HR 3200’s "public option" will not resemble Medicare

Advocates of a “public option” claim that the “option” will look like Medicare. They say this about the “option” in both bills that have been introduced to date – the House “reform” bill, HR 3200, and the bill written by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) committee. But this statement is not true.

Medicare is larger than any private insurance company; the “option” in both bills will be small. The traditional Medicare program is a single program with uniform benefits; the “option” in both bills will be a balkanized program that may not be available in all parts of the country. Medicare is administered by public employees; the “options” in both bills will be administered by private-sector corporations, some or all of which will be insurance companies. The “option” in neither bill resembles Medicare.

When Jacob Hacker began promoting what is now called the “public option” in 2001, he referred to it as “Medicare Plus.” Given the enormous size of this version of the “option” (Hacker predicted it would enroll at least half of the non-elderly population), Hacker’s comparison of his proposed program with Medicare was not misleading. But after the Democrats introduced draft versions of the Senate HELP bill and HR 3200 last June, “option” advocates should have immediately ceased comparing the “option” to Medicare.

They did not do that. They continued to barrage the public with statements linking the “option” with Medicare. For example, in an interview posted on AlterNet on July 8, Howard Dean responded to a question about what the “option” looks like by saying, “In a nutshell, it looks like Medicare.”

One would think “option” supporters would have an especially strong motive to stop misleading the public about what the “option” will look like. They risk serious embarrassment if the “option” they keep comparing to Medicare turns out to be a hodge-podge of small, ineffective insurance companies created by private corporations. But I am aware of only two instances in which “option” advocates have so much as hinted at the possibility of this outcome. In a paper posted on August 20, Jacob Hacker conceded in a parenthetical remark that “the HELP bill appears to leave open the possibility … that the public plan could be contracted out to private insurers or at least established on a state-by-state basis, two undesirable approaches that should be clearly ruled out in subsequent legislation.” (page 2) The other instance was the September 1 comment by HCAN’s Richard Kirsch, which I quoted above, in which Kirsch agreed with Sen. Reid that the “option” might be administered by a private-sector firm.

“Option” advocates need to do better. They need to tell congressional Democrats the “options” in the HELP bill and HR 3200 will be no match for the insurance industry and that unless the Democrats rewrite the “option” sections to create “options” like Hacker’s original Medicare Plus, they will urge members of Congress and the public to oppose the “reform” legislation.

Please read it all here. With all the talking heads on the Sunday morning talk shows saying that the Public Option is dead it is more important than ever to start lobbying your representatives to vote YES on the Weiner Amendment to H.R.3200 when it is up for debate and a vote on the floor of the Housee. On the left side of this page you will find links to make it easy for you. Time is running out so please don't delay.