Health care: Most wouldn't have public option

[DearAbby]

Health care: Most wouldn't have public option
Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's gambit to include a government-run insurance option in health care legislation has given a fresh tailwind to the idea despite opposition from conservatives.


But lost amid the ideological battle for or against a public option is a key overlooked fact: The vast majority of Americans would have no access to a public option even under its most expansive versions.

House and Senate bills limit the option to the smallest businesses and to individuals who cannot get insurance, or whose health care costs exceed 12.5 percent of their income. Even seven years into an overhaul, an estimated 90 percent of Americans, including nearly everyone who has employer-based coverage now, would be shut out of a public option.

Those currently in other government programs, such as Medicare and the Veterans Administration, also would be excluded.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/29/MNAL1ABCOT.DTL&tsp=1#ixzz0VMPej3R3

[DearAbby]

1. The article goes on...

<snip>
...people who are unhappy with the insurance they have now would be locked out of these exchanges, leaving many Americans who are watching the debate in for a big surprise.

Only a handful of senators, such as Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Mary Landrieu, D-La., have focused on widening the exchanges where a public option might be available. Wyden wants everyone who now has employer-based coverage to have access to the exchange if they don't like their insurance companies, but his efforts have been lost amid the narrower fixation on the public option itself.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/29/MNAL1ABCOT.DTL&tsp=1#ixzz0VMQMktUB

[Coyote_Bandit]

2. Any "reform"

that affords less than single payer is doomed to be a clusteruck of a failure. And the sorry bastards we elected are gping to pretend their proposal is an informed one - even though they largely refused to consider any testimony or evidence as to the viability of a single payer system. Fuck 'em.

The inclusion of a "publlic option" in some form or another is not a measure of whether any refomr is meanignfdul and effective. That measure is whether the uninsured/underinsured - as well as those currently insured - are going to be able to have meaningful affordable access to quality healthcare. Our current system is so screwed up that ain't likely to happen - regardless of legislative enactments.

[DearAbby]

3. Insurance companies win.

They will still have 90%, and that 90% will be shut out, without an open public option for all, there would be no incentive for these companies to change. Where is the freedom of choice?

[Warpy]

4. Medicare sucked when it was first introduced

and had to be amended into the form that seniors now love.

While it would be wonderful if those old boys bit the bullet and did what they will have to do eventually, we know that is simply not going to happen. It never has in the past, won't now, and likely won't in the future.

Congress has always been reactive, not proactive, and has had to be dragged kicking and screaming all the way into legislating real reform.

[DearAbby]

5. Kick