Without the public option, health care reform is right wing

[Onlooker]

This is an oversimplification, but it's roughly how I think it works:

Now
You are not required to have insurance.
You can buy insurance with limited benefits at a lower price.
Your insurance company can charge whatever it wants.

After
You are required to have insurance (though if you're poor, you won't have to pay much).
Your insurance will be required to offer significant benefits.
Your insurance company can charge whatever it wants.

Thus, health care reform risks creating a financial burden for the poor and the middle class, and it makes a gift of 30,000,000+ new customers to insurance companies.

The only way this can make sense is to have a public option that will drive insurance costs down. Otherwise, all we're doing is putting a greater burden on the poor and middle class, and giving insurance lots of business.

I have yet to see a logical progressive case for health insurance without the public option. Even that is pretty bad, compared to far better solutions that exist in Europe, Japan, and elsewhere.

[Zynx]

1. Unlike many here I have no basic objection to the mandate.

However, without a public option we are just essentially dancing around the fact that the health insurance industry is an oligopoly.

[Vinca]

2. If the plan passes as you suggest, it might as well be named the McCain Plan

because that's about the best a President McCain would have produced.

[stray cat]

3. McCain told you his plan - get rid of employer-paid insurance and give a tax break of $5000

to purchase your own health insurance plan without regulating any aspect of insurance.

[area51]

6. Agreed.

McBush wanted to force people to buy private, for-profit, unregulated health insurance, as did Hillary Clinton and Newt Gingrich. Mandated insurance purchase should really be known as GingrichCare.

[Sebastian Doyle]

8. Nah RomneyCare sounds better than GingrichCare

Because the corporatist swine dog abusing mor(m)on actually made it the law in his "home" :eyes: state when he was Governor.

[Vinca]

11. How have you missed the mandated insurance discussions?

And now the talk that the public option might be out . . . what's left? Private insurance and there is no way in hell the Republicans are going to cast a vote that regulates anything. Essentially, if the public option is axed, we're back to square one. An unchanged system.

[populistdriven]

4. *(&@#$%^ trolls unreccing this thread

[ej510]

5. It could be republican with a weak public option.

[Faryn Balyncd]

7. K&R - - Without a public option for all, "reform" will be grandiose CORPORATE WELFARE.

[ej510]

9. Thank You!

[hvn_nbr_2]

10. Required insurance without a public option is simply ...

the government being the strong-arm enforcer for insurance company "protection" schemes.

[SKKY]

12. Does anyone really think he's going to abandon the Public Option???

He's triangulating folks. Rope-a-dope.

[Thrill]

13. Thats BS.

A right wing plan would be tax credits to buy insurance, tort reform, and there would be no regulation for pre-existing conditions or when they can drop your coverage

[Onlooker]

14. In their dreams, but they'd certainly be happy with a plan that ...

... gave their insurance company allies 30,000,000+ new customers and put no pressure on those companies to charge fairer rates. If Bush had pushed healthcare, the health care reform act without a Public Option would be seen as a victory for him.