Patient Power

Polis’s suport for new gov’t run health plan: bad policy, bad politics.

Paul Hsieh, M.D. explains in the Daily Camera (Boulder).  Here are the opening paragraphs:

Boulder`s Congressman Jared Polis recently made national headlines when he and fellow first-term Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) teamed up to petition the U.S. Senate to include the so-called “public option” in its next version of health care legislation.

Polis` move was an attempt to break the political stalemate between the House and the Senate following Republican Scott Brown`s upset election victory in Massachusetts. After Brown`s election deprived Senate Democrats of the 60-vote supermajority necessary to pass the current version of ObamaCare, the House and Senate have struggled to bridge the differences between their respective versions of health legislation. In particular, one key difference has been the government-run “public plan” to compete with private insurance plans, which House liberals (including Polis) supported but which the Senate rejected.

Unfortunately, Polis` “public plan” is both bad policy and bad politics.

Read the whole article about Jared Polis and the public plan.

• Polis calls for Senate to add “public option” to health care bill
• Jared Polis: what’s your real reason for pushing the “public option”?
• No compulsory charity for Obama Care’s phony reform
• Majority prefers “nothing” to Dems’ health “reform”
• The “Public” insurance plan’s huge market share