Max Baucus...public option is only to leverage the insurance companies.

[madfloridian]

Run time: 02:19 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvZrCDzlosk   Posted on YouTube: March 27, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: March 27, 2009 By DU Member: madfloridian Views on DU: 1229

 
Here is more on the topic:

Baucus responds to Howard Dean's plea for a public option

Let’s see what we come up with. I think we can accomplish the objective (Dean) wants without (a public plan). We can, we’re going to have to work on it. But we may have to have it, (Dean) may be right. Just don’t know yet.

More from the Wonk Room:

Baucus: We Can Accomplish Health Care Reform ‘Without’ Public Health Plan Option

Gov. Howard Dean (D-VT) has argued that you can’t reform the health care system without forcing private insurers to compete with a new public option. “If we only get community rating and guaranteed issue that’s great insurance reform, but that is not health care reform and nobody should mistake it,” Dean explained.

But Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus has recently indicated that the public plan is just a bargaining chip to “encourage the private health insurance industry to move in the direction it knows it should move toward—namely, health insurance reform, which means eliminating pre-existing conditions, guaranteed issue, modified community rating.”

Today, during an event at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, ThinkProgress caught up with Baucus and asked the senator if Dean was wrong in insisting that a public health plan is essential to achieving a more efficient health care system:

Let’s see what we come up with. I think we can accomplish the objective wants without . We can, we’re going to have to work on it. But we may have to have it, may be right. Just don’t know yet.

More from Time's Karen Tumulty:

Max Baucus and the "Public Plan"

What Baucus had to say will not give much comfort to those who support the idea of a public plan as it is presently being proposed. He strongly suggested that its main value, at this point, is as a bargaining chip to get the health insurance companies to agree to other things that reformers want to see:

"Essentially, it's to keep it on the table to encourage the private health insurance industry to move in the direction it knows it should move toward—namely, health insurance reform, which means eliminating pre-existing conditions, guaranteed issue, modified community ratings. It's all those actions that insurance companies must take in order to provide affordable coverage. And the public option helps encourage the private companies to move in that direction, because they're worried. We might have to modify the public option to get enough votes. I hear some concerns among Republicans about the public option. The main purpose is to keep the health insurance feet to the fire."

They are so worried about the Republicans. This is probably why Bayh's group wants to insist on 60 votes to pass a health care plan instead of a simple majority.

They have no intention of listening to us in the party. The deed appears to be done.

[madfloridian]

1. Watch the video. Pathetic. They are controlled by insurance companies.

It is pathetic.

[avaistheone1]

2. Does Max have one of those boxes hidden under his suit where the health insurance industry is

giving him his talking points? It sure sounds like it. The Democrats are leading the health insurance industry take charge. That seems to be just fine with Obama too.

It also sounds like the White House and the Democrats who are heading health care reform have no intention of changing things EXCEPT to make health insurance mandatory (that is their idea of universal coverage) and to take our taxpayer money in order to fatten the bottom lines of their companies.

Now who exactly is working for us?

[madfloridian]

3. I see the insurance companies told them the public option was not acceptable.

Yep, they control them.

[droidamus2]

4. Main problem

I think the main problem here is that the people that are looking at health care reform are starting from the status quo and looking for some little tweeks and changes that would be a viable solution. If the status quo is what caused use to be in this situation wouldn't it make more sense to start from a clean slate and look to rebuild a viable long term solution from there which I think would have to include single payer. Its just like the financial situation where they keep asking the same people that got us into the problem to come up with a solution. Finding solutions to long term endemic problems in our society pretty much requires thinking outside the box and putting aside past methods that have proved to be ineffective. The idea is that they are supposed to be looking into how to provide health care for all US citizens (yes and illegal aliens when necessary) not how to protect the current insurance system. Isn't it interesting that the free marketeers scream about how government is ineffective and not the solution but aren't willing to let government compete with their revered corporations.

[JDPriestly]

10. That approach will not work -- too expensive.

Too many people will not be able to afford it, and it will cost too much to subsidize their care with private providers because the CEOs and shareholders of the private companies take too large a cut.

[msongs]

5. hey leave max alone, he's only going along with the "new democrat" in the white house isn't he? nt

[madfloridian]

12. The "new democrats" control the agenda.

They are keeping the Republicans empowered.

Sadly.

[madfloridian]

6. Listen to part 4 of the DFA conference call. Dean gives a lot of good info.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGBQ9MxLBCk

[tomm2thumbs]

7. either this guy is being puppeted by the insurance companies, or he's

playing them like a fiddle right under their noses as he makes them slink into a sense of security while behind the scenes a real plan for a public option is being formed by a smart and powerful committee.

I can't decide which is more plausible.

[madfloridian]

8. The video makes me very uncomfortable.

He seems uncomfortable crossing the insurance companies.

[CTyankee]

13. You have a really good point and one I thought might be his rationale.

The whole idea, as I see it, is for us to lure the private companies into a competition situation with a public plan (I'd like to call it "Medicare for Everyone"). The companies will try to compete and their effort will be either so expensive or their coverage so skimpy that they will fall on their faces. The public plan then emerges as doable and viable. I think that is a really possible scenario, esp. since Obama is SO popular now he can really sell it.

This is not 1994 with the Harry and Louise ads. People are fed up and scared to death about their health care. The Republicans are getting more irrelevant by the minute. Every time they open their mouths they get smacked down and they look stupid. Even businesses are complaining about the cost of providing health care to employees. Our idea is gaining support by the hour. If we just sit around bitching and moaning about Baucus we'll get exactly nowhere...

[wroberts189]

14. The "Harry and Louise ads" Wow I remember those ..

15 years ago health care reform was ruined with the help of the lies in those commercials.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt31nhleeCg

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


"Harry and Louise" was the name of a television commercial funded by the Health Insurance Association of America (HIAA), a health insurance industry lobbying group, in opposition to President Bill Clinton's proposed health care plan in 1993. The ad depicted a white middle-class couple, portrayed by actors Harry Johnson and Louise Caire Clark, despairing over the allegedly bureaucratic nature of the plan and urged viewers to contact their representatives in Congress. It was widely credited as being a major factor in the plan's ultimate defeat, and is often cited as a landmark moment in the use of public relations techniques for lobbying. The commercial was created by public relations consultants Ben Goddard and Rick Claussen of Goddard Claussen.<1>

[Faryn Balyncd]

9. K&R

[chill_wind]

11. K & R n/t