Why A Strong Public Option Is Essential – By jacksmith – Working Class

Robert Reich explains the pubic option: http://bit.ly/dDYSJ http://robertreich.blogspot.com/

John Garamendi on the Public Option and the Grassroots: http://bit.ly/TJMty

It’s not just because more than two thirds of the American people want a single payer health care system. And if they cant have a single payer system 77% of all Americans want a strong government-run public option on day one (86% of democrats, 75% of independents, and 72% republicans). Basically everyone.

It’s not just because according to a new AARP POLL: 86 percent of seniors want universal healthcare security for All, including 93% of Democrats, 87% of Independents, and 78% of Republicans. With 79% of seniors supporting creating a new strong Government-run public option plan, available immediately. Including 89% of Democrats, 80% of Independents, and 61% of Republicans, STUNNING!!

It’s not just because it will lower cost. Because a strong public option will dramatically lower cost for everyone. And dramatically improved the quality of care everyone receives in America and around the World. Rich, middle class, and poor a like.

It’s not just because it will save trillions of dollars and prevent the needless deaths of millions more of YOU, caused by a rush to profit by the DISGRACEFUL, GREED DRIVEN, PRIVATE FOR PROFIT MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX!

It’s not just because every expert in every field, including economist, and Nobel laureates all agree that free market based healthcare systems don’t work. Never have and never will. The US has the only truly free market based healthcare system in the World. And as you all know now, IT IS A DISASTER!

It’s not just because providing or denying medically necessary care for profit motivations is wrong. Because it is WRONG! It’s professionally, ethically, and morally REPUGNANT!, Animalistic, VILE and EVIL.

THE REASON THE PUBLIC OPTION IS ESSENTIAL:

The public option is ESSENTIAL because over 200 million of you are trapped in the forest of the wolves. Which is the forest of the DISGRACEFUL, GREED DRIVEN, PRIVATE FOR PROFIT MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX! With no way out except through needless inhumane suffering, and DEATH. While the wolves tear at your flesh, and rip you limb from lib. Then feast on your lifeless bodies like a dead carcase for transplant parts.

At the most vulnerable times of your lives (when you were sick and hurting), millions of you have had to fight and loose cruel, but heroic battles. Fighting against the big guns of the DISGRACEFUL, GREED DRIVEN, PRIVATE FOR PROFIT MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX! in the forest of the wolves. All because you have no place else to go. You have no other CHOICE!

But the PUBLIC OPTION will give you someplace safe to go. And it will give us someplace safe to take you. The public option will be your refugium (your refuge). Where the wolves cannot get at you when your down, hurting, and vulnerable. Where everyone who needs it can find rest, security, comfort and the care they need. Protected by the BIG GUNS of We The People Of The United States. THE MOST POWERFUL PEOPLE AND COUNTRY ON EARTH.

This is why it is so critical that we do not lead another 50 million vulnerable, uninsured Americans into the forest of the wolves, without the protections of a Strong Government-run public option. We The People Of The United States MUST NOT LET THAT HAPPEN to any more of our fellow Americans. If healthcare reform does not contain a strong public option on day one. YOU MUST! KILL IT. Or you will do far more harm than good. And millions more will die needlessly. Rich, middle class, and poor a like.

To those who would continue to obstruct good and true healthcare reform for the American people, and who seek to trap millions more vulnerable Americans in the forest of the wolves. We will continue to fight you. We are prepared to wage all out war against you, and will eagerly DESTROY! you. Time…is…UP! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! No Co-op’s! No Triggers! NO INDIVIDUAL MANDATES! without a Strong public option on day one.

Healthcare reform can be the GREATEST! Accomplishment of our time and century. A time when future generations may say of us, that we were all, AMERICAS GREATEST GENERATIONS.

BUT WE MUST ACT!

I therefore call on all my fellow Americans and the peoples of the World. To join us in this fight so that we may finish becoming the better America that we aspire to be for everyone.

SPREAD THE WORD!

I have been privileged to be witness as many of you fought, and struggled to take your first breath, and your last breath on this earth. Rich, middle class, and poor a like. Life is precious.

Whatever the cost. WE! MUST SUCCEED.

God Bless You My Fellow Human Beings

jacksmith – Working Class

Things You Can Do To Help NOW! http://www.everydaycitizen.com…..die_n.html

No Triggers! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…..77910.html

Triggers http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…..83583.html

Krugman on heathcare (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/why-markets-cant-cure-healthcare/)

Senator Bernie Sanders on healthcare (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSM8t_cLZgk&feature=player_embedded)

Too bad we can’t get wider exposure of what all this means.

So why do they need government subsidies?

They don’t. Watch and learn. Lots of orgs don’t get government subsidies and do fine. ACORN will too.

It’s just another Pyrrhic “victory” for the wingnuts. Nothing will change, and with no government subsidies to threaten to take away, government will have no say at all in what ACORN does.

There are also all those many cubicles to fill, which I imagine lay underneath 1600 Penn, in addition to the tank traps and other post-9/11 whatnots that Karl and Rummy and Darth Vader had installed at a gazillion taxpayer dollars. (My shorthand for the hundreds of Bush-era Karl’s Klackers that hounded websites and appeared to be funded by an AEI new-to-literacy program.)

Excise Tax. The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise tax. If a taxpayer‘s MAGI is between 100-300 percent of FPL, the excise tax for failing to obtain coverage for an individual in a taxpayer unit (either as a taxpayer or an individual claimed as a dependent) is $750 per year. However, the maximum penalty for the taxpayer unit is $1,500. If a taxpayer‘s MAGI is above 300 percent of FPL the penalty for failing to obtain coverage for an individual in a taxpayer unit (either as a taxpayer or as an individual claimed as a dependent) is $950 year. However, the maximum penalty amount a family above 300 percent of FPL would pay is $3,800.

Does anybody think this is a good idea?

“…a bill that specifically prohibits public health care solutions for the rest of the population–really have on the fiscal responsibility of health care overall?”

How is this prohibition implemented in the bill? Where can I read in detail how it works?

Thanks to commenter above for links to MW’s posts on Baucus.

My opinion on whether changes to Medicare can produce changes in the rest of the system: Unless it concerns efficient mechanisms to collect payments, I do not see why what Medicare does should influence private insurers.

There is a general vague opinion in health policy and research circles that Medicare has a big influence on the private market. But that is mostly based on the spread of the Medicare payment systems: the proceducre and DRG codes, bundled payments, capitated rates for units of service such as hosptial admissions. Those aspects of Medicare seem to have had a huge impact on private industry practices.

But many of those systems were being developed before Medicare, or as Medicare was being passed. Procedure codes were being developed by regional medical associations to control extreme variations in fees by individual physicians and group practices. The idea of capitation and capitated carve outs for contracted services predcates Medicare.

Because Medicare is a big program, its payment systems did provide a common standard that could be adopted by the private industry at little cost, and reduced coordination problems.

So, I think it is reasonable to conclude that where Medicare provided a common standard that eased collecting MONEY, Medicare did shape, or at least speed, development of reimbursement standards and practices that dominate US healthcare. Other than that, I am not sure Medicare practices would have a big influence.

ACORN worker fired over video sting
By Eleanor Yang Su
Union-Tribune Staff Writer
4:46 p.m. September 17, 2009