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10/29/09

The Public Option: Yeah, Right

From Rep. George Miller:
The key components of the Affordable health Care for America Act include:

Increasing choice and competition. The bill will protect and improve consumers’ choices.
  • If people like their current plans, they will be able to keep them.
  • For individuals who aren’t currently covered by their employer, , and some small businesses, the proposal will establish a new Health Insurance Exchange where consumers can comparison shop from a menu of affordable, quality health care options that will include private plans, health co-ops, and a new public health insurance option. The public health insurance option will play on a level playing field with private insurers, spurring additional competition.
  • This Exchange will create competition based on quality and price that leads to better coverage and care. Patients and doctors will have control over decisions about their health care, instead of insurance companies.
So only the currently uninsured, or if your employer decides to enter the "exchange", employees, will be able to enter the public option. This is not a public option. This will not reduce costs. Our congress has decided it is more important for insurance companies to be guaranteed huge profits than it is to insure that Americans can get health care even if that means some folks won't be able to earn millions of dollars a year in salaries and bonuses.

Health care should not be a for-profit enterprise.  Like fire suppression and crime suppression, illness suppression should be non-profit.

We should reject it. Completely. We need single payer. The corporate oligarchs will not help us. They need to be forced. Take Lieberman's chairmanship away, to start.