This is pretty much what I imagine goes on in the meetings of Conservatives for Patients Rights, or Patients United Now, or AHIP's Campaign for an American Solution, or Blue Cross Blue Shield's Get Health Reform Right. They're clueless.
Meet HAARM - Healthy Americans Against Reforming Medicine:
The front group "Get Health Reform Right," funded by the insurance industry, sent out their first "grassroots" email today. Here's what it says:
The healthcare reform debate is heating up in Washington and we all have a stake in the outcome. Draft health reform legislation in the House of Representatives is now under consideration. While this draft legislation takes some of the critical steps needed to transform our healthcare system and expand coverage, it also takes a huge leap in the wrong direction by creating a new government-run health plan.
We all agree that it is critically important to enact comprehensive healthcare reform this year, but legislation that includes a government-run health plan will actually undermine the goals of reform and have devastating consequences on our healthcare system. Take action now and tell Congress to get health reform right.
More government bureaucracy will only create more problems, not solve the ones we have. A new government health plan would use its built-in advantages to eventually take over the entire health insurance market, forcing out private plans and limiting consumers' choices. Many Americans would lose their current employer-sponsored coverage as millions of people are shifted into a government plan. This is not the answer for improving our healthcare system. Instead, Congress should build on the current employer-sponsored healthcare system that is already working for more than 160 million Americans. Tell Congress to build on healthcare that’s working for most until it works for all.
Thank you for making your voice heard on this important issue. With so much riding on healthcare reform, Congress needs to get health reform right for America.
Now, given that it's the insurance industry sending this message, I'm going to rewrite it so you can see what they really mean:
The healthcare reform debate is heating up in Washington and our profits have a stake in the outcome. Draft health reform legislation in the House of Representatives is now under consideration. While this draft legislation takes some of the critical steps needed to transform our healthcare system and expand coverage, it also forces us to compete and actually provide health insurance, or lose money. We don't like that.
We keep saying that it is critically important to enact comprehensive healthcare reform this year, but we're really worried that our CEOs won't be able to take that 2nd vacation this year if our profits get cut a couple percentage points. So we're going to tell people that offering them a choice of a public health insurance option somehow will cause them to lose health care. It's not true, but it sure is scary! And if we scare them enough, maybe they'll complain to their Members of Congress!
If we actually had to compete, we couldn't pay our CEOs billions, and we would have to stop denying care for prexisting conditions. That would be a big problem - for us. And of course, though we've argued for years that government is so incompetent that it can't do anything, we're going to pretend that we're so vulnerable that we can't compete with government. Yes, we know this doesn't make sense, but we're going to say it anyway. If we make it sound scary enough, people might not realize they would love to choose to dump us if they could, and that most of them (76%) support giving us a bit of competition.
We hate competition, and so we're against health reform. And we're trying to scare you so you are, too.
Boo!
I don't expect anything better from the industry - they lie about everything else, why not lie about being grassroots.
Update: The Education and Labor Committee sends along this fact-check of the insurance industry's lies:
1. Government plan would use its built-in advantages to eventually take over the entire health insurance market, forcing out private plans and limiting consumers' choices.
The public health insurance option would be just one choice for consumers and families in a menu of private health insurance options called the national health insurance exchange. The public health insurance option would be required to follow the same rules as private insurers (level playing field). And, the public health insurance option would self-sustaining through premiums, not government subsidies.
If we are serious about real competition to help control costs, and most Americans agree, a public health insurance option must be one of many choices consumers will have. As studies have shown, many Americans have little or no choices in health plans in their region.
2. Many Americans would lose their current employer-sponsored coverage as millions of people are shifted into a government plan.
No one will be forced into the public health option. If an employer drops their insurance coverage for their employees, those workers would have a choice of any plan in the health insurance exchange, including a public insurance option. In addition, the employer would then have to pay an 8 percent penalty, based on their payroll, for not covering its employees in order to assist low and moderate income employees to obtain insurance coverage that is right for them.
Some text for the HELP Committee's public health insurance option leaked last night. The language includes:
–HHS-based plan: The community health insurance option would be run by HHS. The government would pay for the first three months of claims as a way to capitalize it; this would be a loan to be repaid over time. For the first two years and longer if necessary, the option would also qualify for “risk corridor protections” which offset or reclaim excessive losses and gains which could result during the start-up period (identical to those in Medicare Part D). Subsequently, its premiums would be set to make it self sufficient. This would make the health insurance option quickly available in all areas of the country.
