Time to Take Action on The Public Option

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Blogger mcjoan at Daily Kos is a daily must read for the latest on the health care bills moving through Congress. I will reproduce her recent post followed by additional commentary. Public Option Action:

The Senate Finance Committee will take up the Rockefeller and Schumer amendments which were supposed to have been debated today, on Tuesday. The reasons for the delay are unclear, but it gives us a few more days to impress upon those Democratic Senators who haven't been as helpful on creating real, comprehensive reform. As of now, we know of three public option amendments that will be offered. The first is from Rockefeller, and it fairly closely follows the public option House version, which is stronger than the Senate HELP version. The other two are from Schumer, one that would add the same language as is in the HELP bill, and one that would create a "level playing field" option, the weakest of the three amendments.

Make no mistake, the public option in this committee is facing an uphill climb. But it's not impossible. The second Schumer amendment is likely the only one that has much of a chance of making it out of committee. If it should, and if all three of these amendments get at least majority support among committee members, the chances of the public option making it into the final bill out of the Senate are significantly increased. So an action effort on this is worth our while.

Jane has been in touch with Hill sources, and reports on the usual suspects of Dems on the committee.

1. Max Baucus — has said he supports a public plan, despite the fact that his bill doesn't contain one.

2. Bill Nelson — acknowledges that a public option would address lack of competition in the health care industry, but said he was against it, then he was "open" to it, and most recently says it must be subject to triggers. Bill Nelson — says emerging public option is "attractive."
3. Kent Conrad — Has always said that "there aren't enough votes for a public option," but wouldn't say if he was one of them.  Told Ezra Klein today he would only be open to one that wasn't tied to Medicare rates — which Schumer's "level playing field" isn't.
4. Blanche Lincoln — said in July that a public insurance option should be included in any health care bill, but since then has changed her position like some people change their hair color.
5. Tom Carper — thinks the job of the Senate Finance Committee is to honor back room deals with PhRMA.  Won't say how he feels about a public option.

There are 13 Democrats and 10 Republicans on the committee, which means they can only lose two Democratic votes and still pass the amendment.   So, in order for a public plan to come out of Finance, three of these are going to have to get off the fence.

Contacting these, and all of the Dem members of the committee would be worth our while. It would help to remind them of a few factors:

• The CBO scoring of the House bill shows an additional $85 billion in savings over the Blue Dog version: the public option will save money and bend that cost curve.
• The  public option remains popular with majorities of Americans.
• The public option is popular with swing state voters.
• In national polling, voters oppose a mandate to purchase private insurance by 64% to 34% but support a mandate with a choice of private or public insurance by 60% to 37%.

Contact info for all of them is below. The focus should be on those five Jane identified: Baucus, Nelson, Conrad, Lincoln, and Carper. But if you live in any of the states represented by the Senators below, calls to them certainly won't hurt, as well as "thank you" calls to Rockefeller and Schumer, in particular, for their efforts.

• ::

Max Baucus MT (Committee Chair)
e-mail
Phone: (202) 224-2651
Fax: (202) 224-9412  

John Rockefeller WV  
e-mail
Phone (202) 224-6472
Fax (202) 224-7665  

Kent Conrad ND
e-mail
Phone: (202) 224-2043
Fax: (202) 224-7776

Jeff Bingman NM
e-mail
Phone: (202) 224-5521
TDD (202) 224-1792
Toll Free (in NM) 1800-433-8658

John Kerry MA
e-mail
Phone (202) 224-2742  
Fax (202) 224-8525  

Blanche Lincoln AR
e-mail
Phone: (202) 224-4843
Fax: (202) 228-1371

Ron Wyden OR
e-mail
Phone: (202) 224-5244
Fax: (202) 228-2717  

Charles Shumer NY
e-mail
Phone:(202)224-6542
Fax: (202) 228-3027
TDD: (202) 224-0420

Debbie Stabenow MI
e-mail
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: (202) 224-4822
TTY: (202) 224-2066

