Olbermann: "The Public Option" is in broad essence "Medicare For Everybody."

[ProSense]

Just as you and I have largely failed to understand the terror, the fear of death, that underlies this debate in the minds of so many, the leadership of the reform effort has also failed to understand it, and failed to lead not just in practical terms, but in rhetorical ones. If you did not know what something called "The Public Option" was, you might instinctively oppose it.

Option? My health care is now optional? Doesn't that mean it can go away somehow? Doesn't that mean that when I need it, it won't be there? Doesn't that mean somebody is trying to take it away from me? And this insurance that might go away is public? I'm giving control to the government somehow? No "private?" Just "public?"

And so, in seconds, with mental reflexes as acute and natural as any mechanism of "fight-or-flight", something that will expand health care and reduce its cost, something that will help fight death and pain becomes misunderstood as exactly the opposite. You can blame the one doing the misunderstanding all you want. But the essence of communication is reducing the chance of misunderstanding. And the term "The Public Option" has been as useless and as full of holes and as self-defeating as has been the term "Global Warming." It is political-speak. It is legalese. It is designed not for the recipient but for the speaker. It is the ego of the informed, strutting down the street and saying "look at me, I talk smart."

Just as "global warming" is really "bad climate change," "The Public Option" is in broad essence "Medicare For Everybody." Frame it that way, sell it that way, and suddenly it doesn't sound like a threat, turning the seemingly solid insurance which people have now, into something "optional" and turning anything "private" into everything "public."

Once you said "Medicare For Everybody," there would be just as much to explain. If you were under 65 you'd be paying for it. You wouldn't have to buy it. You wouldn't have to change from whatever you have now. There are just as many caveats.

Still, the intent of all this would be clearer. Much of the criticism of health care reform is coming from those who have or are about to get Medicare and, in confusion, in fear, in the kind of indescribable realization that we are far closer to the end than to the beginning, they are suddenly mortally afraid that health care reform will take it away from them. "Medicare For Everybody," might not be literally true, but instead of terrifying, it would be reassuring. And the explanations and the caveats would be listened to, and not shouted down, as anger and fear -- fear, remember, of death - swell up inside.

link

(emphasis added)

Olbermann gave reform a huge boost tonight.

[ProSense]

1. Video links

here.

[defendandprotect]

2. k i c k

[mzmolly]

3. "Medicare for More"

is how I framed it a while ago.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6313387&mesg_id=6313387

Of course I fully agree with Keith, who is a great patriot, and far better with words than I! ;)

[ProSense]

5. Cool n/t

[mzmolly]

6. Thanks.

:hi:

[LaPera]

4. We absolutely need it.

[Overseas]

7. Good chant at HCR Rallies = "Open Up Medicare! Single Payer Now!"

Opening up Medicare would get us help sooner than some new public option that needs to be discussed and amended for a few years before it even begins.

Medicare Part E- E for Everybody, as Thom Hartmann says
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/thomhartmann/1

Wed Sep 09th 2009, 05:05 PM
The President this morning admitted on national television that he lost control of the message with health care. It's time to reboot - and use a very, very, very simple message so all Americans can understand it.
Let's use Medicare, which nearly every American understands. Just create "Medicare Part E" where the "E" represents "everybody." Just let any citizen in the US buy into Medicare.

It would be so easy. No need to reinvent the wheel with this so-called "public option" that's a whole new program from the ground up. Medicare already exists. It works. Some people will like it, others won't - just like the Post Office versus FedEx analogy the President is so comfortable with.

Just pass a simple bill - it could probably be just a few lines, like when Medicare was expanded to include disabled people - that says that any American citizen can buy into the program at a rate to be set by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) which reflects the actual cost for us to buy into it.

Thus, Medicare Part E would be revenue neutral!

To make it available to people of low income, Congress could raise the rates slightly for all currently non-eligible people (like me - under 65) to cover the cost of below-200%-of-poverty people. Revenue neutral again.

[redqueen]

8. Why not Medicare for All?

We already have the bills in place.

[joeycola]

9. and the adminstrative infrastructure-which will reduce costs and hurring

it along. and it would certainly NOT take 3 plus years==