Dems! Follow Johnson, Enact Public Option This Year

Kudos to South Dakota's Senator Tim Johnson: he is among 31 senators so far [Update! 34!] who have said they want a public option in the health insurance reform reconciliation bill. Makes sense, since that's what Americans want.

Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee promises Republicans will campaign to repeal whatever health insurance reform the Democrats pass this year.

To which the proper response is to pass health insurance reform with a public option that kicks in now. Don't wait until 2013, which is how long it would have taken Uncle Sam to start offering health insurance under earlier forms of the House bill. Pass it, sign it, and start offering working Americans the chance to buy into Medicare the next day. Watch millions of Americans, myself included, buy in before Election Day.

And then, even if the GOP retakes Congress in November, just watch what happens when they turn to those millions of Americans who buy the public option and ask them to give up that more comprehensive, more secure, more efficient and affordable insurance and return to the dog-eat-dog private individual market.

Don't think about November, Dems. Think about now, and the millions of Americans who need a health insurance solution.

ABC-WP Poll Shows Health Coverage Reform Still Winning Public Support

...or, a lesson for Dan in how to write accurate headlines.

Dan Richardt at Aberdeen's Red Purple and Blue offers a study in deceptive blogging. In typical distortion mode to protect his crumbling worldview, Richardt writes "Polls show that Congress’ plan that Obama approves of is still losing support with American People." His link goes (where else?) to Fox News, which cites a single Rasmussen Reports survey. Poll. Singular.

In his comment section, I ask what anyone other than Fox might be saying abotu the issue and provide links to four polls (yes, plural) indicating continuing majority support for a public option. Of course, the sharp-eyed logicians in the RP&B comment section note that the Fox/Rasmussen poll asked about the plan currently before Congress, not the public option specifically, so Richardt must be right. Never mind that the House plan still has a public option. Never mind that no one will provide clarification on which bill Rasmussen asked about (despite Adam Feser's noble efforts—thanks, Adam!).

Richardt also spins his headline: "Obama's Health Care Still Losing with the People." Never mind that not one of the bills in Congress has been written by the White House. Richardt plays to the Obama hatred, choosing ad hominem over policy specifics. Never mind that "still losing" attempts to revise history to suit Richardt's fantasy that the duly elected president has been losing all along.

Never mind, also, these specifics from the latest ABC–Washington Post survey (just one, Dan) that seem to indicate the effort toward health coverage reform is still winning:

• Support for the public option as rebounded since August to 57%.
• 56% back the insurance mandate (alas); add subsidies for low-income folks to cover premiums, and support swells to 71% (including a majority of Republicans).
• 51% will back a public option even if such a plan got no GOP support in Congress (have fun with that filibuster, Senator Thune). Independents are on the Dems' side on this one.
  
• If President Obama's numbers are down, that may be largely due to Democrats expressing their disapproval of his unwillingness to push for stronger reform (I know that feeling!): the President's "strongly approve" rating among Dems on health care has dropped 15 percentage points since mid-September.

Dan Richardt is just wrong. Health coverage reform still enjoys majority support. I'll even argue that if the Senate will drop Senator Baucus's Private Insurance Profit Protection Act and restore the public option to its legislation, public support for the measure will go up.

Paging Herseth Sandlin: Doctors Love Public Option!

Doctors are probably best positioned to tell us whether a public option on health insurance is a good idea. What do they think of Uncle Sam insurance?

In a survey conducted throughout this long, hot political summer, 73% of doctors said they want a public option. 63% want the public option alongside current pricate insurers; 10% bite the bullet and say they'd take a system where there is nothing but public health insurance.

Oh, but you can't trust surveys. They must have interviewed only hippie doctors in San Francisco, right?

The researchers say they found strong support for a public option among all categories of doctors. "We even saw that support being the same whether physicians lived in rural areas or metropolitan areas," says Federman.

"Whether they lived in southern regions of the United States or traditionally liberal parts of the country," says Keyhani, "we found that physicians, regardless — whether they were salaried or they were practice owners, regardless of whether they were specialists or primary care providers, regardless of where they lived — the support for the public option was broad and widespread" [Joseph Shapiro, "Poll Finds Most Doctors Support Public Option," NPR.org, 2009.09.15].

But don't doctors know that government will get in between them and their pateints?

