By Mark Dunlea, Executive Director, Hunger Action Network of NYS; co-chair,
http://singlepayernewyork.org/">Single Payer New York.
As the various public option proposals in Congress for national health care reform become weaker every day, there is still time for its proponents to support what they really believe in: a single payer, Medicare for all type program.
The architects of creating a “public option” as part of the push for national universal health care have always admitted that a single payer Medicare for All type programs was the best solution for America. It does the best job in controlling costs by eliminating the waste and bureaucracy of private health insurance while guaranteeing that every American would receive quality health care and have freedom of choice in selecting whom to receive health care services from.
The public option advocates – well-funded public interest groups and unions used to insider political wheeling and dealing – argued that the lesson from the 1993 defeat of the Clinton plan was that insurance companies were too powerful to defeat. Thus they had to abandon the best solution, single payer, to instead craft a proposal that would have a chance of passage by ensuring a continued large role for the present for-profit health insurance industry.
Their solution was to create an “800 pound gorilla” in the form of a public health insurance system that would provide quality and affordable health care coverage to more than one hundred million Americans. It would be large enough to operate efficiently and achieve cost savings. They argued that by setting up a fair fight between a public option and the private for-profit health insurance companies, over time the advantages of the public option – no profit margins, reduced paperwork and administrative costs, less marketing costs – would become clear. The public option would grow stronger, and under the best case scenario, either we would move to a single payer system or private for-profit health insurance would become a boutique industry serving the rich.
Before either House of Congress has adopted a specific plan, the public option 800 pound gorilla has turned into a five pound Chihuahua. And with four months or more of intense negotiations to take place among the nation’s power players before a final deal is reached, the public option will only get weaker.
More:
http://cthealth.server101.com/time_to_come_home_to_single_payer.htm--- ---- ---
http://cthealth.server101.com/bait_and_switch.htm">Bait and switch: How the “public option” was sold
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