President Obama's public health insurance option—the key to lowering costs and helping cover everyone—is in danger. The threat? The so-called co-op plan.
If you have no idea what that means, don't worry. This stuff is confusing and changing quickly. So here are three great articles laying out the case FOR the public health insurance option, and AGAINST the co-op plan.
"Health Care Showdown," by Paul Krugman, Nobel prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist:
"For the record, neither regional health cooperatives nor state-level public plans, both of which have been proposed as alternatives
, would have the financial stability and bargaining power needed to bring down health care costs."
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51535&id=16456-8587521-sMtPrNx&t=4
"Un-Cooperative: The Trouble with Conrad's Compromise," by Jacob Hacker, author of Health Care for America and U.C. Berkeley political scientist:
"...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."
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51537&id=16456-8587521-sMtPrNx&t=5
"Why We Need a Public Health-Care Plan," by Robert B. Reich, former secretary of labor and professor at the University of California:
"...cooperatives would lack the scale and authority to negotiate lower rates with drug companies and other providers, collect wide data on outcomes, or effect major change in the system."
Experts agree: the co-op doesn't cut it. But some senators are in danger of bargaining away our best chance at health care reform in a decade.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124580516633344953.html
Thanks for all you do.
–Patrick S., Kat, Peter, Ilya and the rest of the team