selling you the "bait and switch" of public option
Corrente — Spoiler: There's a number they don't want to talk about. Kip Sullivan: The people who brought us the “public option” began their campaign promising one thing but now promote something entirely different. To make matters worse, they have not told the public they have backpedalled. The campaign for the “public option” resembles the classic bait-and-switch scam: tell your customers you’ve got one thing for sale when in fact you’re selling something very different. When the “public option” campaign began, its leaders promoted a huge “Medicare-like” program that would enroll about 130 million people. Such a program would dwarf even ...

Normal
Suburban Guerrilla — One of the things I’ve learned from my many years in journalism (and yes, even my short stint in politics) is that when legislation is first proposed, people throw a bunch of crap on the wall and duke it out over the details. You know why they say it’s like watching sausage being made? Because it’s stomach-churning. Several other bloggers (Lambert, Avedon, Bruce Dixon) have linked to this tonight. They’re taking the article in good faith and assume it’s accurate in its conclusions (that the public option has been gutted and the idea of “reform” amounts to a bait and switch), and I just don’t believe that. ...

Bait and Switch on Public Option? No, The Sky Really Isn't Falling
Crooks and Liars — One of the things I've learned from my many years in journalism (and yes, even my short stint as a political staffer) is that when legislation is first proposed, people throw a bunch of crap on the wall and duke it out over the details. You know why they say it's like watching sausage being made? Because it's stomach-churning. Several bloggers linked to this. They're taking the article in good faith and assume it's accurate in its conclusions (that the public option has been gutted and the idea of "reform" amounts to a bait and switch), and I just don't believe that. The author doesn't even seem to understand how legislation is made. It's ...

Need health care? Siddown, STFU, behave and maybe we'll give some to [some of] you.
Corrente — Susie Madrak, an otherwise good liberal, as far as I know: One of the things I’ve learned from my many years in journalism (and yes, even my short stint in politics) is that when legislation is first proposed, people throw a bunch of crap on the wall and duke it out over the details. You know why they say it’s like watching sausage being made? Because it’s stomach-churning. Several other bloggers (Lambert, Avedon, Bruce Dixon) have linked to this [Kip Sullivan's essay on the public option] tonight. They’re taking the article in good faith and assume it’s accurate in its conclusions (that the public option has been gutted and the idea of “reform” ...

Bait and Switch on Public Option?
Open Left - Front Page — The most devastating critique I've read of the current public option comes from Andrew Coates. What makes it devastating is that although he's a single payer advocate, instead of attacking it from the point of view of single payer, he takes it on on its own terms—comparing the House bill's version of the public option to the one originally proposed by Hacker: • The PO had to be pre-populated with tens of millions of people, that is, it had to begin like Medicare did representing a large pool of people the day it commenced operations (Hacker proposed shifting all or most uninsured people as well as Medicaid and SCHIP enrollees into his ...

Beyond Dr. Tiller
Taylor Marsh — Not only did she fear the protesters, she also ...

Hullabaloo — Building The Mandate by digby Here's an interesting article from a single payer advocate about the "bait and switch" on the public plan, which says that although the original idea of a public plan might have accomplished the cost savings and reform that it promised, what's coming out of the HELP Committee and the House is a watered down version that won't accomplish any of it. I don't disagree with a lot of this, although I do think that some of it is being willfully naive about the strategy. As TeddyKennedy says, the most important thing is to get a public plan by hook or crook and then expand it. But I would love to know why this fellow ...

A "single payer" advocate insists the "public option" proponents have baited-and-switched us into plans that can't and won't work
DownWithTyranny! — "Somewhere along the line it became obvious that the Hacker model was too difficult to enact and had to be stripped down to something more mouse-like in order to pass." -- Kip Sullivan, in "Bait and switch: How the 'public option' was sold," on the PNHP (Physicians for a National Health Program) blog As I keep saying, in ...

What the Public Option MUST Have To Survive
Open Left - Front Page — On Saturday I wrote about a piece by Kip Sullivan which attacked the Public Option on its own merits.  Kip's most devastating, and I think, accurate, criticism was that the public option as envisioned by the current House proposal (let alone likely Senate modifications) is so weak it might not even survive. Why? Because it has no built in customer base, which increases its upfront expenses for advertising and a salesforce significantly.  People who have company healthcare plans can't join. Doctors, hospitals and so on are not required to accept it, and providers will not accept it if it provides below market rates unless it also ...

Is the Obama Health Care Plan Really Better Than Nothing?
Commondreams.org Views — Like just about everything else, your take on the national health care debate depends on whether you're inside or outside the matrix. Within the bubble of fake reality blown by corporate media and bipartisan political establishment, the health care news is that the Obama Plan ...

Just say no to junk policies
The Sideshow — Readers have alerted me that Ian Welsh is doing some nice work over at his blog, and had a nice heads-up on Bait and Switch on Public Option up the other day: The most devastating critique I've read of the current public option comes from Kip Sullivan. What makes it devastating is that although he's a single payer advocate, instead of attacking it from the point of view of single payer, he takes it on its own terms - comparing the House bill's version of the public option to the one originally proposed by Hacker: The PO had to be pre-populated with tens of millions of people, that is, it had to begin like Medicare did ...

Why I Believe That The Insurance Reform Is A Debacle
The Moderate Voice — ... Ironically the public plan that is so decried as socialism is nearly toothless as it has none of the qualities needed to distinguish itself from the private insurers. So according to the CBO, we are going to spend $600 billion to $1 trillion over the next ten years for a plan that will only cover a few million more people than are covered now, and will fragment the market even more. It’s unreal that most of the rhetoric is either for/against government health care, but in the Senate version, the government’s role is almost exclusively to just write the checks (the ...

Just shoot me
Corrente — Not content with running a bait and switch operation on single payer at the national level with public option, "progressives" now undercut the Kucinich Amendment, which would permit single payer at the state level, by advocating public option at the state level instead. Yay! Read more…

Just shoot me
Corrente — Even -- "even," haw -- WaPo has become infected with the noxious meme that the "public option" and Medicare are the same*: Reid has compared himself to the late Mike Mansfield (Mont.), who succeeded Johnson and served as Democratic leader for 16 years, the longest tenure ever for a Senate party leader. Mansfield's soft cajoling helped lead to the 1965 passage of Medicare and Medicaid, the largest "public options" ever created in the health-care system. Medicare is not a "public option." Medicare is single payer for over-65s, which can be supplemented with private insurance. Why conflating Medicare with public option bad, other than being, well, a lie? Because when ...

Other than that, Mr. Ackroyd, how was the farce?
Corrente — And you thought pinning the bogometer on public option was no longer possible. Jay Ackroyd : The only argument in opposition to a public option is that it will lower executive compensation and shareholder value in the health care industry. Well, except that [a|the][strong|robust]? public [health insurance?] [option|plan] won't lower costs, the health exchanges it's based on -- however they turn out to work -- can't be shown to work on a national scale, and the friggin thing is only going to cover ~9 million people after "progressive" access bloggers like Ackroyd helped sell the American people that it would be like Medicare and cover ...