Blue Oregon blog interview with Dean on health care option supporters working together.

[madfloridian]

Dean, Wyden, the public option, single payer and the kitchen sink.

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to interview the always interesting Governor (Dr, Chairman) Howard Dean, who visited Portland last Friday to pump health care reform and specifically the public option.

I asked the Governor about single-payer, and the heavy advocacy it's receiving at town halls and other places from Oregonians. Governor Dean noted that some single-payer advocates aren't interested in dialogue and disrupt events, which is counterproductive. But he said he believes that Obama made a crucial error at the outset of the conversation. "The Administration made a mistake by not bringing them (single-payer advocates) to the table. That's the best way to have real dialogue".

Dean also said that single-payer is pretty tough to differentiate from the public option. "Public option is like single payer. It gives consumers the choice. There's no such thing as a pure single-payer plan anywhere." Dean went on to say that there's absolutely no reason for a wedge between single payer advocates and those who support the public option. In fact, Dean said he believes that it's a recipe for disaster. "It's a mistake to drive that wedge. It's how reform has been killed in the past.", Dean said.

This united advocacy is crucial, Dean said, because without the public option, it's "fake reform".

Dean and I also talked about Senator Wyden's plan. The Governor said that he will not support a plan without a public option, no matter the plan. The choice should be made by the people which option they want, public or private.

There is more in the interview about Wyden's views.

And while the left fights with itself, there are people taking over the process. One of them is Zeke Emanuel, an Obama and Orszag advisor. They are quietly working on a VAT, a national sales tax to fund a plan with no public option at all.

Still, Orszag has hired a prominent VAT advocate to advise him on health care: Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and author of the 2008 book "Health Care, Guaranteed." Meanwhile, former Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker, chairman of a task force Obama assigned to study the tax system, has expressed at least tentative support for a VAT.

"Everybody who understands our long-term budget problems understands we're going to need a new source of revenue, and a VAT is an obvious candidate," said Leonard Burman, co-director of the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, who testified on Capitol Hill this month about his own VAT plan. "It's common to the rest of the world, and we don't have it."

And while we are dividing ourselves into two camps over this, the man who is being shunned by many of the single payer advocates continues to speak out.

Howard Dean said a public health insurance option is more important than bipartisanship, and that Democrats should pass health-care legislation that includes the option with 51 votes if necessary.

Dean added that Democrats should have "no intention" of working with Republicans if it's not the strongest possible legislation that could be passed with a simple majority.

"If Republicans want to shill for insurance companies, then we should do it with 51 votes," Dean said during a news conference at the first day of the liberal America's Future Now! conference here.

Dean warns against bipartisanship.

But the splitting apart continues.

[kenny blankenship]

1. Dean is right. What will justify & guarantee the survival of the public plan is if it *works well*

That is ALL that can assure its survival and the only thing you should be thinking of.
If on the other hand the plan is set up to fail, set up to be weak, it will be abandoned over time.

WRITE THIS DOWN: The Republicans will never agree to any version of a public plan that could work well - that is a plan that would achieve cost reductions through large pool size and the negotiating power that brings. If they sense a proposal on the table is a winner they will oppose it absolutely. They will fume and call you a Communist. They will sick their crowd of lone whackjobs on you. They will hint that this other plan, the one nobody thinks can work or can even explain how it came to be in the room, is more "American", and might meet with their approval. They will shit on anything that has been shown to work elsewhere in other countries. Not American.

They will carry on in this way because their overriding goal is for the whole project to fail in spectacular fashion so that no one brings up the subject again for 30 years. They know if this reform succeeds and a permanent role for government is created in providing health care they will not return to power for at least a generation.

Honestly I don't know why some people have such a hard time figuring this out. You're not going to get "85% of what you want" from the Republicans, not if what you want is a WORKING PLAN. You will die of old age first. You'd be lucky to get 50% from them, and something that works only 50% of the time ain't really working.

[madfloridian]

2. Right. The Republicans have no intention of supporting a reasonable plan

They simply want to say no.

:shrug:

[madfloridian]

3. He is also using his role as a CNBC commentator to speak out loudly.

From this morning...the exchange with Kernan (sp?) starts about 5 minutes in.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1150205278&play=1

[madfloridian]

4. Kick

[madfloridian]

5. There is one single payer website that is against Dean, Dems, and the public option.

http://www.singlepayeraction.org/blog/?p=975

I am getting together a post about it because they are attacking some very good Democrats, calling the Democratic party corrupt.

It does not say who wrote the article, but I do know some of the names who will fight against the public option to the end are not Democrats.

[quidam56]

6. Dr. Dean knows of what he speaks...

In East Tennessee and southwest Virginia, I have seen what is deemed, defended and supported as "the acceptable standards of health care" http://www.wisecountyissues.com/?p=62 Clearly PROFIT CARE is more important than PATIENT CARE in America. How many more will die thanks to the greed and mislead health care system we have now.

[Bluenorthwest]

7. The event in Portland was filled to capacity

And I did not get in. I tried but the interest was very high, and that is better to me than getting in, if that makes sense.

[John Q. Citizen]

8. I think Dean made a mistake in not standing up early on and demanding all sides be allowed in the

conversation.

Even Senator Baucus reportedly said back in May that he made a mistake by shutting out single payer advocates and by having them arrested when they wanted to testify in front of his committee.

It's nice that Baucus admitted after the fact he made a mistake, and it's nice that Dean admitted after the fact that Obama made a mistake, but the fact remains that millions of Americans were cut out of the discussion and nobody said a thing about it while it was happening.

Today (6/16/09) Health and Human Services Secretary Kathrine Sebelius in an interview on NPR said that the public option is being written so that it won't lead to a single payer system. This of course contradicts what Dean has been saying all along, that a public option is a stepping stone to single payer.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105442888#commentBlock

(snip) "This is not a trick. This is not single-payer," Sebelius told Steve Inskeep. She added: "That's not what anyone is talking about — mostly because the president feels strongly, as I do, that dismantling private health coverage for the 180 million Americans that have it, discouraging more employers from coming into the marketplace, is really the bad, you know, is a bad direction to go."
(snip)
Republicans have also raised the specter that a public option could evolve into a single-payer health care system where funding comes from one source — usually the government. The GOP says that such a system would lead to health care rationing and long delays in treatment.

Asked if the administration's program will be drafted specifically to prevent it from evolving into a single-payer plan, Sebelius says: "I think that's very much the case, and again, if you want anybody to convince people of that, talk to the single-payer proponents who are furious that the single-payer idea is not part of the discussion."

So who is right? Is Dean correct when he tells people that the public option is a stepping stone to single payer? When he says that it's "like single payer."

Or is the Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius correct that the bill will provide a "level playing field" (code for weak pubic option, listen to the interview) and won't lead to a single payer system?

[howmad1]

9. Maybe Howard Dean should run for Pres. as a third party candidate in 2012

Bet he'd have a damn good shot at it.

[depakid]

10. "It's a mistake to drive that wedge."

Yes, it is- but some DUer's are insistent on doing so.