What do we mean by "robust" public option

[Cant trust em]

Has anyone seen an article or a position paper that details this?

Or, at least an article about what progressives would like the public option to look like.

[Oregone]

1. More ambiguous posturing

It means many things to many different people that are subject to morph with the political dialog and direction of the bill.

[Cyrano]

2. Someone thought that the word "robust" was better bullshit than the word "limp."

[lumberjack_jeff]

11. Turgid. I want a turgid, tumescent public option. n/t

[jody]

3. Statements explaining & amplifying promises mean nothing. Only a final bill signed by Obama matters

and by then it may be too late.

[Cyrano]

4. It's already too late for those who

died because insurance companies deemed them too expensive to keep alive.

[Cant trust em]

5. If we can't even articulate what will be in that bill, then we're really screwed.

Seems like no one even knows what they want the public option to do.

[damntexdem]

6. We could start to name some criteria:

1) national, like Medicare.
2) available to all, not screened out by employer provision of private options.
3) able to negotiate prices with providers and vendors, including pharmaceutical companies.
4) having an adequate administration and powers to enforce its provisions.
5) providing an adequate array of benefits for the current population to be covered (sadly, unlike Medicare, which does not adequately address chronic illnesses nor long-term care).

Additions???

[jody]

8. Decades of govt contracting have shown the efficacy of concentrating on three major criteria;

cost, schedule, and performance.

Cost is the price the government pays for a given product or service,

Schedule is the delivery of a product or service at a designated time, sometimes referred to as "due date"

Performance is the quality of a product or service.

A good primer for those concepts is CIRCULAR NO. A–11 and the Federal Acquisition Regulations.

IMO it's highly unlikely that any contract between a "public option" and providers of health-care resources will use criteria in contracts that do not include cost, schedule, and performance or other words describing them.

Of the three, explanations of a "public option" I've read all stress reducing cost while assuming equal or better performance (quality) and that delivery will at least be equal between competing options.

Of course the "public option" will cover more people but competition between "public v. private" will still be judged by cost, schedule, performance.

[bluethruandthru]

9. All doctors, hospitals and providers must accept it. n/t

[Cant trust em]

15. Increase choice of physician options. I want to be able to shop for my doctor. nt

[Laelth]

7. That is a very good question.

I called Representative Lynn Woolsey's office a couple of weeks ago and asked that very question. The Progressive Caucus, as you may recall, has vowed to vote against any "health insurance reform" bill that does not include a "robust" public option. The representative to whom I spoke could not give me an answer to that question.

For me, here's what "robust" means in this context. It needs to be big enough to have significant bargaining power that will, in turn, drive down the rates of private insurers. As I understand it, when Hacker first proposed this idea in 2000, or so, he envisioned the public option plan being pre-populated with all 40+ million of the uninsured in the US. That would give the plan a lot of bargaining power and allow it to effectively distribute risk. He imagined that it would top out at around 100 million participants, and that at that level, it would be sufficiently "robust" to drive the market.

The 10 million participants that might be enrolled in the public option as it is currently envisioned, is way too small to accomplish any of the President's major goals ... driving down costs and keeping the insurance companies honest. A public option with 10 million participants is not robust. On the other hand, I would be willing to support a public option that was projected to enroll 50 million or more participants within five years. That, I would call "robust."

:dem:

-Laelth

[andym]

12. I think this is correct, it needs to be of a sufficiently large size to drive costs

What the minimum size is, I'm not sure. The bigger the better is likely true here.

Btw, this is why(size) the insurers' trade organization have been quoted as not wanting even Co-ops. Some here might wonder why, since they are not thought to be strong competitors. They are afraid of the possibility of a National Co-op open to all, because that could mean a competitor with more than 40 million people that drives down prices (profits). Now they are almost certainly less afraid of a Co-op than any government plan, because they probably feel that they could somehow subvert the Co-op, but it is the size of the potential competitor that scares them the most. A government public option plan with 100 million people is their worst nightmare.

[Cant trust em]

14. Holy shit! An idea and discussion on DU.

I'm learning something. OMG!

[SoCalDem]

10. Wiggle words..just wiggle words

repair
reform
robust
affordable
accessible
portable


Excessive use of adjectives & adverbs is something we've become accustomed to, thanks to advertising.

When my boys were small, and started reading the paper, I always taught them how to eliminate the "unnecessary" words, to get to the "nugget" of any story they were reading (usually for current events reports).

The MORE wiggle words, the smaller the nugget:)

When politicians use these words, it's especially dangerous, since they are used as a deliberate attempt to give future deniability, since their "definition" can (and usually is) always be re-defined later..

It's like someone saying "that's pretty".. WHY is it pretty? what , specifically makes you think it's pretty?

Everyone looks at things differently, and has a different spin, depending on their own life-experience..

I may look at a painting that has a lot of a specific color in it that I don't like, even though the painting itself is quite nice... I would never buy it.. Someone else may see the same painting, and fall in love with it..

[Orsino]

13. Something not wimpy.

Or that can be spun as not wimpy, when it turns out that Congress can pass nothing better.