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August 23, 2009 06:56 PM UTC

Denver Post: Public option is critical to reform

  • 21 Comments
  • by: ThillyWabbit

The Denver Post editorial board came down hard today on the side of the public option, and blamed the loss of it on the futile attempt at bipartisanship.

It is possible, as President Obama said during last week’s visit to Grand Junction, to revise the nation’s health care system without having a public insurance option.

But without strong competition for the health insurance giants that dominate the landscape, it just won’t be complete reform.

The Obama administration and congressional Democrats need to push forward with their plan to pass a public option as part of a comprehensive health care overhaul when they return to Washington next month. We don’t see how it works without one.

It is the best way to slow escalating health care costs and expand access to quality care. The country, ultimately, will lose if the public option vanishes because of Democratic efforts to make health care reform a bipartisan effort.

Seven of nine members of Colorado’s congressional delegation support a public option. Colorado’s governor supports a public option. The same Denver Post that endorsed Bush and printed a front-page editorial against the labor movement supports the public option.

I don’t care what the Senate has to do, they just need to get it done. Buy off Ben Nelson and Friends with some pork if you have to. Just get it done.

Comments

21 thoughts on “Denver Post: Public option is critical to reform

  1. It’s a clear argument for why the choice of a public health insurance option is essential to health insurance reform:

    Without major reform, the status quo will help bankrupt the country and the private businesses that no longer will be able to afford to offer health care insurance because of the spiraling costs.

    The status quo will also damage individual families who won’t be able to afford their sky rocketing premiums, as the Commonwealth Fund found the following:

    Health insurance is already becoming unaffordable for families and businesses, with premium inflation outpacing wage increases. Between 1999 and 2008, employer family health insurance premiums rose by 119 percent, while the median family income rose by less than 30 percent. As a result, average family premiums for group policies have risen from 11 percent to 18 percent of median family income. And if Congress fails to pass health reforms that control health care costs, premiums are projected to rise to 24 percent of a family’s income by 2020

    And the best way to control health care costs are as the Post so astutely concluded is to insert real competition into the insurance monopoly:

    We think it will give the insurance industry every incentive to innovate and find efficiencies, best treatment practices and ways to make their rates more attractive to businesses and policy holders.

    In Colorado, health insurance reform with the choice of a public health insurance option is supported by Representatives DeGette, Perlmutter, Polis and Salazar (not quite sure about Markey yet) as well as both Senators Udall and Bennet.

    Let’s get this done for the good of America.  

    1. I know for a fact that my premium is already equal to about 20% of my gross salary when you add both my portion and my employer’s portion. Small businesses employ an ever-increasing percentage of the working population, and that always spikes during an economic recovery, so it’s just going to be compounded. Given that our premium goes up by about 15-25% per year (and our salaries sure don’t), it will be 25% way sooner than 2020. Probably more like 2012.

      And that’s just for one person. Our employees with families get more of the employer benefit, so they’re all likely at 25% already.

      Re: Markey, I could be wrong, but I believe she’s leaving the door open as long as it’s deficit neutral and doesn’t compound the already strained rural healthcare system. Not far off from Salazar’s stated position, IIRC.

      What Salazar, Markey, and others who focus on cost need to get is that the public option is designed to reduce costs in the long term, and it’s far from the most expensive part of the reform proposals. Subsidies and tax exemptions are a much bigger portion of the cost, and even the Republicans support subsidies and tax exemptions (or so they say anyway). They just want it to be a big giveaway to insurance companies just as Medicare Part D is to drug companies–i.e. no competition. Presumably so they can come back at a future election and point to how out of control it all is while ignoring it was their idea and counting on the press to do the same–just as they have done with Medicare Part D.

      1. If it keeps going like this even high tech companies are going to have to cut back on what they cover.

        And what happens when we hit 50% of people’s income? At present the system is designed to funnel all profits from other companies into the insurance companies.

    2. need for a public option and, finally, some coverage of the fact that we already have bureaucrats rationing and making our health care decisions in the private insurance sector.

      Do people really think private health insurers are covering anything for anyone right now? Of course not.  Rationing of some kind is a fact of life in any plan and the one we have now rations so severely you can’t even get coverage with many conditions.  

      Nice to finally see some of that in print. But I didn’t expect anything like a strong Post endorsement of a public option as a necessary part of the solution.  Even though that’s obviously the case. Wonder what other regions’ papers are saying.  Are we turning some kind of corner?  

    3. that the Public Option is one part of the bill she supports since it is deficit neutral (through the payment of premiums).  She is worried about the taxes and fees associated with other parts of the bill.

  2. I think it’s good that the Denver Post is making sense.  Perhaps they are realizing like most are realizing that if we don’t fix the middleclass there will be no recovery. Nah! It’s just a fluke.

      1. They and many companies want to layoff their healthcare costs like Bennet laid off varios DPS costs to PERA.

        Again, I’d like to see this public option b/c I’d jump right in.  Sure it might not be as good, but I wouldn’t have to pay that damn monthly fee anymore.  That would be a couple of hundred bucks extra for me … all on your backs!

        1. People who choose the public option get to pay premiums too. You’re so dense you can’t even look up basic bits of information to come up with your moronic rants.

          You resemble a lot of these knuckleheads doing heil Hitler salutes at town halls. They have no idea who Hitler was, let alone how moronic they look.

          But why spend any effort at all learning anything when being an idiot is just so much easier?

  3. but someone should hold Senator Max Baucus accountable to this recent statement supporting the choice of a public health insurance option:

    U.S. Senator Max Baucus has finally broken his silence regarding his personal position on including a public option in health care reform legislation. Last Monday night (8/17), in an unprecedented conference call to Montana Democratic central committee chairs, the powerful leader of the Senate Finance Committee told his strongest supporters that he supported a public option.

    While discussing the obstacles to getting a public option through the Senate, he assured his forty listeners, “I want a public option too!”

    Well Senator, pass your bill out of committee with the choice of a public health insurance option included. Several other committees have already accomplished that much without validating an old coots conspiracy theories.

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