Just looking for people's take on it. I don't think it'll get passed. But who knows, maybe if we use the word option enough, even the idiots will finally realize they don't HAVE to use it. If it does get passed the Republicans are finished. Once the public gets a chance to use it, the Republicans would be the party trying to take it away from people who like it. In other words they can't let a public option ever hit the streets because they know people will like it. But ironically it's not the Republicans that will be the ones to stop it if it does get stopped. It'll be their inside man Joe Lieberman. Funny his last name starts with Lie.
My big concern is that as currently written in the bill the public option will only be available to those who don't already have health insurance. I don't see how that is going to offer real competition to the private health insurance industry. It will also be a problem that since only those who don't already have health insurance will be in the insurance pool, it's likely to be a very high risk pool. An article on this issue: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/10/29/MNAL1ABCOT.DTL It's amazing to me that people could call this a "government takeover" when it's so weak. It goes beyond what you're saying that people wouldn't have to choose the public option, as written - anyone who has health insurance wouldn't even be able to choose the public option.
Yeah, most of what I read would limit the public option to people with low incomes. Rather than creating an alternative to the profit-model of medicine (which almost left me dead because American doctors are particularly bad at finding things with free cures), they're going to turn it into another mark of poverty. Unless they've very recently changed the definition of poverty, I don't think most people with full time minimum wage jobs would even qualify. The public option insurance is going to end up like food stamps or welfare checks if we even get it at all. Of course, nothing would be worse than a federal mandate to buy private insurance - without some kind of non-profit alternative.
Nah I don't think it'll go that route. Insurance company lobbys have already ensured that their Republican puppets slipped enough amendments into the bill that the people who actually need it (employed people who have been screwed over by their insurance) can't get it. So basically anyone who already has insurance won't even have the right to use the option. That's what Republicans and conservative Democrats have done for you with their amendments. They are so afraid that people might actually like the public option (which would be a good thing) that they don't even want you to have the option (not be forced to, but the option....) to choose it. All I can say is I seriously underestimated the power of the health insurance lobby. The insurance industry lobby is more powerful and has more political savvy than a party with a 60 vote majority and the White House. Not just blowing smoke here either. Take a look at all the Democrats that are having trouble voting for the public option. Joe Lieberman's constituents favor the public option by 63% majority. But darn it there is the matter of those millions he's received over the years from the health industry. And (D) Evan Bayh? Oh yeah his wife happens to be on the board at wellpoint.