–Plays by the same rules: The option would be one of the Gateway choices. It would follow the same rules as private plans for defining benefits, protecting consumers, and setting premiums that are fair and based on local costs. The only difference between this option and others is that the Secretary would set the reserve requirements for this plan rather than states.
–Provider payments and participation:
• Negotiated rates within limits: The payment rates paid by the option would be no more than the local average private rates – but could be less. The Secretary would negotiate these rates.
• Input from Advisory Councils: Each State would create a Council of provider and consumers to recommend strategies for quality improvement and affordability. States would share in the savings that result.
• Purely voluntary: Health care providers would have the choice of participating in this plan; there would be no obligation to do so.
Why It Will Make Health Care Affordable:
–Pooled purchasing power: This health insurance option can pool the purchasing power of its enrollees nationwide to leverage lower prices to compete with private plans. Similar negotiation power has been used by states to get drug rebates in Medicaid beyond the statutory minimum. It has been used by large businesses to drive delivery system change. This negotiation would be backed by a ceiling of paying no more than average local rates.
–Flexibility and incentives to innovate: Unlike administered pricing, the negotiation for payment rates gives the Secretary the ability to quickly and aggressively promote payment policies that promote quality and best practices. In addition, the State Advisory Councils would tailor delivery system reform for the plan, with a financial bonus for success.
–Lower administrative overhead: The community health insurance option would not need to raise premiums to support shareholder profits, extensive marketing, and extra risk reserves required by require to protect enrollees from plan insolvency or mismanagement of funds.
This fulfills the broad requirements for a public option: Available everywhere and on day one, and accountable to Congress and the voters, as well as rate flexibility. Of course, things are still very much in flux and these details could all change, for better or for worse. But so far, so good.
Chris Bowers has been keeping track of the answers you all have gotten from the Senate over the last few weeks. For those just joining the campaign, we, along with Chris at OpenLeft and Democracy for America, are asking Senators to answer for questions on the public health insurance option:
The answers are starting to trickle in, and we're going to publish them all this week. But we want to make sure we've gotten all the responses so our count is accurate. So, if you've gotten a response from your Senator, click here to report it.
Of course, if you haven't gotten an answer yet, keep asking. As Chris says (and I concur), if there's one thing he's learned from blogging, it's that you have to keep asking Senators over and over until you get the answer you want. So, click here to email you Senator.
And of course, tell your friends about this campaign, so we can turn up the pressure.
Stay tuned for the answers!
Dianne Feinstein: Criticism From Left On Health Care “Doesn’t Move Me One Whit” - Greg Sargent
Senator Dianne Feinstein has already taken a hammering from Dems and health care reform advocates for casting doubts on the prospects of President Obama’s health care reform efforts. MoveOn, for instance, aired an ad against her in California, demanding she show some leadership and fight harder to get the president’s reform plan passed.
Obama Steers Health Debate Out of Capital - New York Times
With Democrats deeply divided over health legislation, President Obama is trying to enlist the nation’s governors and his own army of grass-roots supporters in a bid to increase pressure on lawmakers without getting himself mired in the messy battle playing out on Capitol Hill.
AP Interview: Snowe seeks bipartisan health bill - Associated Press
Sen. Olympia Snowe, a key figure in shaping federal health care legislation, said Monday that a government-run plan that would take effect if the private insurance market fails to deliver affordable coverage could bridge the partisan divide that threatens to derail President Barack Obama's efforts to reform the system.
Dems warn GOP not to overreach in health care - Associated Press
Mainstream Democrats close to Barack Obama are warning Republicans about insisting on too many changes to the president's health care overhaul, saying the Democratic-controlled Congress will move ahead without GOP input if they do.
This won't come as the slightest surprise to those versed in health care policy issues. But I fear it's only barely permeated the health care reform debate in the country, certainly in Washington. And that's this: the opposition to a so-called 'public option' comes almost entirely from insurance companies who have developed monopolies or near monopolies in particular geographic areas. And they don't want competition.
Note, I'm not saying more competition. I'm saying any competition at all. As Zack Roth explains in this new piece 94% of the health care insurance market is now under monopoly or near-monopoly conditions — the official term of art is 'highly concentrated'. In other words, there's no mystery why insurance costs keep going up even as the suck quotient rises precipitously. Because in most areas there's little or no actual competition.
That's exactly right. As President Obama pointed out last week, the arguments used by the industry and by conservatives are illogical at best and dishonest at worst:
If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care; if they tell us that they’re offering a good deal, then why is it that the government, which they say can’t run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That’s not logical.
They're not against the public plan because it would be bad for you and me, they just don't want the competition. Pretty self-serving, no?
