public option - Jezebel

posts about #publicoption more →
It Happened Last Night: Nelson Amendment Nixed, Public Option In Limbo
Health Care Bill Is Still Full Of Drama
Heather Graham Leaves Private Insurers In The Dust
Poll Positions: America Gets New Hope For Public Option
Maine Event: It's Wait & See With Senator Snowe
What Constitutes a "Public Option?"
Finance Committee Shuns Public Option; Coughs Up Cash For Abstinence Education
Health Insurance, Anti-Abortion Amendments, & Howard Dean's Big Brass Balls

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judgingamy
12/09/09

In reply to It Happened Last Night: Nelson Amendment Nixed, Public Option In Limbo
Yet another reason to raise the friggin poverty line.
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Lymed
12/09/09

In reply to It Happened Last Night: Nelson Amendment Nixed, Public Option In Limbo
My fourth grade teacher needs to give Bart Stupak a lecture on the difference between the words "can" and "may." While the amendment is written so that a person receiving a subsidy may purchase abortion coverage if they desire it and can afford it, the fact that these women are receiving a subsidy for their health care means they are low income and likely don't have the money to afford the additional coverage and therefore can not purchase a supplemental policy.
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lalaland13
12/09/09

In reply to It Happened Last Night: Nelson Amendment Nixed, Public Option In Limbo
Under the plans being debated, will insurance companies pay to remove these senators' heads from their asses?

For the love of...I just don't even. I do not comprehend all this flailing. I would ask Congress to stop letting so many employers wait 90 days before covering new workers, because really, WTF is that? But then the Republicans and half the Dems would probably say that is to "protect" employees from all those rascally people who just want health insurance and would leave once they get new boobs.

But as is, I'd have to think really really carefully before leaving my current job, because frankly, I don't know if I can go 90 days without.
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RomanaTwo
12/09/09

In reply to It Happened Last Night: Nelson Amendment Nixed, Public Option In Limbo
This is beyond frustrating and insulting. Why is it that, instead of acting in the interest of the people that elected them, members of Congress (and the Senate, and so on) insist on dancing around actual issues in order to avoid serious conflict with each other?
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bluebears
12/09/09

@RomanaTwo: because they're getting paid by the insurance lobbies?
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RomanaTwo
12/09/09

@bluebears: Yes, Congressmen, keeping the insurance industry afloat is more important than the ongoing health and well-being of the American public.
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sympathyforthebasementcat
12/09/09

In reply to It Happened Last Night: Nelson Amendment Nixed, Public Option In Limbo
Congressmembers really do have no clue what it is to struggle with healthcare costs. Their official policy might as well be "if a family of 4 making $30k/year can't afford even bread to eat after medical bills, then let them eat cake!"
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Lymed
12/09/09

@sympathyforthebasementcat: There is a time and a place to bash team cake and this is neither. I'm sure Sarah Palin is already preparing her pie recipes for everybody who can't afford health care.
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CynicalPink
12/09/09

In reply to It Happened Last Night: Nelson Amendment Nixed, Public Option In Limbo
TERM. LIMITS.

I want a time machine to go back and kick the drafters in their colonial era balls for not mandating term limits for every office. If congresswhatevers had to spend any time out in reality with jobs that are even slightly more "normal," these debates wouldn't be nearly as contentious. Some of this shit is just so obvious that is makes me scream that it's treated like a situation where "reasonable minds can disagree."

People don't want to die when they don't have to. They can't always afford to not die when they don't have to. FIX THAT. Any while you're at it, spare a thought for students who get thousands of dollars taken straight from their loans to go toward a mandatory "insurance plans" that don't actually cover anything at all and are only useful when you get hospitalized and even then it's questionable how much they'll pay. GAH
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AlFuncoot
12/09/09

@CynicalPink: Term limits don't really help. Just based on California, you go from a system where legislators are constantly fund raising for their next race to a system where legislators trying to use their connections (while they have still have them) to get a nice job when their term ends.

So, sadly, they stay in their bubble, they just have to work harder at it.

What would really help is campaign finance reform, so there isn't a huge financial burden to non-incumbents. Right now, challengers have to spend a lot of money to get their name awareness to the point that they can compete with an incumbent.
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Lymed
12/09/09

@CynicalPink: Another problem with term limits is you end up with a large percentage of the legislature that is new and does not know how the budget works or other necessary aspects of legislating. They end up getting "educated" by organizations that have their own agenda. I attended a meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) which is just such an organization. Its members are state legislators. A lot of new legislators turn to ALEC for guidance. The meeting I went to, had pre-written legislation such as anti-environmental legislation with the word "terrorism" in the title. There was a panelist complaining that 70% of money going to public school classrooms goes to teachers...and making it sound really, really awful as if the main thing that happens in a classroom isn't a delivery of the service of education which is delivered by the teacher.
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Hooplehead
12/09/09

In reply to It Happened Last Night: Nelson Amendment Nixed, Public Option In Limbo
We need to stop ceding the moral high ground to the GOP. These people are throwing monkey wrenches in a package to provide healthcare to poor people in order to cater to big corporate interests and, as a bonus, punish the dirty, dirty sluts in their imaginations who might someday access their legal right to an abortion. We should beat that drum loudly and daily until these corrupt, hypocritical, moralizing, class-baiting, poor hating motherfuckers are driven out of office and back to wherever they came from.

