rssWhite House Open to Co-ops in Lieu of Public Option
Friday, August 07, 2009 at 12:20 pm
- 8 Comments
It’s no news that the Obama administration has pushed hard for the creation of a public-plan option to accompany whatever health care reform overhaul the Democrats come up with this year. But Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, has just softened that stand.
In an interview with Bloomberg Television airing Friday, DeParle indicates that the White House “would be interested in” an alternative proposal that would create health cooperatives in lieu of the public option — as long as the co-op model is shown to inject additional competition into the insurance market.
Obama has said in the past that he won’t hinge his support for the larger health reform bill on the inclusion of the public option, but DeParle’s openness to the co-op strategy is the most specific indication that the administration won’t insist on a government-backed plan.
Her words appear to align the White House roughly with the sentiments of House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who told reporters last week that he’d also be receptive to the creation of co-ops.
“After all,” Hoyer said, “a co-op will be a competitor.”
But that’s bad news for many liberal lawmakers and patient advocates, who argue that the public option is the only way to create a nationwide patient pool large enough to compete with the giants in the private insurance industry, thereby keeping them honest with respect to cost and coverage.
Writing for The New Republic in June, Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker argued that there are three unique advantages to the public option approach: It would (1) be a backup when patients had no other affordable coverage options (for example, when employers don’t offer coverage); It would (2) provide a benchmark to make sure private insurers offer comprehensive coverage; and it would (3) create a backstop preventing doctor and hospital costs from creeping up, as often happens in areas where health care providers consolidate their operations. The co-op approach — being championed by Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) — wouldn’t accomplish all of these goals, Hacker wrote.
Cooperatives might be able to provide some backup in some parts of the nation, but they are not going to have the ability to be a cost-control backstop, much less a benchmark for private plans, because they are not going to have the reach or authority to implement innovative delivery and payment reforms. And so Conrad’s idea appears to be yet another compromised compromise that cuts the heart out the idea of public plan choice on the alter of political expediency.
It might not matter. Conrad, one of six Finance Committee members in contentious negotiations over how to structure that panel’s overhaul blueprint, told The Washington Post this week that, considering the conservatives’ opposition to the public plan, the inclusion of that option would sink the bill in the Senate, where 60 votes are required to pass almost anything these days.
“The hard reality is . . . that a public option does not have enough support in the Senate to pass,” Conrad said.
He doesn’t mention if he would be among the “no” votes.
8 Comments
Comment posted August 7, 2009 @ 6:40 pm
Why do the Dems want to enrich insruance companies?
I'm not in favor of the 'public option' but the public v private is only a small part of the problem with this plan. If there is a preexisting condition issue, address it alone. Medicaid covers the poor, to the extent it doesn't, it is because doctors won't accept it, which won't get better if we are all essentially on it. Children are covered if their parents make up to $80,000. Seniors paid for medicare all their working lives and planned on it and now are told it will be cut, though insolvent, to pay for 2/3 of costs to cover 16 million more people including those with expensive preexisting conditions. Government wants to force us to buy plans we don't want to choose and will make us lose the type of plans we do choose when our current plan expires, or our employer loses it, because no new enrollment in grandfathered plans will be allowed. And where does government get the right to do that?
Making the plan 'co op' v. 'public' might make the insurance companies happy but doesn't even begin to address the problems the people have with it. That is the problem you get when special interests have seats at the table in creating the plan, and unhappy constituents are demonized as 'astroturf' when they try to stop having something ENTIRELY unwanted shoved down their throats.
Isn't our government supposed to be working for US?
Pingback posted August 8, 2009 @ 8:10 am
[...] subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.Powered by WP Greet BoxThe option that has been touted by Senator Kent Conrad all along.  But as I’ve pointed out before, the [...]
Pingback posted August 11, 2009 @ 2:30 pm
[...] to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.Powered by WP Greet BoxThe option that has been touted by Senator Kent Conrad all along. But as I’ve pointed out before, the “co-ops” [...]
Pingback posted August 11, 2009 @ 2:30 pm
[...] to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.Powered by WP Greet BoxThe option that has been touted by Senator Kent Conrad all along. But as I’ve pointed out before, the “co-ops” [...]
Pingback posted August 11, 2009 @ 2:31 pm
[...] subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.Powered by WP Greet BoxThe option that has been touted by Senator Kent Conrad all along. But as I’ve pointed out before, the “co-ops” option is [...]
Pingback posted August 11, 2009 @ 2:31 pm
[...] to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.Powered by WP Greet BoxThe option that has been touted by Senator Kent Conrad all along. But as I’ve pointed out before, the “co-ops” option is [...]
Comment posted August 16, 2009 @ 3:52 am
Republican Credo: Fear,Hate,Dread,Doom & Gloom.
The So Called [Republicans]
Actually Dixie Crats
In 8 Years as President, Did Reagan get Rid of Government Run, Single Payer Health Care called…
[Medi-Care]
Ans: No
Did Republican Presidents, Richard Nixon 7 Years, Gerald Ford, 1Yr. Or George H.W.Bush 4 Years Or his son, George W.Bush Jr. 8 Years, Get Rid of Medi-Care, Medi-Caid, Indian Health Services, VA:Hospitals, CHIP: Covering Poor American Children…
Ans: No
Did they get Rid of the IRS [No]
Or the Federal Reserve [No]
Did they start the Flat Tax [No]
What do you know, Majority of the USA has been Under Control of Republicans, the Presidency, Congress and Senate and what have they Accomplished ?
Not a Thing
Bush Extended Medi-Care [Fact]
Medi-Care:A Government Run Single Payer Plan and Rural Republicans Think,Medi-Care & Medi-Caid are Not Government Controlled [Jeesh]
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