As Health Care for America Now's report on affordability issues in the health system shows, Americans in every state face exploding health care costs. That's one reason why strong majorities of Americans, in poll after poll, say they want a strong public option.
Americans all over the country are speaking out, but the past week has seen major pressure on elected officials from out West. Reform advocates demonstrated in Las Vegas this weekend. Last week, California Senator Dianne Feinstein faced strong pushback from grassroots groups in response to her skepticism that the Senate will support a public option.
The Western state where grassroots pressure is most likely to move a skeptical Democrat, though, is Washington. A local outlet, The Columbian, says Washington's congressional delegation "has muscle to flex over health care":
Washington's top elected officials — Gov. Chris Gregoire and Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell — have key roles in the national debate.
Gregoire was among five governors who met with President Obama Wednesday to discuss the states' perspective on health care reform. She said later that she advocated "a hard look" at a government-run plan, but suggested that it could be run by the individual states — with the federal government footing the bill.
Cantwell and Murray serve on the two committees that are writing the Senate bill. Both will be in the state this week to talk health care with constituents.
Though Rep. Brian Baird does not serve on any House health care committee, he has a long-standing interest in the issue. In 2007, he introduced legislation that would de-link health coverage from employment and provide private health insurance coverage for every uninsured American.
All have offered measured support for creation of a government-run "public option" that would compete with private insurance plans, by far the most contentious issue in the health care debate.
Both Cantwell and Baird have come under fire from advocates of a public option for failing to take a stronger stand.
One example of the fire directed at Sen. Cantwell by Washingtonians is this piece in Seattle's The Stranger, bluntly titled "What's Up with Maria Cantwell?" Author Eli Sanders writes,
Seattle congressman Jim McDermott supports it. Washington senator Patty Murray wants it. So does President Barack Obama. So does the often conservative Seattle Times editorial page. So do 72 percent of Americans, according to a recent poll. So what's going on with Washington's junior senator, Maria Cantwell? Why doesn't she want Congress to include a public option—a new government-run health-care plan that will be available to everyone and will compete with private insurance companies to bring down costs—in its health-care-reform package?
"I don't think that's something we can get through the United States Senate," Cantwell told KUOW on June 22. It's an odd bit of circular logic: Because Cantwell can't yet count enough votes to pass the public option, she won't add her vote in favor of the public option—which, of course, makes it even harder to find enough votes to pass the public option.
Sanders goes on to share his frustration - and the frustration of a Washington small business owner he interviewed - at Cantwell's lack of clarity on her positions regarding a public plan or various proposed compromises.
For one more Washingtonian voice on health reform, I looked up the Seattle Times editorial that Sanders references. This line stood out to me:
After so many false starts and clever ads from opponents of health-care reform, the public is serious about change. Politicians notice.
Judging from the diversity and seriousness of the voices in Washington pushing for meaningful reform, if Cantwell hasn't yet noticed the hunger Washingtonians have for real change then she will soon. With nearly three-quarters of a million people in Washington uninsured, nearly one in ten unemployed, and health premiums rising over five times faster than median earnings in the state, it's clear Cantwell's constituents are suffering under the current system. With Murray and others in Washington's delegation on board for real reform, it's also clear that Cantwell will have plenty of company if she joins the ranks of reformers. Here's hoping she'll put a finger to the wind and feel the change that's taking place in Washington, in the West, and across the entire United States.
Just so we're clear, we know Republicans aren't going to vote for health reform that actually does anything right?
Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, said he was unaware of any House Republican inclined to support the Democrats’ proposed legislation.
Asked how many Senate Republicans could sign on to developing Democratic plans, Senator Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, author of a Republican alternative, said: “I think right now, none. Zero.”
So, the question becomes, how far are you willing to push this "bipartisanship" thing? Will you go for bipartisanship at the expense of getting a bill that does what President Obama and the American people want it to do - lower costs, make health care affordable, and increase coverage?
Because it's possible to get, say, one or two Republican votes in the Senate, but that might not even be enough to satisfy Republicans:
Hoping to lessen the divide, a handful of senators from the two parties who sit on the Finance Committee have been meeting privately, trying to find some consensus. But they left for the weeklong Fourth of July recess without any firm agreement, though they pledged to keep trying. Even a senator at the center of those talks among four Republicans and three Democrats, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the committee, indicated a reluctance to back any legislation unless it was constructed to attract more than a handful of Republicans.
“This is not going to be a bipartisan bill with just three or four Republicans,” Mr. Grassley said. “This is a bill that gets broad bipartisan support or it is not going to be a bipartisan bill.”