What would Jesus do? Not this.
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Edited by Hooplehead at 12/09/09 10:29 AM Hooplehead was starred Hooplehead was unstarred

Erda
12/09/09

@Hooplehead: The button my mom has reading "I have no problem with Jesus. It's his fan club I can't stand" is seeming very relevant right now.
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discoballfeet
12/09/09

In reply to It Happened Last Night: Nelson Amendment Nixed, Public Option In Limbo
Not having public healthcare in the US is crazy. I'm an American citizen living in France, and was told today at my "carte de séjour" interview (a medical exam and chest x-ray that completes the visa process) by the doctor that if I ever have a flare-up of one of my two chronic illnesses that I should just head on over to La Salpêtrière (one of the world's best hospitals) for care. And it would probably cost me, like, 200$. Can we just learn to love taxes and universal care, pleez?
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Trulymadlyme
12/09/09

In reply to It Happened Last Night: Nelson Amendment Nixed, Public Option In Limbo
Snowe flatly rejected a possible expansion of Medicaid.

"It's a huge burden on the states," Snowe said. "It is without question and without a doubt a very expensive proposition."

Agree completely. It's hilarious to see Congress kicking this duty to states that are barely keeping themselves afloat. What a stupid idea.
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BearDownCBears
12/09/09

In reply to It Happened Last Night: Nelson Amendment Nixed, Public Option In Limbo
So...optimistically speaking, all the older expensive public option people get to buy Medicare, whereas the less expensive public option people get these exchange thingies with a less expensive risk pool, and therefore maybe cheaper premiums? This doesn't, on its face, sound worse than the shitty senate public option to me, but I guess we have to wait for the CBO. Hell, even the House bill pegged PO reimbursement rates ABOVE medicare rates.

Also, just because somebody making 133% of the poverty line can't get Medicaid doesn't mean they won't get enormous subsidies to buy other stuff.
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J.D.Regent
12/09/09

@BearDownCBears: Howard Dean agrees with you.
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BearDownCBears
12/09/09

@J.D.Regent: Well, that's because I write his speeches. Er, not the screamy one, though--that was ad-libbed.
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J.D.Regent
12/09/09

@BearDownCBears: for real? sorry i'm really tired and unable to discern internet tone.
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BearDownCBears
12/09/09

@J.D.Regent: Ha, no, that would be silly. I'm just slowly taking over his life, a la "Single White Female".
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bluebears
12/09/09

@BearDownCBears: Have you stabbed his girlfriend in the eye with your stiletto heel yet?
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wednesdayam
12/09/09

In reply to It Happened Last Night: Nelson Amendment Nixed, Public Option In Limbo
So, once again, are we back to where everyone will be required to have it, but there won't be any option for people who honestly will have to choose between healthcare and food/shelter? Or those that are just making ends meet but are technically above the poverty level? Good times...
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Hooplehead promoted this comment Edited by wednesdayam at 12/09/09 10:20 AM wednesdayam was starred wednesdayam was unstarred

johnva
12/09/09

@wednesdayam: Well, there will be subsidies for premiums up to a higher income level (I don't remember the exact number, but it might be 300% of the FPL?). So a lot of people who wouldn't qualify for Medicaid under this plan would still get their premiums subsidized. The subsidies, which are the main mechanism in the bill for expanding insurance coverage to the uninsured (along with the prohibition on preexisting conditions and the expansion of people's right to stay on their parents' insurance until an older age) are separate from the much-discussed public option. Poorer people will still get a subsidy, but they just won't have the option of spending it on a public health insurance plan. Instead, they'll have to go to a regulated private insurer or possibly this new "compromise" of letting them buy into a privately administered, publicly overseen insurance program similar to what federal employees have access to.

I'm not happy with the individual mandates either, but to be fair the bill does try to address the situation of people who are going to have to choose between food and insurance.
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bluebears
12/09/09

In reply to It Happened Last Night: Nelson Amendment Nixed, Public Option In Limbo
(By the way, to meet the guidelines for coverage at 133%, a family of four would need to bring home less than $29,327.)

see this is just grotesque. All it does is leave the VAST middle to lower middle class exposed. And the insurance rates keep climbing with no help in sight.
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Questioning Everything
12/09/09

@bluebears: Look on the bright side, soon there will be no middle class, they'll be making so little that they may someday qualify for the idiotic program. Then again, by then the right will have changed the rules in favor of tax cuts for the rich and the left will somehow just let them do that (per usual).
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Edited by Questioning Everything at 12/09/09 10:18 AM

TheFormerJuneBronson
12/09/09

@bluebears: It disincentivizes marriage among the poor, too, since two people making minimum wage would bring in more than that. Not that marriage is the most awesome thing ever, but people shouldn't have to choose between family stability and home stability.
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johnva
12/09/09

@TheFormerJuneBronson: It doesn't work exactly like that. The Federal Poverty guidelines account for the size of the household. They don't DOUBLE the amount of income you can have and still be under the line (presumably since it's cheaper to live together than separate)...but the actual dollar value of the limit is higher if you have more people in your household.
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TheFormerJuneBronson
12/09/09

@johnva: I know that, but you can't deny that a family of four that includes two parents making minimum wage and two kids is going to exceed that limit.
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johnva
12/09/09

@TheFormerJuneBronson: It's actually pretty close to even with the minimum wage (I think the minimum wage, 40 hours a week, adds up to something like $15,000 per year).

