The House version of a public option is designed to fail and Pelosi & all know it.
Because they will limit the number of people that can access this version of a public option, because many of those that do will be people with pre-existing conditions & already shunned by the health care corporations, the PREMIUMS ARE EXPECTED TO BE HIGHER THAN THOSE OF PRIVATE INSURANCE.
Public Option, RIP? The Congressional Budget Office explains the perils of compromise and the limits of its own interest in health costs.
By Timothy Noah Posted Friday, Oct. 30, 2009
I've had a bad feeling since Tuesday that Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman's pledge to filibuster any variety of public option eliminated its chances of becoming law. Continuing recalcitrance from moderate Democrats didn't help, either. But I never figured that the final death blow would come from the Congressional Budget Office.
Here's the killer sentence, spotted by Politico's Carrie Budoff Brown on Page 6 of the CBO's analysis of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's "blended" House bill: "
public plan paying negotiated rates ... would typically have premiums that are somewhat higher than the average premiums for the private plans in the exchanges."
Whaa? Most analyses of the public plan, including mine, have assumed that even the watered-down "level playing field" version (i.e., the version in Pelosi's bill and also—with an "opt out" provision slapped on—in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's yet-to-be-scored Senate bill) would set premiums lower than private insurers. But the CBO says that's wrong.
More specifically, here's what the CBO says: "The public plan would have lower administrative costs than those private plans but would probably engage in less management of utilization by its enrollees and attract a less healthy pool of enrollees. (The effects of that 'adverse selection' on the public plan's premiums would be only partially offset by the 'risk adjustment' procedures that would apply to all plans operating in the exchanges.)"
snip
The CBO is saying that a public option that was required to be self-sustaining financially and that was barred from aligning its doctor and hospital fees with Medicare's—as Pelosi's level-playing-field version would be—would see its role as sanctuary doom its role as price competitor. Private insurers would engage in aggressive "management of utilization by its enrollees," i.e., dumping or avoiding the people most likely to need the services of doctors and hospitals, leaving them no place to go except the public option. This would drive down private insurers' costs and drive up the public option's. The CBO acknowledges that Pelosi's public option would have lower administrative expenses than private plans. But because its ability to drive down doctor and hospital fees would be somewhat inhibited by its level-playing-field structure, its cost advantages would be outweighed by its cost disadvantage in serving a disproportionately unwell population.
In short: Private insurers have been fretting that a public option would doom them, but the CBO is saying the opposite: Private insurers would doom (or at least put at a significant disadvantage) the public option.
This is a nightmare scenario that Paul Starr, the sociologist and Hillarycare veteran, has been warning about for some time. "Over-constrained," Starr wrote this past June in the American Prospect ("Perils of the Public Plan"), "the public plan could go into a death spiral ... as it becomes a dumping ground for high-risk enrollees, its rates rise, and it loses its appeal to the public at large." I've long thought that Starr was being too pessimistic because Congress would never design a public option this vulnerable. According to the CBO, however, that's just what Pelosi did.
Please read the rest of the story at
http://www.slate.com/id/2234175/pagenum/all/#p2THE PUBLIC OPTION, AS PROPOSED IN THE HOUSE BILL, IS DOOMED TO FAIL AND PELOSI KNOWS IT!!!!
The health insurance CEOs must be laughing their asses off at how gullible we all are!!
:grr: :nuke: :banghead:
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