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Dec. 14th, 2009 at 8:22 PM

"if there is no public option and no medicare buy in, what exactly is being reformed?"

This is the direct result of somebody's attempt to "frame the message" surrounding healthcare reform. I don't think Obama's doing it, or the Democratic Party. Whose bright idea is this?

Edit: To clarify, I'm wondering where the idea came from, that any health care reform that doesn't include this specific thing is automatically a failure. I still remain unconvinced that a public option is required to make a meaningful reform to the nation's health system.

Comments

( 11 comments — Leave a comment )

nathanw

Dec. 15th, 2009 03:43 am (UTC)

Regulating away recission and rejection for pre-existing conditions is still pretty big. There are other regulatory changes that I think are generally improvements. Not nearly as dramatic, of course.

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crs

Dec. 15th, 2009 04:25 am (UTC)

Yes, but the way certain people are reacting, it's like the reform we're getting is meaningless. It's all over the blogosphere, some sort of truly viral meme that has multiplied indiscriminately.

Someone engineered this. Someone decided it had to be this way. Who, and why?

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jered

Dec. 15th, 2009 04:55 am (UTC)

I see this a lot on the progressives sites like DailyKos, MyDD and AmericaBlog. The general opinion seems to be that given the amount of political capital the Dems have spent, not to get and significant reforms is a waste. Just the phrase "health care reform" without any specifics has been such a lightning rod for Republicans that they've gained a dozen points.

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tirianmal

Dec. 15th, 2009 02:52 pm (UTC)

Precisely. The Democrats have control of Congress and if they can't pass this, then they are lame ducks. All of them.

The reality is that the Republicans will be able to say "Look, what we feared almost came to pass! But we stopped it." And the Democrats won't even be able to say "But we accomplished X". Because they didn't. They haven't done squat since 2006. They haven't done squat since 2008.

Lame. Ducks.

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jered

Dec. 15th, 2009 03:14 pm (UTC)

Thanks; yeah, to broaden the topic I think Obama has been an almost complete failure, and the only reason I don't totally regret voting for him is that I don't think McCain has been any better.

Is there a single issue that he has been a positive force on yet? I think that health care has been a failure, to the minimal extent that he has been involved. Nothing productive has happened in terms of financial industry reform. And his record on gay rights is worst that Bush!

I feel like this has been a total bait and switch, and the cries of "it hasn't been a year, wait for him to gain political capital and then he'll be a strong leader" are nonsense. I wish I had voted for Clinton in the primary.

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navrins

Dec. 15th, 2009 01:54 pm (UTC)

Well, I've had that thought myself. It seems to me that half the reforms worth considering were removed from the table before negotiations began (decoupling health care from employment, for example), and a lot of the rest has been negotiated away, and I don't know what, if anything, is left.

So, what exactly is being reformed?

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treptoplax

Dec. 17th, 2009 04:59 am (UTC)

The big thing, AFAIKT (and I don't really know what's in this monster at this point) is "no denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions". That's necessary (not quite sufficient) for decoupling coverage from employment. You can't really have that without the mandate, though, and it's not at all clear how you can make costs work for the mandate.

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binkbink

Dec. 15th, 2009 05:45 pm (UTC)

Support this industry or go to jail.

I have been without insurance and it is frustrating to try to pay-as-you-go with the current price structure (or lack thereof) and all the gotchas, but I could not pay for insurance because it was more than my entire income. Instead of paying, I did without. In one case, I super-glued a huge slash in my leg back together rather than brave the billing department at the emergency room. No one does without insurance because they ~want~ to be without it.

My main concern with the law as it is now is the mandate that everyone MUST buy insurance. Without a public option, if they can't afford it now, then they won't be able to afford it when it is law, but then, in addition, they also won't be able to afford the fines.

If you can't afford car insurance, you can choose not to license your car and then you have the option to sell it or take it off the road.
If you can't afford health care insurance, will they give us euthanasia clinics?

The last time I tried to get non-employment-related insurance, the cost was about equal to the entire take home pay from a minimum wage job.
Without offering an affordable option, the law will either be forcing the poor to work for the insurance companies (indirectly--all earnings go to insurance instead of feeding their families), we will impoverish them further with fines, or we will be jailing them. At least in jail, they get free health care but I worry about capacity. Will we need to bring back the poor houses?

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crs

Dec. 16th, 2009 04:56 pm (UTC)

Re: Support this industry or go to jail.

Is there no need-based subsidy for coverage in this bill? It should be possible to provide that without having to provide a full-blown public option...

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