The Public Option or Bust

Just this one time, I want to share my personal health insurance story below with you so you know why I'm adamant about real health reform *including* a Public Option choice as part of it. This message is entirely written by me.

I know we must have a Public Option - a CHOICE whether to buy into a government sponsored health insurance plan to keep big insurance corporations honest about competition, price, and access. Universal coverage is the most sound system, like other industrialized nations in some form, but a Public Option as the compromise is a good one.

Because I work in a small business, I am under-insured. I only have catastrophic coverage because I can only get an individual policy. My insurance doesn't even cover prescriptions, and if I wanted to switch to a different individual policy, even with the same company (Aetna), I would have to go through brand new underwriting, which would cause more pre-existing exemptions at this point for example. And while my premiums have raised several times since I've had this policy, I've had this policy since I was 27 or so, and so I can't give up this policy without a significant rise in expense that would come with brand new underwriting on a new policy.

I spend over 10% of my gross income every year on my own health insurance. That's true. When I had large corporate employers, I paid a fraction of that for gold-plated "Cadillac coverage" because large corporations can get and afford large group policies. Not so for small business, generally fewer than 50 employees.

It's not fair that I'm out providing jobs on the ground, but I can't offer health insurance with those jobs, and I also have to personally pay a "private profit tax" for the giant medical companies with my higher expenses on a lousy individual policy - just because I'm a small business owner. Why can't I join some other large insurance pool to get quality coverage? I can't. I've tried - with this much expense at stake, I've tried. It doesn't exist and anyone who tells you it does - is lying or misinformed.

Please help me help those who are holding the President's feet to the fire right now, in any way you can, even if you can just speak the truth to those who will listen.

The White House is still drafting the president's Wednesday speech, and he needs to advocate strongly for the Public Option. The public wants it, every poll shows it (once it's explained in basic terms)! The giant insurance companies -- seeing a potential windfall from mandatory coverage and only private companies offering it -- are the ones against it.

Wanted to share my personal true story with you. I contributed $20 to Act Blue's fund on this issue from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

I stlll just wanted to share my story and give a little "real world" context to what's showing on the ol' boob tube.

Where is the new center of gravity? With progressives, Mr. President.

Senate Finance Chair, already gutting reform in a "bipartisan" effort, gets stabbed in the back by his partison collaborators. Surprise?

And now Chairman Baucus may be forced out of his chairmanship. The progressives are finding their roar.

In an apparent warning to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), some liberal Democrats have suggested a secret-ballot vote every two years on whether or not to strip committee chairmen of their gavels.

Baucus, who is more conservative than most of the Democratic Conference, has frustrated many of his liberal colleagues by negotiating for weeks with Republicans over healthcare reform without producing a bill or even much detail about the policies he is considering.

Although I love the President's Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel's tenacity and pugnaciousness, he's flat wrong about what's driving Democratic majorities, and he appears to be stuck in the years that made him, the Clinton years when the right scared the pants off all of them and they tucked tails and ran away from HCR, condemning Americans to another 16-20 years of a failed and predatory health care system that is a joke to all other western developed nations. A joke. A farce. A true American tragedy for millions.

I have to think as competitive as Barack Obama is, he knows the score and what has to happen.

Let's see you get serious, Mr. President. Let's see a staff shake-up over this.

Leak to the press, Mr. President, that so-called compromise bent too far, and your home team will now get this into the end zone. Tell them that Republicans stuck a dagger in the back of the SFC chairman and you gave them a chance, like with the stimulus bill, to come to the table, and a few did - but only to poison the effort.

Lay out the final plan Mr. President. Give the Progressive Caucus the final plan, and tell them to drive it home and to your desk.

That will set up the next 3 years for getting your agenda done. And when good-faith moderate Republicans want to come to the table to contribute and not poison, they can always be welcome.

But there are no good-faith players in the Republican party right now, and until they get their shit together, there is no reason to be dealing with them.

Tell the Republicans, Mr. President, to get their shit together before you bring them back to any table.

Enjoy your beer this afternoon. Please use it to talk about the stimulus (municipal jobs) and health care reform.
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Texas: Molly Ivins, Ann Richards, Walter Cronkite, Bill Moyers, Barbara Jordan, Lloyd Bentsen, Jim Hightower, Dan Rather, Ron Paul, Willie Nelson, LBJ

The President Needs Republicans? No. He Needs Me.

The DC media are saying that Obama needs to win over "moderates" on health care reform, the so-called "Blue Dogs" and so-called "moderate" Republicans (an oxymoron these days if there ever was one).

Really? Because I think Obama needs to win over ME. Because I'm the guy that made monthly and sometimes weekly contributions to the Obama campaign 2007-2008. I campaigned hard in 2006 and 2008 for candidates who promised long-needed reform. FDR first proposed health care reform in 1932 but backed away when he heard cries of "socialism!" (Socialism! Like Canada! Be very very afraid! Like England! Run! Run for your life!) Yes, the same tired old canard we heard in 1993 that made the Clintons turn tail and run.

No more. I'm standing up. I demand real reform, and I'm the one the president has to win over to keep his job and secure a lasting legacy. I'm the one, and the millions like me. I'm the small business owner creating jobs but can't provide health care to my employees, and I won't hire anyone who doesn't have health care from some place. The result? I can hire married people with spouses who have benefits, I can hire retired people, I can hire young healthy men who can afford individual policies. Everyone else probably cannot *afford* to work for me. Tell me in what country in the world is that fair? Is that a democratic employment market? Is that a free market for employment? No.

The Public Option is already a compromise. That IS the compromise. Most every thinking person that looks at both cost and coverage elements of a solid health care system knows that single payer is the only grand design of a sound solution.

But we are not unreasonable people. We will compromise. Even with The White House, The House, and The Senate, even with 60 Democratic votes in the Senate and an enormous majority in The House, even coming off two wildly successful national elections on which winning candidates campaigned on successful health care reform... EVEN WITH ALL THAT, we will still compromise.

That compromise is the Public Option. We won't even compromise the name at this point. It's done. The compromise is there.

If the Public Option can't get done, then we expect our work winning elections for Democrats for the last four years will bring real reform with something *better* not weaker.

Waterloo indeed. And in this fog, I'm looking around wondering who's really on my side in the end and who's on the other - because some of my opponents appear to be wearing my uniform, and I'm not okay with that.