The last compromise - Kill the mandate, pass the bill?

[grahamhgreen]

As a Medicare-for-All advocate, I am thinking I could live with the Senate bill if we simply got rid of the mandate.

If the other side balks, well, it's their turn to compromise now, we've compromised away any type of public plan.

If we dump the mandate, and pass the bill, then it seems like it's simply insurance reform.

Would this work?

[begin_within]

1. Dropping the mandate would certainly make it a bit more acceptable to me.

But it's still not Single Payer, public option or Medicare-for-all so it's still not what I want.

[Statistical]

2. Does it take 60 votes or 50 votes in Senate to pass the "compromise" version.

If it is 60 I don't see many changes. If it is 50 it is possible.

However I would rather see public option in and mandates (w/ subsidies in) then both out.

[grahamhgreen]

8. 60, from what I've researched

[tridim]

3. The Senate bill is designed as the seed for single payer.

Thanks to Bernie Sanders and Harry Reid.

Honestly I hope the merging process plants the seed instead of tossing it for a weak PO.

[Oregone]

6. It institutionalizes private insurance providers.

Seed for single-payer? What a joke. The entire bill is a direct rebuke of socialism.

[FLAprogressive]

20. he's been peddling a doozie about this bill being "Vermont style single payer"

if it were single payer, wouldn't the pro-single payer physicians endorse it?

[Oregone]

22. Link to that absurd quote

I gotta see this....

[FLAprogressive]

23. He agrees with a post that says this bill is "Vermont style single payer".....

...and that "Community Health Clinics" are better than a comprehensive public option!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7303316#7303516
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7303316#7303689

The entire thread is pretty misleading and dishonest....

[Sebastian Doyle]

13. You really believe Spineless Harry wants single payer?

If he actually did, now he has the opportunity. Strip out the mandates and all the other useless criminal rewarding garbage, replace it with Bernie's single payer bill (or Ted Kennedy's 2007 Medicare for all bill, since they're implying he would have endorsed this crapfest).

If Harry did that, I'd take back every mean thing I ever said about him.

[tridim]

15. Yes, I do.

The law is contained in HIS ammendment.

Have you read it?

[FLAprogressive]

19. You're still peddling that "VERMONT STYLE SINGLE PAYER" bullshit?

If it were Vermont style single payer....why is the PNHP against the bill?

[Hydra]

4. Ya, but they won't do it

This was the agreed upon bill coming out of those secret meetings.

All of the propaganda since this started was that the mandate was required. "Every other functional system in the world has that mandate" was the word.

This was after President Obama so eloquently explained why a forced buy in wouldn't work without a public option to keep the insurance companies honest(and weak).

They know all this will do is create the next bubble...but that's the plan. Get on and profit, or suffer.

[rateyes]

5. No. They must drop the tax on health benefits, too.

[grahamhgreen]

10. No mandate and no tax on HC plans, instead use the funding from a tax on the wealthy as in

the house bill, would this make it agreeable?

[rateyes]

31. No. They must also remove the anti-trust exemption from insurance companies, and

raise the medical loss ratio to 90%.

[grahamhgreen]

35. I heard an insurance expert explaining that the MLR was an easily gamed number

What they do is claim that allkinds of non medical expenses are deemed medical.

So the MLR argument, he was saying, is a scam.

And including the anti trust is also key.

[Oregone]

7. The mandate has been the only non-negotiable part of this bill from the get-go

No one has touched it. Most politicians have ignored it. It was hiding behind the shiny trinket of the public option for some time. Its not going away. The rest of the bill was suppose to offset the detrimental effects of the mandate.

[grahamhgreen]

9. In reality, it was MOSTLY about mandated private insurance from the get go. The mandate seems to

be a sacred cow.

This is exactly why I think this could be a negotiating position for progressives.

We give them two options:

1) Include a public option or expanded Medicare.

or

2) Kill the Mandate.


If neither of these is acceptable, then it is they who have killed the bill, then we could get rid of these boondoggles and expand Medicare in reconciliation.

[ipaint]

11. Giving up the mandate is the single stupidest thing in this bill.

It is the only negotiating tool we have to force the kind of changes needed to eventually usher in some form of universal care. Without it we lose now and in every attempt in the future.

