Jordan:
>By "this" you mean: a government mandate for everyone to have a health plan?
By 'this' I mean the requirement that I pay a private corporation to insure my carcass, without requiring that said corporation actually do anything when I get sick. Lots of people 'have insurance' but don't get the care.
>So you say. If you think the insurance companies are absolutely required for buy-in to any proposed plan, we should just stop this thread completely: no radical change will be comfortable for insurance companies[*].
Well, I'm sorry I gave the impression I think that, if I did. What I tried to communicate is that there needs to be a buy-in by the public to counteract the power of insurance companies. There wasn't much public buy-in for the original Clinton plan, I think rightly, because it was a mess. Now, a new-improved mess is being introduced which has the same fatal flaw. I'm actually rather more optimistic than most people I know on the left because I spend a lot of time talking to random non-left people about health care.
> Jordan writes:
Jenny: If it happens, it won't be better than not doing it
No, my point was that it won't happen *because* it's so badly mangled.
Your point about a public insurance system undercutting the private market is right, which is why I mentioned in the example of Fla. property insurance. That's the only hope in this mess. That was the theory of a campaign I worked on in the early '90s for a public statewide health insurance plan. (Meanwhile, Medicare is going the opposite direction, with huge public subsidies to private drug providers, making water flow upstream.)
Clinton's plan says there will be the possibility of buying into a public 'Medicare like' plan. I don't see how this thing is funded, however. My guess is that it will be more expensive, and most people who are having trouble affording insurance will have to opt for high-deductible private plans. Which we would be required to buy, of course. I suppose it's possible that Clinton could change her tune and present the 'Medicare like' option as the crown jewel of the whole thing, but then she'd have to explain how it gets paid for, other than premiums. Right now it's stuck in there like a slightly unpleasant afterthought.
>Everyone seems to nay-say all kinds of
>ideas with "it'll never get the support of [fill in the blank]" -- well
>if there's one thing the last 7 years should teach us all is that a
>very unpopular thing can be accomplished through the sheer will of a
>single person.
I don't think Bush, as they say about Oswald, 'acted alone.' There's ample evidence Bush wasn't going against the wishes and interests of the rest of the state. Now he's more isolated, but that's only because Iraqis stubbornly insist on getting their country back. Had they not put up such a fight, he'd be a hero... which happens to be an example of people turning things around against very long odds. The same mechanism can be applied to the fight for health care.
Jenny Brown