General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhy are the Democrats afraid/reluctant to propose a public option?
I can see the reluctance to propose single payer but I can not see the reluctance to propose a public option. If you like your private insurance you can keep it, if you don't you can buy a publicly funded plan.
AJT
(5,240 posts)That would make healthcare affordable for older people and lower the premiums for everyone else.
WinstonSmith00
(228 posts)The most effecient nonprofit insurance around should be available to anyone who wants it.
Corvo Bianco
(1,148 posts)alarimer
(16,245 posts)There is a current proposal for Medicare for all. There have been proposals to lower the age of Medicare gradually.
As long as the insurance market is held hostage by Republicans, I don't see what other options we have. Right now, many areas only have a single choice of plans. This under current ACA rules and largely due to Republican obstruction.
WinstonSmith00
(228 posts)Democrats need to be pushing medicare for all as it was intended and to do that we need to educate the people why its better.
Phoenix61
(17,002 posts)because that is the only option. ACA is the Republican plan. The only thing left is a public option. If they wait long enough, even the repubs will figure that out. When they ACA came out it was very unpopular. Now that people have gotten used to having insurance and are seeing the benefits of getting preventive health care and not going bankrupt when something serious happens, they love it. People are starting to believe that health care is a right, not a privilege.
emulatorloo
(44,115 posts)and replace them with a "Voucher" system.
"To summarize, the Heritage Plan was to end Medicare and replace it with a voucher system, end Medicaid and phase out employer-based insurance, and require everyone not eligible to Medicare to purchase largely de-regulated catastrophic insurance with ungenerous subsidies. It is, in other words, radically different than the ACA."
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The Heritage Plan *Was* the Conservative Alternative to the ACA. It Was Much Worse Than the AHCA.
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2017/03/heritage-plan-conservative-alternative-aca-much-worse-ahca
Not this again:
Link to tweet
Ah, yes, durr, Obamacare was the Heritage Foundation plan, durr the go-to for anyone who doesnt know what theyre talking about and for whatever reason wants to imagine American conservatism as being much better and/or American liberalism as being much worse than they are. Anyway, this is an absolutely absurd characterization. To summarize, the Heritage Plan was to end Medicare and replace it with a voucher system, end Medicaid and phase out employer-based insurance, and require everyone not eligible to Medicare to purchase largely de-regulated catastrophic insurance with ungenerous subsidies. It is, in other words, radically different than the ACA. Saying the ACA is based on the Heritage Plan is like saying George W. Bushs plan to privitize Social Security was based on FDRs Social Security legislation. The only thing they have in common is the requirement to carry insurance, a banal recognition that insurance requires a broad pool to work that was hardly invented at Heritage.
As you know, at this point people strongly committed to the utterly false claim that the ACA was the Republican plan invented by the Heritage Foundation will generally add the second and third cards to the 3-card monte. First you compare the ACA to the decoy plan introduced by a senator from Rhode Island who favored a national handgun ban in 1993. The obvious problems with this comparison are that 1)the plans arent that similar (no Medicaid expansion) and 2)you have to be the most gullible rube in the world to the think federal Republicans have ever favored anything like the Chafee plan and would ever enact anything like it. The typical next move is to compare the ACA to the plan enacted by veto-proof majorities of Massachusetts Democrats, which has the advantage of being a reasonable policy comparison but the fatal disadvantage of being completely irrelevant to national Republican health care policy preferences. (If only the Republican governor who signed the legislation after multiple overridden vetoes had been the Republican candidate for president so we could have seen if he would maintain support for this health care policy as a national Republican!)
Another variant of this argument is to say that Trumpcare failed because Obamacare was the Republican/conservative alternative for universal coverage. But this is also completely false. The Heritage Plan is the conservative alternative to the ACA. If you combine Paul Ryans Medicare and Medicaid proposals with Trumpcare as amended by the Freedom Caucus, thats basically the Heritage Plan with a clumsier and less effective mandate. Heres a handy guide for people who are for whatever reason delusional about the actually existing American political spectrum:
The conservative alternative to the ACA is to privatize Medicare while increasing the eligibility age, while ending Medicaid and employer-based insurance and replacing them with a de-regulated private market much less generously subsidized than the ACA.
The center-right alternative is to accept the political reality of mostly preserving Medicare while block granting Medicaid and gutting the private insurance market.
The Affordable Care Act, a plan to substantially expand Medicaid while increasing public expenditures and regulation on the private market is a compromise between the left and moderate wings of the Democratic Party that Republicans have always vociferously opposed.
Trumpcare didnt fail because the ACA was the conservative alternative. It failed because only a politically suicidal party would enact any conservative alternative to the ACA. The ACA survived because its much harder to take away benefits tan it is to stop them from going into effect but Republicans would always have done the latter if the had the power to do so. Its really not complicated. And pretending otherwise is both false and politically worse-than-useless.
Phoenix61
(17,002 posts)Grown2Hate
(2,010 posts)true (Heritage plan = ACA) because I'd heard it so much (and seemed like a good tool to smack Republicans over the head for being hypocrites). So thank you for setting me straight (and, honestly, it seems so obvious now that it wouldn't be the case).
ismnotwasm
(41,976 posts)I see that "it's a republican plan" far too often, and I greatly appreciate your efforts to give good information.
MineralMan
(146,286 posts)That's when they'll propose it.
Weekend Warrior
(1,301 posts)In the last ten years by the house. Lieberman wielded too much power in the senate at the time and his threat of filibuster was all it took to remove it. In 2008 Obama campaigned on a public option. Clinton did so more recently. A lot of Democrats speak about it often.
Clinton:
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/health-care/
I wish Clinton were in the WH.
WinstonSmith00
(228 posts)We could of villified Lieberman and expose him for the fraud that he is even calling him self a Democrat.
Weekend Warrior
(1,301 posts)And his career was coming to an end. He went Independent in 2006.
emulatorloo
(44,115 posts)He blocked both the Public Option and the Medicare for 55 and up proposal.
Expecting Rain
(811 posts)Democrats are not "afraid" of the public option. President Obama and Congressional Democrats reasoned they could not get the ACA passed with a public option included.
A public option is the next progressive step forward. We have some elections that need winning.
DBoon
(22,356 posts)Even unsubsidized, it would be less than private insurance
It would prevent situations where only one or no private insurers cover a market. A private health insurance plan would always have Medicare as competition. If the last insurer decided to pull out of a market, you could still get coverage from Medicare.
emulatorloo
(44,115 posts)long ago. I think someone will propose it soon.
QC
(26,371 posts)HughBeaumont
(24,461 posts)Lobbyists and their clients in Washington are too entrenched in this for-profit system to fiddle with such "commie nonsense".