The mandate = gobs of money for ins. companies. It should be ours to use to get the best possible reform and regulation and should never be handed over in an untested bill written by industry lobbtists representing companies who have massively failed as gatekeepers to heslth care.

It is stupid to think that anyone handing it over on a silver platter to ins. companies has the best interests of the american people at heart.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

[grahamhgreen]

12. You agree we should get rid of the mandate?

[ipaint]

25. Absolutely.

It'll never happen though.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7306998

[grahamhgreen]

29. Then they give us a public option or we kill the bill.

[MadMaddie]

14. Maybe this is the plan after all!

The repugs are wanting to go to the Supreme Court over the mandate, if that is the only argument they have then wait till the last minute and drop the mandate.

I don't agree with the mandate because it is a gift to the insurance industry.

[tritsofme]

16. A bill that banned insurers from excluding pre-existing conditions, but lacked a mandate

could not pass this Congress.

Certainly not 60 votes in the Senate, and I doubt even a majority in the House.

[Vincardog]

18. Because this congress is dedicated to the well being of Insurance companies right?

[tritsofme]

28. Well for one thing, the ten year cost of the bill goes through the roof.

We're looking at a bill that far exceeds President Obama's request for a package under $1 trillion and it would explode the deficit.

That's before you look even start examining things like the cost of adverse selection to the industry.

[grahamhgreen]

30. So, you repeal the Reagan tax cuts and bring back a top tax bracket of 94% on the uber-lords

Rather than out of the working poor, who, if they could afford insurance, would have it already.

[Vincardog]

17. Drop the Mandate works for me.

[bonnieS]

33. not for me

I want the abortion language out. Since not even progressives seem to care (it is rarely mentioned by anyone--just look at this thread) whether this is the step to getting rid of Roe v. Wade altogether, I guess the few of us (mainly women) who do care will just have to give up and live with being non-citizens in this great country. On Stop Stupak Lobby Day in DC my Senators and Barbara Boxer reassured me that no such language would be passed. Now they have sold me and all women out, and we are supposed to just fade away, or, they will ignore us altogether, joined by the progressives on this thread, and throughout the discussion, which is the same thing.

Oh yeah, I'm against the mandate and for single payer.I don't think women should be the bargaining chip to get that.

[TheWebHead]

21. you kill the mandate

you would have to kill the no caps and no pre existing.. there's a symbiotic relationship between the two for what should be obvious reasons to people looking at this rationally.

[grahamhgreen]

26. Just as there is a symbiotic relationship between a mandate and a public option!

Either kill the mandate, or give us the public option - the ball would be in their court then.

Progressive show we are willing to compromise.

[Matt Shapiro]

36. Symbiotic relationship? Get real

To speak of the mandate and the various "reforms" (presuming they would even work) as if there was some logical relationship between them is ridiculous. The simple fact is no bill will pass without the mandate, regardless of what else is in the bill. The mandate means billions of dollars in insurance premiums to the health insurance giants. They will accept nothing less, and this is, after all, THEIR BILL!

[Vincardog]

37. Sa long as they saw some rational reason to have parasitic corporations profiting off our poor healt...

[sendero]

24. Dude..

.. the mandate IS THE BILL. Everything else is window dressing.

The mandate has as much chance of going away as we do coming out of conference with single payer.

[grahamhgreen]

27. The negotiating position would be - kill the mandate or give us the public option.

Makes the conservadems or Obama himself be the ones who can not compromise.

[shotten99]

32. Mandates are part of the deal if you have a single payers system.

[eomer]

34. You can't kill the mandate unless you also bring back the pre-existing condition exclusion.

But if you do that -- kill the mandate and bring back the pre-existing condition exclusion -- then you're left with a bill that is definitely not worth doing.

If you include the banning of the pre-existing condition exclusion then you've got to include the universal mandate. If you include the universal mandate then you've got to include a public option. So either fix the bill by getting a public option into it, kill the bill, or be in the camp that says we can fix it later. But just killing the mandate is not an option that will work to our benefit because it will fail and we will be blamed for that failure.

By the way, the problem with just killing the mandate (for those who haven't already seen this explanation) is that it would make it possible (and smart) for people to not buy health insurance while they are healthy and wait until they have a major illness to buy in. The result would be that the costs are shared only among sick people and then those costs would be too expensive for anyone to afford. It would be equivalent to letting people wait until their houses are on fire to buy fire insurance.