Maria Cantwell WA
e-mail
Phone: 202-224-3441  
Fax: (202) 228-0514  
TTD: (202) 224-8273

Bill Nelson FL
e-mail
Phone: (202) 224-5274
Fax: (202) 228-2183

Robert Mendez NJ
e-mail
Washington, D.C. 20510
Phone: (202) 224-4744
Fax: (202) 228-2197 fax

Thomas Carper DE
e-mail
Phone: (202) 224-2441
Fax: (202) 228-2190

For weeks now, the media villagers and Beltway bloviators have been advancing the pro-corporate narrative that the public option is dead — because they say so (pharmaceutical and insurance company dollars spent on advertising at their networks had absolutely no influence on producing this narrative, nosiree. If you believe that I have some ocean-front property in Arizona I'd like to sell you.)

The conventional wisdom (CW) of these Washington "bubble" prognosticators who only talk to politicians, lobbyists and to one another, usually at the same cocktail parties or functions (because what does the unwashed mass of citizens know, really? It is their job to know what's best for us) is often and spectacularly wrong. (How many times did they confidently predict that Hillary Clinton would be the next president of the United States in 2008?)

Yet they all managed to keep their jobs (some even got promotions to jobs they did not deserve, David Gregory and Chuck Todd, you know who I mean) and have fallen back into their comfortable pattern of repeating the same "bubble" CW they always do, despite their mea culpas and promises to do better. When you can earn six and seven figures annually on easy street by doing the same thing day in and day out, there is no incentive to change anything. The lack of any accountability within the news media is far worse than in politics — at least we can vote those idiots off the island every two to four years. But the public has no say over who gets to report the news.

I digress into this diatribe against the news media only because of the corporate sponsored narrative of misinformation perpetrated against the American public by the corrupt "Fourth Estate" with respect to the public option over the summer.

The poll cited above is the CBS/New York Times poll (note the decidedly negative tone of the Times headline and the reporting by Adam Nagourney despite the poll results – "we're not changing our corporate approved narrative damnit!") Public Wary of Obama on War and Health Care, Poll Finds (key highlights):

At 56 percent, Mr. Obama’s job approval rating is similar to what President Ronald Reagan's was at this point in his first term (53 percent); President Bill Clinton's was at 43 percent.

Just 30 percent said they had a favorable view of Republicans in Congress. By contrast, 47 percent said they had a favorable view of Congressional Democrats.

By a margin of 52 percent to 27 percent, Americans said Mr. Obama has better ideas about overhauling health care than Republicans. And the percentage of Americans who approve of how Mr. Obama has handled health care has gone from 40 percent in August to 47 percent, about equal to where it was earlier in the summer.

On one of the most contentious issues in the health care debate — whether to establish a government-run health insurance plan as an alternative to private insurers — nearly two-thirds of the country continues to favor the proposal, which is backed by Mr. Obama but has drawn intense fire from most Republicans and some moderate Democrats.

[The top-line result is 65% in favor, 26% opposed. Among Democrats only, it's 81%-12%, and independents are at 61%-30%. And among Republican respondents, 47% are in favor, to 42% opposed.]

[T]he poll suggests that Mr. Obama is in a decidedly more commanding position than Republicans on this issue as Congressional negotiations move into final stages. Most Americans trust Mr. Obama more than Republicans to make the right decisions on the issue; 76 percent said Republicans had not even laid out a clear health care plan.

When you get down into the weeds of the New York Times/CBS News Poll, you also find that 51 percent of respondents believe that fundamental changes are needed to the health care system and an additional 27 percent say we need to completely rebuild it. This means that 78 percent of Americans reject the Republican position that the status quo is just fine by them and we do not need health care reforms.

By 51 to 40 percent respondents said that government should guarantee health care for all, and by 59 to 35 percent respondents said that covering the uninsured was more important than keeping costs down.