Now you tell me: What kind of bill do you think more than a few Republican Senators would vote for? Do you think it would do any good? Do you think it would be anything but the status quo? Do you think it would lower your costs instead of bailing out the insurance industry with taxpayer dollars?
If I had to guess, any bill Senate Republicans support would do nothing for the American people. The health care crisis is too great - bipartisanship isn't worth the price we'd pay.
Little Hope for G.O.P. to Support Health Bill - New York Times
Congressional Republicans are finding much to dislike in Democratic health care proposals, illustrating the immense difficulty Democrats face in fashioning an overhaul that can attract enough Republican support to be portrayed as bipartisan.
Unions demand public plan in healthcare bill - The Hill
A horde of union members gathered on Capitol Hill on Thursday demanding that a government-backed insurance program be included in healthcare reform legislation.
President Obama to host town hall on healthcare reform - Examiner
In another move that further underscores the importance his administration (and most Americans) attaches to the issue of our broken healthcare system, President Obama will on Wednesday host a town hall on healthcare reform in Annandale, Virginia. In the video (below) courtesy of the White House blog, the POTUS asks Americans to submit their questions via YouTube, a continuation of his policy of interacting personally with the people as a means of gauging their pulse on this most crucial of national issues.
Axelrod, Grassley Spar Over Bipartisan Health Care - Huffington Post
One of Barack Obama's chief advisers and one of the key Republicans in the Senate jousted on Sunday over what constitutes bipartisanship when it comes to health care legislation.
Senator Chuck Grassley, ranking Republican member of the Senate Finance Committee, has made a lot of noise about "bipartisanship" in health care reform. The kind of "bipartisanship" that Grassley has in mind, however, will not answer America's needs and demands. Nor does it represent what the people of Iowa want.
Iowans are deeply engaged in the debate over health reform. As town halls on health care take place throughout all of Iowa's 99 counties, state residents are engaging in "spirited debate" over the shape reform should take. With Health Care for America Now airing ads in Iowa in support of the public option and the national health care debate capturing daily front page headlines, the temperature of the fight is increasing - and the public option is winning among ordinary people. In April, polling indicated that a majority of Iowans favor the inclusion of a strong public option (h/t Think Progress) - as do over 70% of Americans. With President Obama (who won Iowa 54%-45%) speaking out for the public option and people across the country engaging in the fight, I can only imagine that Iowans' support for the public option is increasing by the day.
So when Grassley says that bipartisanship means nixing the public option, who does he speak for? Grassley may cast suspicion on the results of a recent New York Times poll, but does he doubt the clear trend in multiple national polls? Does he doubt the sincerity of his constituents when they say want real reform, not watered-down compromises? Rather it seems that voters should doubt the sincerity of Grassley's "bipartisanship" when he disagrees with Democrats on nearly every principle and detail.
Grassley is, in fact, one of the most problematic voices in the health care debate. TPM's Brian Beutler reports that Grassley and Schumer, a leading advocate of the public plan, are deeply at odds when it comes to reform:
Some conservative Democrats on the committee had "concerns" about Schumer's plan, and Republicans were generally opposed, which put a crimp in Baucus' plan to reach a bipartisan consensus–for all intents and purposes, to win the votes of ranking member Chuck Grassley and Olympia Snowe. That's what ultimately created the political space for Sen. Kent Conrad's plan to build a cooperative system, which Grassley said he was open to in principle.
There were just a couple significant problems with that.
First, the co-operative plan Grassley might support is not a plan Schumer would abide by. "If the co-op option remains unchanged from what it is now he would not support it and he would urge other Democrats not to support it as well," Schumer's spokesman Brian Fallon told me.
And by the same token, a co-operative plan Schumer might support isn't a plan Grassley could support. Conrad said earlier this week that he and Schumer don't really disagree too much on the potential shape of the co-operatives–but Grassley's still not on board.
So there's a bit of an impasse, and committee leaders are struggling to reconcile a number of seemingly incompatible desires: The desire to build a bill that stands a chance of surviving in the House; the desire to move a bill out of committee with some Republican support; and the desire not to get further behind schedule than the committee already is.
Grassley, it seems, wants others to compromise but will give little ground himself. At a time when Americans want leaders who will solve problems, that attitude places Grassley out of step with his constituents not just on the issue of health care, but on his entire approach to governance. Too bad Grassley has not, like his colleague Senator Tom Harkin, signed on to Health Care for America Now's principles. And too bad that Grassley won't listen to Iowans and play a more constructive role in the most important domestic debate of the year.