Sen. Jay Rockefeller explains why the “Baucus Caucus” Kent Conrad Co-Op option will not work

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Senate Finance Committee chairman Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), in pursuit of the ever elusive "bipartisanship" (like the mythical city of El Dorado), has effectively turned over his committee to his ranking minority member Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA). Mad Max apparently doesn't believe that elections have consequences or understand that Democrats now run the Senate, not Republicans. You don't have to kiss their asses anymore, Mad Max. It's time to play Thunderdome.

The bipartisan "gang of six" aka the "Baucus Caucus" last week rejected the public option in the Senate Finance Committee bill in favor of a medical co-op option being touted by Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND). (Is anyone else bothered by the fact that all of these guys represent more cattle than people?)

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) has been a long-time advocate and ally of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) for national health care reform. Sen. Rockefeller was a guest on The Ed Show (MSNBC) last week and discussed the bill emerging from the Senate Finance Committee. Sen. Rockefeller explained why the Kent Conrad Co-Op option is a really bad idea and is "unacceptable."

Crooksandliars.com provides commentary and a transcript Jay Rockefeller explains the fallacy of Conrad's "co-ops" in President Baucus' health care bill: "It's unacceptable"

Jay Rockefeller was on [MSNBC] this morning with Andrea Mitchell and complained about the Kent Conrad "co-op" plan which he said was basically unworkable. He then went on The Ed Show and hit it even harder. Jay is a supporter of the public option and was pissed that the co-op proposal was inserted in the Baucus bill since it was never even talked about during the general election. Isn't it nice that Baucus has killed the public option just to work with Republicans? Conservatives don't even have to win elections to get what they want. That's some deal they have.

Ed: It's not going to work. There's really no successful model out there to support the basis of signing on to a co-op. Would you sign on to a co-op or is that unacceptable?

Rockefeller: That's unacceptable and I can almost prove it. We've been in touch with all the folks that oversee, represent all the co-ops in the country on all subjects and they point out that there are probably less than twenty health co-ops in the country. There are only two that really work that well. One in Puget Sound, one in Minnesota, except for those two, they are all unlicensed. All present health co-ops are all unlicensed, they're unregulated. Nobody knows anything about them, nobody has any control over them and nobody has ever said, which is stunning to me, no government organization or private organization has ever done a study to what effect they might have in terms of bringing down the insurance prices.

They are untested, they are unlicensed, they are unregulated, they are unstudied. Why would we even think about putting them in as a control on this massive insurance industry instead of the public option?

There aren't any co-ops throughout much of the country, but to appease the conservative Dems we're supposed to throw six billion dollars around and hope that the states will try to make them workable. Is this insane? Watch the whole clip, but you get the idea from this one statement. Kent Conrad's big proposal is a complete sham, but President Baucus is trying to cram that down the throats of the country, which will render all health care reform useless. All hail bipartisanship!

The Frank Luntz GOP talking point to scare the public about the Obama administration's health care reform is to describe it as a "dangerous and costy experiment." It appears this framing accurately describes the Baucus Caucus bipartisan (GOP drafted) bill emerging from the Senate Finance Committee. Nobody does projection better than Republicans.