Keyhani says doctors already have experience with government-run health care, with Medicare. And she says the survey shows that, overall, they like it. "We've heard a lot about how the government is standing in between patients and their physician," Keyhani says. "And what we can see is that physicians support Medicare. So I think physicians have sort of signaled that a public option that's similar in design to Medicare would be a good way of ensuring patients get the care that they need" [Shapiro, 2009.09.15].

Our Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth Sandlin keeps saying the public option is a "deal breaker." SHS evidently needs to see her doctor.

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Update 13:02 CDT: Badlands Blue catches the news, too, and notes that AMA members seem to like the public option, even though their powerful leadership has rumbled to the contrary.

SD Peace &Justice: Single-Payer Best

The South Dakota Peace and Justice Center weighs on the side of socialists like Congressman Anthony Weiner and me: their August policy analysis calls for a single-payer health coverage system. SDPJC joins the myth-busting crew on three points:

1. You don't have choice under a private insurance system... unless you think "cling to my employer's health insurance or do without" is real choice.
2. You and your doctor don't have control with private insurance—ever hear of "managed care"?
3. Single-payer doesn't mean long waits... at least not any longer than you might wait now for care.

(On that third point, Erin and I have a friend who has a medical problem that could cause paralysis. This friend got a cursory interview with a surgeon, who said he'd do the surgery in six months and then didn't stick around long enough to answer questions about why that wait was acceptable. And folks say America has no waiting for health care? Riiiight.)

SDPJC holds its nose and says a strong public option—government insurance every American can buy—is an acceptable compromise. But let's remember: public option is an extreme compromise down from the successful standard of public health coverage in dozens of other countries.

Reich: Public Option Is "Last Stand" for Real Reform

I've argued hard here (and here, here, and here) for a public option health insurance plan (and 77% of my readers and a similar percentage of Madison residents and the American public back me). I've been willing to accept that as a compromise down from the ideal single-payer system. Now the Obama Administration is signaling it's willing to bail from even that reasonable compromise.

Howard Dean says a public option is a sine qua non of health coverage reform. I'll let Robert Reich carry the argument further:

Without a public, Medicare-like option, health care reform is a bandaid for a system in critical condition. There's no way to push private insurers to become more efficient and provide better value to Americans without being forced to compete with a public option. And there's no way to get overall health-care costs down without a public option that has the authority and scale to negotiate lower costs with pharmaceutical companies, doctors, hospitals, and other providers -- thereby opening the way for private insurers to do the same.

It's been clear from the start that the private insurers and other parts of the medical-industrial complex have hated the idea of the public option, for precisely these reasons. A public option would cut deeply into their current profits. That's why they've been willing to spend a fortune on lobbyists, threaten and intimidate legislators and ordinary Americans, and even rattle Obama's cage to the point where the Administration is about to give up on it [Robert Reich, "The Public Option's Last Stand, and the Public's," Robert Reich's Blog, 2009.08.17].

And what of the non-profit health cooperatives being suggested as a sufficiently tolerable alternative that could pass the Senate?

Senator Kent Conrad's ersatz public option -- his regional "cooperatives" -- won't have the scale or authority to do what a public option would do. That's why some Republicans say they could buy it. What's Conrad's response? "The fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the United States Senate for a public option. There never have been," he tells "FOX News Sunday." Conrad is wrong. If Obama tells Senate Democrats he will not sign a healthcare reform bill without a public option, there will be enough votes in the United States Senate for a public option [Reich 2009.08.17].

President Obama should not have to compromise to appease opponents who are willing to use any means necessary, including manufactured rage and outright deceit, to protect a broken status quo. It's time to stand for what's right, not what polls well with lobbyists. Let's push that House vote on single-payer. Let's show just how much support there is for real health coverage reform. And let's make clear that the public option is the rock-bottom compromise position.

Mr. Obama, we did not elect you to give in to willful deceit and ignorance. Spend that political capital, fight for the public option.

(Besides, how will the Republican cries of "Socialism!" and "Tyranny!" stick if you don't create the one big government program that scares them the most? ;-) )

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Update 13:20 CDT: But I agree with Ned Hodgman of Understanding Government that President Obama at least deserves credit for making a case that puts facts and sensible policy above emotion and identity politics.

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Update 17:00 CDT: As I suspected, compromise on public option is pointless, since it won't win over Republicans anyway.