Fyi...



The man who has no imagination has no wings. 
Muhammad Ali


Rodney D. Coates
Professor
Growing Momentum for Public Option

Robert Creamer
Sept 29, 2009
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/growing-momentum-for-publ_b_303415.html

In a surprising vote Tuesday, ten Democrats voted to
add a public option to the most conservative of the
five health insurance reform bills working their way
through Congress. That's just two votes short of
passage.

This robust support for the public option -- in what
most observers consider the most conservative committee
in the Senate -- signals a sea change in Congressional
opinion toward the public option. The odds are now very
high that some form of public health insurance option
will be included on the final bill when it emerges from
a House-Senate Conference Committee later this fall and
is ultimately passed by Congress.

The three bills that have passed House Committees, and
the Senate Health Committee bill, all contain a public
option. And increasingly it appears that the strongest
form of public option will come out of the House.

In the midst of the right-wing, town hall onslaught
last August, the pundits -- public option opponents --
all but declared a public option dead and buried. This
narrative was amplified by the private insurance
industry that doesn't want to compete against a not-
for-profit public health insurance program focused on
providing health insurance instead of maximizing the
ever-ballooning profits of Wall Street investors and
the salaries of CEOs that take home tens of millions.

The big private insurance companies don't want to
change the status quo that has allowed a few big
players to corner the market in most markets. An AMA
survey, released in late January, gives a score gauging
the concentration of the commercial market for 314
metropolitan statistical areas. The report showed 94%
had commercial markets that were "highly concentrated"
by standards set by the Federal Trade Commission and
Justice Department.

A Robert Woods Johnson Report indicates that over the
last ten years wages have gone up 29%, health insurance
rates have gone up 120% and the profits of the private
health insurance industry have gone up 428%. No wonder
they don't want competition.

So why the resurgent Congressional support for a strong
public option? There are three reasons:

1) First and foremost, voters' support for a public
health insurance option is as strong as ever. All of
the right-wing talk about a "government takeover" has
not fooled voters who are forced every day to deal with
the stranglehold that the private insurance industry
has on their health care.

Last weekend's New York Times poll showed that 65% of
all voters support giving Americans the choice of a
public option and only 26% oppose it.

More importantly, the public option is also popular in
swing Congressional districts. The firm of Anzeloni
Liszt just released the results of a poll it conducted
in 91 Blue Dog, Rural Caucus and Frontline districts.
The poll found that 54% of the voters in these
battleground districts support the choice of a public
option.

And the poll also found that the voters in these
districts want reform and want it this year. The
polling report says:

Overall, 58% of voters believe the health care system
is in need of major reform or a complete overhaul, and
almost 59% are concerned that Congress will not take
action on health care reform this year. The risks of
inaction to Democrats in swing districts increases if
voters perceive opposition stems from ties to the
insurance industry, as 74% are concerned that the
health insurance industry will have too much influence
over reform.

Those kinds of polling results get the attention of
Members of Congress.

2) Members of Congress have begun to realize that they
will have to live with the consequences of what they
pass for years to come. And what the voters will care
about in the future will not be slogans or ideology.
Once the program is passed, the voters will care most
about one thing: affordability.

All of the health insurance reform bills contain
mandates that every American buy health insurance or
pay a fine. All the bills allow relief for hardship
cases, but most people -- or their companies -- will
have to buy health insurance.

Members of Congress are beginning to realize that if
they are requiring the voters to buy insurance, it has
to be affordable. The public option is an extremely
powerful tool to assure affordability.

First, its presence in the market place will drive down
the prices of premiums for private insurance. That, of
course, is why the private insurance companies hate it.
Insurance companies aren't seriously worried they will
be forced out of business. They just don't want to cut
their prices and profits.

Second, the Congressional Budget Office has found that
it will save the Government huge amounts in subsidy
monies that it would otherwise have to pay to make more
expensive for-profit plans affordable. The most robust
version of the public option saves over $100 billion
over ten years.

If you don't have a public option, Congress' only
choice is either to cut subsidies that are the major
means of providing affordability -- or they must raise
more revenues. Given the massive need for
affordability, and reluctance of many to raise taxes,
the public option is looking better and better to many
swing Democrats.

3) Finally, they have begun to realize that the public
option helps protect them from potential political harm
when they vote to support a health insurance mandate.
Anzeloni and Liszt make clear in their polling report
that in swing districts:

It's wrong to think about the public option in
isolation from other elements of reform. Forcing an
individual mandate without a public option is a clear
political loser (34% Favor / 60% Oppose), and only
becomes more palatable when a public option is offered
in competition with the private sector (50% Favor / 46%
Oppose)

Turns out that a public option provides a political
inoculation against backlash to a mandate. That's
because people have no stomach for being herded into
the arms of private insurance industry like sheep to
the slaughter. They want to know that if the government
is going to require them to get health insurance, that
it also provides the choice of a not-for-profit public
plan -- that they are not left at the mercy of private
insurance CEOs.

Here's the bottom line: the odds are better by the day
that before the holidays President Obama will sign a
health insurance reform bill that for the first time
provides Americans universal health insurance coverage
-- and includes the choice of a robust public option.

Robert Creamer is a longtime political organizer and
strategist, and author of the recent book: Stand Up
Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on
Amazon.com.

_____________________________________________