Senate Committee drives a stake through Public Option
Senators Baucus and Grassley confer during the September 29 Finance Committee on health care reform legislation (Chip Somodevilla/Getty)
The writing was on the wall, but it is official. The Senate Finance Committee voted to kill the public option in ObamaCare. Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s (D-W.Va.) amendment went down by a lopsided (and bipartisan) margin of 15-8, with Democrats Baucus, Carper of Delaware, Conrad of North Dakota, Lincoln of Arkansas, and Nelson of Florida, joining all 10 Republicans in voting no. Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) amendment didn’t fare much better, losing by a 13-10 margin, with Carper and Nelson voting aye.
Harry Reid (D-Nev.), has already signaled that he will drop the public plan contained in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee when he merges the two bills.
Senate Democratic leaders, however, do not believe there will be sufficient support to add the public option to the bill.
Senate Democratic aides say the majority leader, Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, will not include a provision for the public option when he combines the measures coming out of the finance and health committees.
Lefties, like my pal Rick Ungar, will gnash teeth about Baucus being a sell-out, but the fact is that the public doesn’t like what they are seeing. A Rasmussen poll out yesterday showed support for ObamaCare at an all-time low, with only 41% support.
The fact is that there probably isn’t even enough support for the public option in the House. After all, if they could have passed it, wouldn’t they have done it by now to give the thing some much-needed momentum? And today’s vote won’t make the House Blue Dogs more likely to support the public option, given that they will get all the blame, with no credit, if it is in the House bill, but not in the final legislation (assuming there is any final legislation).
But this was only Plan A for the Democrats. Plan B will likely still include the individual mandate (probably un-Constitutional), and they can, and probably will, just raise the income ceiling on Medicaid (like they did with the S-Chip) and lower the age of Medicare to get more people in the government system.
As the boss, Michael Roston, notes, this ain’t the Democrats’ first rodeo and they won’t give up that easily.
So though this is not the end of Obama’s quest to wrest health care from the private sector, it may be the beginning of the end.
And then, as they did the last time a Democrat tried to nationalize health care, the voters will pass their judgment on this whole mess in the midterm elections.
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What’s odd is that while the polls have not been great on “Obamacare” in general (although apparently getting a bit better), the numbers for a public option have always been pretty good. While we would probably agree that much of what is considered Obamacare will make it through the Congress, despite the fact that the support numbers are not terrific, the one thing the public appears to want may well be the one thing they won’t get.
Go figure.
You know Rick, as far as the support for the Public Option goes, if you substitute the word Public with the word Government, the polling changes dramatically. It goes way down!
Is it too much to ask for some honesty with the public when we put proposals together?
Government Option. It is materially what that proposal means. If you can’t say what you mean and mean what you say, you must be a politician!
In response to another comment. See in context »The cowboy makes good sense.
In response to another comment. See in context »Cowboylogic, it’s hugely intellectually offensive that you’d appeal to honesty and then parrot a genius sophist like Frank Luntz, who first made that a talking point. And because FOX News are partisan hacks, they quickly absorbed it into their vernacular. I don’t just mean Luntz told Hannity about it, and Hannity said, “I’m going to use that.” I mean that it’s on the chyrons, it’s in its online articles – it’s everywhere.
And let me tell you something else. It’s usually phrased “government-run health care,” which really isn’t what we’re talking about when we talk about the public option. The public option is about “government-run health insurance,” which is different. Health care is what you get from emergency rooms, doctors, nurses, physical therapists, etc. Health insurance just finances it.
Canada and England have largely government-run health care as well as government-run health insurance, and they have their own problems. France has private health care and public health insurance, which most American’s don’t know. Other countries enjoy complex mixes of public/private health care and public/private health insurance, and it works much better for them.
“Is it too much to ask for some honesty…?” Is it too much to ask for a little research? Is it to much to ask for some intellectual honesty?
In response to another comment. See in context »Jack, if you would ask some cool headed questions and not jump to conclusions you might feel offended less often. I am not someone who engages in gratuitous attack, and I welcome vigorous debate of the points I make.
And of course it’s not too much to ask for a little research or intellectual honesty.
You are correct, Frank Luntz did say on Fox News that changing the wording from Public Option to Government option changed the numbers. I haven’t seen his polling on that but he stated that the numbers “flipped”.
