The Denver Post reports:
U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet is pressing colleagues to use a procedural tool known as reconciliation to pass health-reform legislation — and to include the controversial public-insurance option in the bill. ...
"Much of the public identifies a public option as the key component of health care ...
"It doesn't help one poor person get insurance who doesn't have it now. It doesn't compel one insurance company to provide insurance to somebody who has an illness. And . . . it doesn't do anything to reduce the cost of insurance." -- Joe Lieberman, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 5 ...
Both the House and Senate care bills include a new government-run health plan. (See the Wall Street Journal's comparison.) In June I wrote the following:
Supporters of the “public insurance option,” that is, government-run insurance that competes with commercial insurers sense opposition: People realize it’s unfair competition. You know, like playing ...
The Center for Medicine in the Public Interest made a clever and to-the-point video showing how a "public option" would play out:
(Via FIRM, State House Call)
The Wall Street Journal reported last week:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, stepping deeper into the health-care debate, put his weight Thursday behind a proposal that would create a new government-run insurance plan while giving states the option not to participate.
Roger Pilon of Cato asks the pertinent question:
Will residents in states ...
From the Wall Street Journal:
First the legislature greatly expanded MaineCare, the state's Medicaid program. Today Maine families with incomes of up to $44,000 a year are eligible; 22% of the population is now in Medicaid, roughly twice the national average.
... the state created a "public option" known as DirigoChoice. ... ...
John Lott makes excellent points (emphasis added):
Given all the attacks on profit-making insurance companies, what is possibly more surprising is that by far the dominant players in the "full" insurance market are non-profits. Indeed, one of the motives of the government insurance option is to take profits out of the ...
Related post: Congress & gov’t employees would be exempt from new insurance mandates.
Senator David Vitter (R-La) argues that Congress should enroll in any government-run health plan they want to impose on U.S. citizens:
I’ve joined together with Rep. John Fleming, R-Minden, to apply pressure to the Washington politicians by requiring members ...
Representative Barney Frank says it 30 seconds into this video:
Remember what single payer medicine means: government is, by definition, the single and only entity that pays for medical care. All physicians and providers of medical care would essentially work for the government, and be accountable to government. If you want ...
From 9 News:
[Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colorado)] says people can't handle the double-digit health care cost increases they are seeing each year and that the people who have insurance can't keep covering the costs of those who don't and who are then treated in the emergency room which he called "the ...
