Subject: [big campaign] New Huff Post from Creamer -- Finance Vote on Public Option -- Growing Momentum
From: [email-masked]
To: [email-masked], [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:34:57 EDT
List-Id: <bigcampaign.googlegroups.com>

Growing Momentum for Public  Option 

In a surprising vote Tuesday, ten Democrats voted to add a public option  
to the most conservative of the five health insurance reform bills working 
their  way through Congress. That’s just two votes short of passage. 
This robust support for the public option – in what most observers  
consider the most conservative committee in the Senate – signals a sea change in  
Congressional opinion toward the public option.  The odds are now very high 
that some form  of public health insurance option will be included on the 
final bill when it  emerges from a House-Senate Conference Committee later this 
fall and is  ultimately passed by Congress.  
The three bills that have passed House Committees, and the Senate Health  
Committee bill, all contain a public option.  And increasingly it appears 
that the  strongest form of public option will come out of the House. 
In the midst of the right-wing, town hall onslaught last August, the  
pundits – public option opponents -- all but declared a public option dead and  
buried.  This narrative was  amplified by the private insurance industry that 
doesn’t want to compete against  a not-for-profit public health insurance 
program focused on providing health  insurance instead of maximizing the 
ever-ballooning profits of Wall Street  investors and the salaries of CEO’s that 
take home tens of millions.  
The big private insurance companies don’t want to change the status quo  
that has allowed a few big players to corner the market in most markets.  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. 
A Robert Woods Johnson Report indicates that over the last ten years  wages 
have gone up 29%, health insurance rates have gone up 120% and the profits  
of the private health insurance industry have gone up 428%.  No wonder they 
don't want  competition. 
So why the resurgent Congressional support for a strong public  option?  
There are three  reasons: 
1). First and foremost, voters’  support for a public health insurance 
option is as strong as ever.  All of the right-wing talk about a  “government 
take over” has not fooled voters who are forced every day to deal  with the 
stranglehold that the private insurance industry has on their health  care.  
Last weekend’s New York Times  poll showed that 65% of all voters support 
giving Americans the choice of a  public option and only 26% oppose it.   
More importantly, the public option is also popular in swing  Congressional 
districts.  The firm  of Anzeloni Liszt just released the results of a poll 
it conducted in 91 Blue  Dog, Rural Caucus and Frontline districts.  The 
poll found that 54% of the voters in these battleground districts  support the 
choice of a public option. 
And the poll also  found that the voters in these districts want reform and 
want it this  year.  The polling report  says: “Overall, 58% of voters 
believe the healthcare system is in  need of major reform or a complete 
overhaul, and almost 59% are concerned that  Congress will not take action on 
healthcare reform this year.  The risks of  inaction to Democrats in swing 
districts increases if voters perceive opposition  stems from ties to the insurance 
industry, as 74% are concerned that the health  insurance industry will 
have too much influence over  reform.” 
Those kinds of polling  results get the attention of Members of  Congress. 
2). Members of Congress have begun to  realize that they will have to live 
with the consequences of what they pass for  years to come.  And what the  
voters will care about in the future will not be slogans or ideology.  Once 
the program is passed, the voters  will care most about one thing:  
affordability. 
All of the health  insurance reform bills contain mandates that every 
American buy health insurance  or pay a fine.  All the bills allow  relief for 
hardship cases, but most people – or their companies -- will have to  buy 
health insurance.   
Members of Congress are  beginning to realize that if they are requiring 
the voters to buy insurance,  it has to be affordable.  The public option is 
an extremely powerful  tool to assure affordability.   
First, its presence in the market place  will drive down the prices of 
premiums for private insurance.  That, of course, is why the private  insurance 
companies hate it.  Insurance companies aren’t seriously worried they will 
be forced out of  business.  They just don’t want to  cut their prices and 
profits. 
Second, the  Congressional Budget Office has found that it will save the 
Government huge  amounts in subsidy monies that it would otherwise have to pay 
to make more  expensive for-profit plans affordable.  The most  robust 
version of the public option saves over $100 billion over ten  years. 
If you don’t have a  public option, Congress’ only choice is either to cut 
subsidies that are the  major means of providing affordability -- or they 
must raise more revenues.  Given the massive need for  affordability, and 
reluctance of many to raise taxes, the public option is  looking better and 
better to many swing  Democrats. 
3) Finally, they have begun to realize that the public option helps  
protect them from potential political harm when they vote to support a health  
insurance mandate. Anzeloni and Liszt make  clear in their polling report that 
in swing districts: “It's wrong to think about the public option  in 
isolation from other elements of reform. Forcing an individual mandate  without a 
public option is a clear political loser (34% Favor / 60% Oppose), and  only 
becomes more palatable when a public option is offered in competition with  
the private sector (50% Favor / 46%  Oppose)” 
Turns out that a  public option provides a political inoculation against 
backlash to a  mandate.  That’s because people have  no stomach for being 
herded into the arms of private insurance industry like  sheep to the slaughter. 
 They want  to know that if the government is going to require them to get 
health insurance,  that it also provides the choice of a not-for-profit 
public plan – that they are  not left at the mercy of private insurance  CEO’s. 
Here’s the bottom  line: the odds are better by the day that before the 
holidays President Obama  will sign a health insurance reform bill that for the 
first time provides  Americans universal health insurance coverage – and 
includes the  choice of a robust public option. 
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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