I was curious about that, so I wondered what I could learn from looking at other polling research services.
Here it is:
First from the New York Times/CBS News Poll September 25, 2009:
“Would you favor or oppose the government offering everyone a government-administered health insurance plan like Medicare that wold compete with private health insurance plans?”
Favor 65% Oppose 26%
Next the Kaiser Family Foundation Kaiser Health Tracking Poll. Sept. 11-18, 2009
“Now I’m going to read you some different ways to increase the number of Americans covered by health insurance. As I read each one, please tell me whether you would favor it or oppose it.” …….
“Creating a government-administered public health insurance option similar to Medicare to compete with private health insurance plans”
Favor 57% Oppose 37% Unsure 6%
Lastly notice the wording of the poll and the difference in the numbers from Rasmussen:
National Survey of 1,000 Likely Voters
Conducted July 14-15, 2009
By Rasmussen Reports
Would it be a good idea to set up a government health insurance company to compete with private health insurance companies?
35% Yes
50% No
15% Not sure
I don’t think that the differences in the surveys can only be attributed to the difference in the sampling methods used.
I think that it is clear that the wording is a decisive factor in the results obtained.
I have a lot more references of course and would be happy to pass those along.
In response to another comment. See in context »I think the public doesn’t approve of ObamaCare because they hear that they will forced to buy insurance or face fines and jail time, seniors hear that Medicare will be cut by $500 billion, new individual private health insurance plans will be outlawed (page 16 of the House bill), folks will likely lose their employers’ insurance plan when they dump you into the public program, etc., and that tends to dampen the credibility of the claim that the public option is a benign force for good. The way Obama says it sounds good but the details bear no resemblance to the claim.
In response to another comment. See in context »Thankfully the public has come awake and they are actively seeking out answers and they are talking!
Now 1000 pages isn’t enough to hide the government’s real intentions, and we “regular Joes” out here are demanding that the politicians live up to the standards we set for ourselves in our own lives.
We know not to sign a mortgage agreement without reading it first, and damnit we aren’t going to allow our representatives to sign off on bills that will become the law of the land without reading it through first as well.
We are now looking over their shoulders and reading the bills to them like a parent reading a book to a child. If they show less reading comprehension than those of us out here, I promise you we will fire them and get more competent representation to replace them.
In response to another comment. See in context »But this post isn’t about the mandate, it’s about the public option, right? I do think the public rejected the mandate in the election.
In response to another comment. See in context »If you’d ask a conservative if it’s immoral to require parents to insure kids, they’d say no.
If you say that there are 47 million uninsured Americans, they’d whittle that number down to 13 million by subtracting illegals and people who qualify for Medicare/Medicaid but are not enrolled.
ObamaCare increases the income-ceiling beyond which you are excluded from Medicaid, which will further whittle down that number of voluntarily uninsured, like young people and people in between jobs.
So, they’ll have access to cheap catastrophic coverage, divorced from their employer, via the public exchange.
How many people are we really talking about here?
On a personal note, I’m in my early 20’s and got shingles. I’m uninsured because I’m an idiot, and let me tell you why. Shingles typically occurs in older people whose immune systems are suppressed. If you get it when you’re young, you might have HIV. I of course don’t have HIV, but I can honestly say you’ll appreciate a mandate that young people carry at least catastrophic health insurance when you get your first HIV scare. Or a lump in your armpit. Or a stone in your kidney. OR YOUR FIRST HIV SCARE.
In response to another comment. See in context »By the way Rick, I didn’t mean you personally when I wrote,
“Government Option. It is materially what that proposal means. If you can’t say what you mean and mean what you say, you must be a politician!”
That comment is directed to our masters of spin, our elected representatives. Hope that prevents a mis-understanding.
“So though this is not the end of Obama’s quest to wrest health care from the private sector, it may be the beginning of the end.”
You wish!
It is so easy to twist liberal tails . . .
In response to another comment. See in context »Sorry dude, wrong again, I think you’re funny, I’d have to take you seriously to be as twisted as you!
In response to another comment. See in context »You’re right; it’s hilarious! What’s funnier than people dying from easily-curable maladies, or losing their homes because they can’t afford their 30% co-pays after long illnesses?
Funny, funny stuff…well, it’s funny if you’re a monster, or if you’re an idiot.
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