Mr. Nagourney is spending too much time in the "bubble" with the "nattering nabobs of negativity" as William Safire once described it. These poll numbers are solid!

What the poll numbers demonstrate is that when Republicans claim (falsely) that their constituents back home are happy with the status quo and are opposed to health care reforms, and the public option in particular, they are quite simply lying. They are substituting the shrill and boorish behavior of corporate sponsored Astroturf protesters at town halls for their actual constituents. (Too bad they can't vote for you).

The same goes for the Blue Dog conservative (not "centrist") Democrats. Health Care for America Now (HCAN) sponsored a poll that found the public option is popular in swing districts. Group Commissions Poll To Prove To Blue Dogs Public Option Is Popular Among Their Constituents | The Plum Line:

Health Care for America Now, the major umbrella pro-reform group, has commissioned a big new poll of 91 conservative House swing districts — including many Blue Dog and rural ones — that finds the public option has solid majority support among those voters.

The poll and its accompanying memo— which is being circulated among House Dems and was sent over by a source — also send a strong warning to conservative Dems that if health care fails, the resulting damage to the President will rebound on them.

The poll, by respected Dem pollster John Anzalone, finds that 54% of these swing district voters support the public option, and makes the case that these voters emphatically don’t want a “trigger,” the compromise of choice in some quarters:

The public option shouldn’t be considered in isolation. Including a public option is essential to implementing an individual mandate. Voters also already prefer the implementation of a public option, and do not see a need for a trigger. There’s over-whelming opposition to an individual mandate when the only choices are private insurance, but there’s net support for a mandate when people have the choice of a public option. And swing district voters are convinced private sector health care has failed to make health care affordable, and prefer the public option now rather than waiting on a trigger option.

It also says that failure to get reform done will be courting disaster, and could rebound specifically on swing-district Dems as it did in 1994:

Swing District Dems will rise and fall with Obama. A failure on health care will likely hurt Obama’s approval ratings and in turn hurt Democrats in 2010, with swing district Democrats particularly susceptible given the competitiveness of their districts. Members need only revisit 1994 to gauge the electoral ramifications (52 lost seats) for the govern-ing party when the President pushes aggressively for health care reform but comes up short.

Are you paying attention Gabby, Harry and Anne? I would if I were you.

And after a summer of conflicting CBO reports on incomplete competing health care plans, the CBO has finally come out with an estimate for the the public option, and it saves money! But will anyone in the feckless pro-corporate news media report it? CongressDaily – CBO Estimates Show Public Plan With Higher Savings Rate:

In a bid to wrangle concessions from the Blue Dog Coalition on health care reform, House leaders Thursday released CBO estimates for liberals' preferred version of the public option that show $85 billion more in savings than for the version the Blue Dogs prefer. 

Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, D-S.D., a Blue Dog co-chair, said any possible new momentum toward a public option tethered to Medicare rates is, in part, "because of the cost issue" and the updated CBO score.

* * *

In total, a public plan based on Medicare rates would save $110 billion over 10 years. That is $20 billion more than earlier estimates, a spokesman for House Speaker Pelosi said.

The numbers are based on oral communications between CBO staff and Pelosi's office, a Pelosi spokesman said. They do not represent an official CBO estimate.

Rep. Herseth Sandlin still raises concerns that the Medicare-tied public plan puts doctors and providers at a "competitive disadvantage." Since when are doctors guaranteed a rate of return and entitled to a guaranteed level of income? You're from South Dakota Rep. Herseth Sandlin. I suggest you visit the Custer Battleground National Monument to get a sense of historical reality. As Custer's Indian scouts said to him just before the Battle of Little Big Horn, "General, can you count?"

The 65 to 78 percent of Americans who want a public option far outnumber by the millions the doctors and medical care providers whose incomes the Blue Dogs are so concerned about preserving in perpetuity. (The majority of doctors in professional associations have endorsed the public option, so who are the Blue Dogs really protecting?) The American people only care about their cost of health care. The smart politician would listen to the people and give the people what they want.