Keep in mind, as I mentioned above, that this is just for Medicaid. If you make too much money for Medicaid, but not much more, then you'll still qualify for a large subsidy for other insurance under the plan. Not necessarily as good as free, but not nothing. And there are other assistance options for people with kids, e.g., SCHIP.

And also, remember that this isn't reducing the income limit for Medicaid...it's just failing to raise it. I agree that it should be raised (actually, the FPL should be raised, instead). But it's really nothing new.
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Questioning Everything
12/09/09

In reply to It Happened Last Night: Nelson Amendment Nixed, Public Option In Limbo
God, I'm going to pull my hair out! Our legislative body can't seem to do anything right. Everything has to be watered down until it barely makes a difference, just so that everyone can have their ego stroked.

Assholes, everyone of them!
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EdnasEdibles
12/09/09

@WashingMyHair: It angers me so much. I have so many friends who have no health insurance at all because of pre-existing conditions. It's all such a big racket and no one in governement seems to give a crap.
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Questioning Everything
12/09/09

@EdnasEdibles: They don't care because 1) they're covered and isolated from the problem even after they leave office and 2) they're more worried about filling their war chest and need the corporate lobbyists for that. So they're really voting based on what their corporate contributors want, not the people that elected them.
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Hooplehead
12/09/09

@EdnasEdibles: I have friends who are lawyers and have only "catastrophic" coverage. It is insane that in a country where we spend tons more on healthcare than any other country on the globe that the access to care is so poor.
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discoballfeet
12/09/09

@EdnasEdibles: The pre-existing condition thing is absolutely criminal.
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bluebears
12/09/09

In reply to It Happened Last Night: Nelson Amendment Nixed, Public Option In Limbo
Read about this last night on Gawker. I'm mad but unsurprised. I'm just completely, COMPLETELY disgusted. I have nothing else to say. The Democrats are useless, it's time for a third party (or fourth or fifth) because we the people are not being represented.
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bluetrain84
12/09/09

@bluebears: For reals, I am thisclose to being done with the Dems. I'm a registered Independent, so I'm not in the party anyways, but I usually vote Dem. The way things have been going the last year or so, I don't know who I will vote for next because I don't really care for anyone from any party (except maybe Dennis Kucinich).
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bluebears
12/09/09

@bluetrain84: Oh someone on Gawker last night tipped everyone off on how anti-choice Kucinich is, hang on...check it out

[www.thenation.com]

from the article:

"That a solidly anti-choice politician could become a standard- bearer for progressivism, the subject of hagiographic profiles in The Nation and elsewhere, speaks volumes about the low priority of women's rights to the self-described economic left, forever chasing the white male working-class vote. "
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Edited by bluebears at 12/09/09 10:32 AM bluebears was starred bluebears was unstarred

AlFuncoot
12/09/09

@bluebears: At the least, we should be working to break down the barriers to third (and fourth and fifth parties). Get Instant Runoff Voting implemented in more cities, work to have anti-third party rules repealed (in some states, for examples, any party that doesn't get x% of the Presidential vote in the state has to go through the certification process all over again).
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bluetrain84
12/09/09

@bluebears: Oh, I thought he had recently changed his views to pro-choice within the last five to six years?
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bluebears
12/09/09

@bluetrain84: has he? I mean after all that evidence I'd need to see some hard voting record type proof otherwise I worry he's just paying lip service to it.
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bluetrain84
12/09/09

@bluebears: Well, he did vote against the child interstate abortion act, the abortion pain bill, and the amendment to prohibit federally funded abortions on the house health care bill as of recent, but I do agree in the past that he was anti-choice. I'm also not saying that he's my favorite politician ever, just somebody who I dislike less than the rest.
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johnva
12/09/09

@bluebears: Yes, he has changed his views. If you google it you will see that he has indeed compiled a pro-choice voting record since the time this article was written (100% ratings from NARAL). There are plenty of things you can legitimately criticize Kucinich over (such as the fact that he seems to be fonder of grandstanding than actually getting anything done), but his voting record on abortion rights in the recent past isn't one of them.
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Chrysocolla
11/17/09

In reply to Health Care Bill Is Still Full Of Drama
Gah, I am so angry that they made abortion an issue here and bogged down the bill. We need these reforms and this coverage ASAP. It's just ridiculous. Making women choose between coverage and reproductive rights is sick, and I'm glad they're not taking it lying down... but on the other hand I really want these reforms to pass so I can finally afford health care. #roevsworld
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