Subject: [big campaign] New Huff Post from Creamer
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Date: Sun, 13 Sep 2009 13:46:28 EDT
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Why the Public Option Is Not “Fading”—Just the  Contrary 

The Sunday New York Times ran  a front page story headlined “The Fading 
Public Option.” Since the beginning of  the health care debate in April, the 
main stream media and purveyors of the  Conventional Wisdom have regularly 
pronounced the public option dead and  gone.  But in fact they continue to  be 
dead wrong. 
In fact, the prospects that there will be some form of public option in  
the final health insurance reform measure this fall have actually increased 
over  the last month.  Here is  why: 
1). The odds have dropped that some sort of  “bipartisan” consensus will 
become the final template for a bill.  That has reduced the ability of  
Republicans to tube a public option as a condition of their support.   
From  day one, the Republicans were never going to support a public health 
insurance  option for everyday Americans.  The  Republican party staunchly 
opposed Medicare forty years ago.  Despite former House Speaker Newt  Gingrich
’s hope that it would “wither on the vine,” Medicare is now an  
unassailably popular public health insurance option for seniors.  The Republicans and 
private insurance  industry will do everything they can to prevent the 
American people from having  access to another – undeniably superior – public 
health insurance  plan. 
The insurance  industry desperately wants to protect its “right” to raise 
prices and take home  huge profits – to skim off  as large  a portion as 
they can of every dollar spent on health care..  
So the insurance  industry and Republicans were never going to agree to a 
public option.  What has changed is that the Republican  decision to try to 
block health insurance reform has completely eliminated their  leverage over 
what will be in the final bill. In the end, Democrats are  increasingly 
clear that they will have to pass health insurance reform with  Democratic votes 
– which we can – either by using reconciliation rules or by  securing 60 
votes for cloture from Democrats and 50 votes for final  passage. 
2). The pundits ignore the  legislative facts on the ground.  Four of the 
five committees with jurisdiction in this debate have  reported out bills 
with a strong public option.  The bill that passes the House at the  end of 
this month will include a strong public option.  Whether or not the bill that 
passes out  of the Senate has such a provision, the House-Senate conference 
committee will  likely send a final bill with some form of public option to 
both chambers for  final passage.  That’s because a  bill without a public 
option will have a hard time passing the House and a bill  with a public 
option can, in fact, get more than 50 votes in the Senate.  
3). The President has made it  very clear that he not only supports a 
public option, but he will demand some  mechanism to assure a competitive market 
place and drive down  costs. 
The Republicans played right into his hands with their new talking points  
on this week’s Sunday news shows.  Virtually every Republican argued that 
the Massachusetts plan – that  requires everyone to purchase health insurance –
 has the highest health care  costs in the country.  Precisely.  You can’t 
force  everyone to purchase insurance from private health insurers unless 
you create  competitive pressure to control costs by giving consumers the 
right to choose a  public health insurance plan. 
The private insurers would love the government to require every citizen  
and most businesses to buy their product –who wouldn’t.? What they don’t want 
is  regulation – or worse yet, competition – that prevents them from doing 
whatever  they can to make as much as they can.   And remember that the 
insurance  companies are exempt from the anti-trust laws that seek to assure 
competition in  other markets. They can collude, divide up territories and 
drive up prices until  they’re blue in the face. 
An AMA survey, released in late January, gives a score gauging the  
concentration of the commercial market for 314 metropolitan statistical areas.  The 
report showed 94% had commercial markets that were "highly concentrated" by 
 standards set by the Federal Trade Commission and Justice  Department. 
In Maine, for instance, one company – Wellpoint –  had 71% of the market.  
The second  competitor was Aetna with only 12%.  
There is another way to control the behavior of the private insurance  
companies when we mandate coverage – serious rate regulation – treat them like  
regulated public utilities.   
Rate regulation is an even more serious political lift than a public  
option – which is also a much more efficient means of assuring competitive  
prices than rate regulation. 
The pundits, insurance companies and Republicans need to get used to one  
idea.  Many Democrats – including  the President – will ensure that the 
final bill have some robust means of  ensuring competition and controlling 
prices, and a robust public health  insurance plan is the best option on the 
table.  
4). Giving Americans a choice of a public  health insurance option remains 
incredibly popular.  A poll conducted for Americans United  for Change by 
the respected firm of Anzelone and Liszt – completed last Friday –  shows 
that, by a 62% to 28% margin, likely 2010 voters would be more inclined to  
support President Obama’s healthcare reform plan if it included a public option 
 that gave people a choice between private insurance plans and a public 
health  insurance plan. 
Voters like the idea  of making a choice themselves – and not having the 
choice made for them by  Republicans who are trying to defend the profits of 
private health insurers. The  voters have been unaffected by the insurance 
industry-generated talk that giving  them that choice would prove the demise 
of the private health insurance  industry.    
There are three major  forces that keep pushing the notion that  “public 
option is dead.”  First are the Republicans and insurance  industry that want 
to weave a “public option is impossible” narrative in order  to create a 
self-fulfilling prophecy.  They hope that if public option proponents  think 
it is impossible, they will give  up.  That motivation is completely  
understandable, but Progressives shouldn’t fall for it – or contribute to  it. 
The second is a desire  in the media to create a story that President Obama 
has “mishandled” the health  care debate.  That is simply  wrong.  
President Obama has moved us  closer to giving America universal health care than  
any other President in 60 years, and the odds are very good he will succeed  
where all others have failed. 
But the third is the  most insidious.  It is the cynicism  in the media – 
and Washington Conventional Wisdom – that anything fundamental  cannot pass 
out of Congress.  That  there isn’t any hope that everyday Americans can 
defeat the special  interests.  It is the same cynicism  that convinced most of 
the “sophisticated” in-the-know Capitol Hill insiders  that Barack Obama 
could never be elected President.  And to that cynicism I give the same  
answer that we gave then, and that thousands gave at the President’s Minneapolis 
health care  rally on Saturday: “yes we can.” 
Robert Creamer is a longtime political  organizer and strategist, and 
author of the recent book:  Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can  Win, 
available on _Amazon.com._ 
(http://www.amazon.com/Listen-Your-Mother-Straight-Progressives/dp/0979585295/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213241439&sr=8-1) 

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