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Meeting in Washington on June 27, a group of 30 single payer activists from around the country decided to oppose outright the healthcare reform plan now emerging in Congress, rather than pushing to have it include a "strong public option". The group, representing many of the major organizations involved with the movement for single payer Medicare For All, includes Jerry Call, founder of Maine's Midcoast Healthcare Reform and one of those arrested at a recent Senate Finance Committee hearing.
Many who back single payer Medicare For All have wavered, tempted to settle for inclusion of a strong public option in the Congressional plan as a step toward real reform. Flat opposition to the Congressional plan as "a catastrophe for this country" as Call puts it, clears the air and permits focusing on the drive to achieve real reform with single payer.
Even though it is favored by most voters and physicians, single payer Medicare For All has been called politically impossible because it is opposed by the healthcare lobby. Three committees in Congress have kept Medicare For All "off the table", and are instead working up healthcare reform plans with mandates forcing purchase of health insurance and subsidies to make insurance purchases "affordable". Debate has raged about including a possible public option, "to keep the insurance companies honest".
But any public option we are likely to get will be designed to look strong to voters while satisfying healthcos that they have nothing to fear from it. Olympia Snowe is working to define an acceptable compromise public option.
Everyone thinks "a strong public option" means something like Medicare at a reasonable cost. A recent poll shows that about 70% of policyholders would move quickly to such an option if offered. Since that would clearly wipe out the healthcos, nothing like it will be made broadly available
The healthco lobby is powerful enough to keep single payer off the table entirely, not even allowing the CBO to cost it out. It is naive to think that healthcos aren't strong enough and smart enough to neutralize any public option. No matter how strong a public option might seem to be on entering the Congressional sausage making machine, it will emerge neutered.
The healthcos know better than to kill the public option outright. By publicly opposing it, the resultant debate diverts attention from single payer. Though they know that a "public option" of some kind has to be allowed to pass, they also know they can render it harmless by cutting its heart out in private, behind closed doors.
In his AMA speech, Obama signaled that a weak public option is exactly what is in prospect, one that will just "keep insurance companies honest."
Let your representatives in Congress know that unless they support single payer you will work hard to unseat them. There is nothing like the wrath of an aroused electorate to convince a politician to heed voters, not donors.
Single payer Medicare For All is efficient, economical, and ethical. It
would cover everyone for less than we pay now. Let's not settle for anything
less.
Tom Hagan
Boothbay