The Senate Agrees to Debate 60-39

[Aaron]

Can I ask, how on earth that benefits...well anyone? It'll still be payed for just like private healthcare, just via taxes if not directly.

If enough people opt for it then it should drive down the premiums and eventually drive the parasites private companies out of business. It should also insure one standard of coverage for everyone (no pre-existing conditions BS if they do it right).

Unfortunately I doubt any of this will happen, mostly because the US Government has demonstrated to be about as competent as the Italian Parliament throughout all this.

[Monroe]

Yeah the idea is to drive down costs. It won't drive insurers out of business, nor should it, but it will make it so that private insurers will have to offer more, refuse less, and not have as huge profit margins.

[sunnyside]

In line with what some others have said, the "public option" is supposed to be another insurance company run by the governement that, in principle, should fund itself through premiums. Sort of like how the US postal service is supposed to work.

The "pro" argument for it is that private insurers are rat bastards with huge profit margins and massive overhead. The government run plan will be kinder, easier to use, and cheaper, forcing private insurers to follow suit.

The "con" argument is that it won't be any better, especially since many of the distastful practices of the private companies are about to be illegal anyway. Some think it will just be a giant pile of beurocratic waste, i.e. not enough people will sign up to cover the army of beurocrats needed to operate it, or it'll be mired in fraud and abuses. Others feel that the price will be set far too low, simultaniously plunging our country further into debt while driving private insurers towards bankruptcy.

Many startup companies have a rocky start. So even if it has a reasonable business plan and pricing it may have troubles that the GOP will use to clobber the Dems in election season. However my understanding is that they haven't actually done an analysis of any of the public option plans to see if they're even slightly reasonable, so I have a hard time believing that it won't be a complete mess. I'm actually rather annoyed that they aren't sending it through some independent analysis. There isn't any reason that they shouldn't be able to come up with a reasonable plan, it's just that they seem to refuse to actually do so.

[Mikey]

That's the principle, anyway. The supposed benefit of the gub'mint acting as an insurance company is twofold: 1) competition for private carriers; and 2) it would be available to anyone, regardless of what your employer offers.

[Vic]

Why not just revamp Medicare\Medicaid and make it available to all citizens regardless of age or circumstance? Redirect the mandatory employer insurance to Medicare\Medicaid rather than private insurance companies. People can then spend money on supplemental insurance with private carriers to take care of other stuff.

[Lazar]

Why not just revamp Medicare\Medicaid and make it available to all citizens regardless of age or circumstance? Redirect the mandatory employer insurance to Medicare\Medicaid rather than private insurance companies. People can then spend money on supplemental insurance with private carriers to take care of other stuff.

Because that's evil socialism.

[Monroe]

Slightly related news, but this is why Hardball is one of the best shows on cable news:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn7wG9Pvabk

[Mikey]

Why not just revamp Medicare\Medicaid and make it available to all citizens regardless of age or circumstance? Redirect the mandatory employer insurance to Medicare\Medicaid rather than private insurance companies. People can then spend money on supplemental insurance with private carriers to take care of other stuff.

Because the US is a capitalist society - if not a true laissez-faire capitalism. You can't just tell an employer to give money to the government instead of shopping for their best alternative. If two businesses conspire to do so, it's an anti-trust violation; there's no reason the government should get an exception for attempting the same business practices.

[Lazar]

Because the US is a capitalist society - if not a true laissez-faire capitalism. You can't just tell an employer to give money to the government instead of shopping for their best alternative. If two businesses conspire to do so, it's an anti-trust violation; there's no reason the government should get an exception for attempting the same business practices.

I don't understand what you're saying here.

A government monopoly is an unjustifiable anti-trust violation, when the government already has monopolies over numerous things that have been determined to be in the public interest (law enforcement, defense, public works, schools, etc)? When the government chooses to exercise a monopoly, it does so with the justification of the democratic process, because the industry has been determined to be in the public interest. The government gets an exception, as it has gotten exceptions, because it makes the rules. That's democracy.

The government can't tell employers to give money to the government? The government already does this very thing with the Medicare payroll tax. Just increase the tax and expand Medicare to cover everyone.

Having a single-payer health care system (but not, say, a single-payer military or single-payer highways) is incompatible with a capitalist society, when numerous developed (and I would say, capitalistic) nations have it? They magically cease to be capitalist when it's instituted? Would you say, for example, that the US is fundamentally capitalist in a way that Canada isn't, because they have single-payer for everybody and we only have it for old people?

I ask these things, because it seems like you're looking at the arbitrary point of mixed-economy compromise which we currently have, and characterizing that as capitalist, and anything to the left of that as anti-capitalist, with no justification other than your particular perspective. You could have just as easily used this reasoning, at various points in time, to argue against Medicare or public fire departments or public schools - would you say that all of these measures are compatible with capitalism, but one more incremental step to the left is intolerable? I think there are a lot of conservatives throughout the developed world who would be surprised to be characterized as non-capitalist because they support a single-payer health care system along with their single-payer schools and police.

[Tyyr]

For the most part, because they've been bought by insurance companies. Therefore you have Democratic senators from places like Arkansas and Connecticut who oppose the public option even though a solid majority of their constituents want it.

Awww, it's just so damned adorable to see someone who thinks their representative gives a shit what their constituents thinks.

[Captain Seafort]

Because the US is a capitalist society - if not a true laissez-faire capitalism.

So's the UK. That doesn't prevent us from being part of the civilised world.

You can't just tell an employer to give money to the government instead of shopping for their best alternative. If two businesses conspire to do so, it's an anti-trust violation; there's no reason the government should get an exception for attempting the same business practices.

The state can indeed tell people to give them money - it's called taxes.

If there was a proposal to ban private health insurance then I'd oppose it - there are very few things the state should have a monopoly one, and health care isn't one of them. However, this is not synonymous with opposing government run health care, paid for by the entire population through taxation, to provide a safety net for those unable to afford their own insurance.

Before someone starts claiming that this is what the US already has, two points. One, it's crap, otherwise there wouldn't be tens of millions of un- or under-insured US citizens. Two, I believe that everything the state provides should be provided equally to the entire population - it should not discriminate for or against any section of the population for any reason. Just as the police do not ignore calls to burglaries simply because the individual calling them could afford a private army, so should the health service not refuse patients simply because they could afford private health insurance.