Well, the insurance industry has come up with a new clean way to shut down the public option. We are not against robust competition, we just don't want it to come from the government. Therefore, we will support non-profit coops as an alternative that you, chicken hearted Democrats can vote for.
Why would the insurance industrial complex support coops. Because they know they would be toothless weak shells that could be run over by the insurance industry. They also know that it sounds so democratic to support coops as viable competition. These coops will take years if not decades to even organize and begin to service people. They do not resolve any of the overhead issues [where most savings might lie] costing health care so much money in the current situation - rather they will be saddled with as much or more because they will lack economy of scale that either most major insurance companies or govenrment health plans would have. They will be denied financing by the same industry that they are supposed to compete against and they will either eventually do ok and then become for profit insurance companies ala Blue Cross, or they will go out of business like so many coops do. The insurance companies will be no worse the wear.
Furthermore, as part of their support, they have succeeded in obtaining an individual mandate [but not an employer mandate] in the bill. This means that the insurance companies can expect another 40 million lambs for them to slaughter. What's not to love?
Thirty to fourty percent of our health care dollar is paid for administrative overhead. This includes profit, marketing, huge salaries and other benefits for the executive class, denial of coverage specialists, state and federal lobbying expenses, underwriting to reduce claims, along with some necessary expenses such as salaries, benefits, rent, and supplies. One of the main goals of a public option is to save money by getting rid of the first five items. By being able to streamline the claims process because only one entity will be processing the claims, further savings will occur. Medicare for example has only a 3% overhead. This is not money for medical care, this is money for conserving and promoting the insurance industrial complex. On the other hand, this is also the best reason for single payer because all this fat is sliced from the budget [estimated at 400 Billion dollars]. However, since a mini public option is viciously attacked by so many as socialized medicine, there is not hope that a single payer program could be passed. However, a public option would provide much of this benefit for the people receiving the coverage, thus allowing an affordable insurance program for the currently uninsured and perhaps demonstrating where the waste is in the system we now have. That demonstration is what the insurance companies so fear that they and their allies will say anything, do anything to ensure that it does not pass. Unfortunately, with their lies and distortions, they seem to be able to scare enough uninformed, low information voters about the program that the weak-kneed well greased Blue Dog Democrats and others in the Senate seem prepared to scuttle the public option so that nothing will change, except our premiums, which will of course go up.
This is what will pass as health reform, until the country either goes broke or wakes up to its puppet masters.
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