We need a full public option

Jay, I'm very glad that you and Jim Messina are excited about the public option and the President too. (0.00 / 0)

I went to the Obama Organize For America meeting at the library on Saturday at 12  and there were maybe 35 people there total, of which 6 or 7 were paid organizers and the rest were grass roots volunteers.

The only problem I see is that the volunteers aren't very excited about the public option. If i had to guess (and i do) i'd say that from 3/4 to 4/5 of the civilians just plain honest to god want single payer and they really don't want that great public option that all the paid organizers are so glad is finally on the table.

I arrived about 10 minutes after twelve and took a seat at the nearest table. Every single person at that table was for single payer and was like, who do they think they are fooling?

Is it just me? Am I biased about this? Am I missing something here?

Matt was there? What do you think Matt. Was the energy for a public option palpable? Or not?

And does anybody have a plan that takes this into account? Or is anybody even willing to acknowledge that this may be a problem with a top down back room negotiated health care reform strategy that isn't very popular?

Or is the plan to just shut up and drive kind of like the Hillary campaign did for so long until it was too late?

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by: Steve W. @ Mon Jun 08, 2009 at 07:02:57 AM UTC

I should probably write a post about this... (0.00 / 0)

I realize there's a lot of energy right now around single-payer health care. But politically, there's no support for it.

IMHO, if we get a robust public option, that's a damn good improvement over what we have now. If I were an organizer in the single-payer movement, I'd be busting tail right now to channel that energy towards pushing for that public option, because that's where the political fight is going to be.

In the end, I think we all want the same thing: affordable, accessible, and universal health care. But what I don't see from the single-payer crowd is a strategy to get there. The House bill for single-payer HC didn't seem very realistic, and had zero support. Already the right is slamming health care reform advocates and the Baucus plan for its cost: does the single-payer movement have a plan for paying for the transition? I realize over the long-term the system pays for itself; but this year, now, there'll be questions of deficit spending and taxes.

As we all know, Americans love public services but hate paying for them. That's how the GOP has cruised to power the last two decades, by giving them both, and driving the country to the brink of financial disaster. Explain to me how you'd counter their rhetoric and win popular support. Remember, so far the insurance industry and Big Pharm hasn't even bothered to counter single-payer rhetoric. How will you deal with the public relations onslaught if single-payer gets real attention?

Sure, we've got a poll or two that shows public support for a single-payer system. But that's without any concerted effort to disparage the system from those that would benefit from its demise. You lose single-payer now that way, you probably lose it forever.

Meanwhile, we have the public option on the table, now. A robust public option will help millions. A robust public option will allow Americans to do the jobs they want, start that business they've been thinking about. A robust public option will allow small businesses to be competitive with big corporations in attracting quality workers. And a robust public option is a real possibility. If we all work together and pressure the "moderates" in Congress.

Me? I like it because it would make a huge difference for me and my family now. So I'm personally invested in a public option. If single-payer folks take Mark T's advice and sabotage health care reform, a lot of folks like me will suffer. Seems a little crazy to go all-in on single-payer when there's no political support for it, no plan to bring it about, and a fickle public even unsure of what single-payer health care is...

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by: Jay Stevens @ Mon Jun 08, 2009 at 16:19:46 PM UTC

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If I were an organizer (0.00 / 0)

I'd be busting butt to get some consideration of Bernie Sanders' S.898 to allow 5 states to start experimenting with true single payer reform.

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by: JC @ Mon Jun 08, 2009 at 16:55:42 PM UTC

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You want stratedgy? Ok. First of all, you need as many people as possible working with you. You do that by giving them a (0.00 / 0)

say in the process, and if what they say isn't your strategy, you go with it any way. You don't pretend that they don't exist. We've had people working for single payer since Trumen. In that much time there is a rather large group of people who have come to the conclusion that a single payer system is a proven way to contain costs, is a proven way to insure that everyone has access to quality health care regardless of there income or employment status, and can choose their own care providers. They don't have to go change their paper work and go through income verification three times a year if their income or work changes three times a year.

It's obvious to everyone that shortly after the polls closed in November that a group of power people got together and threw single payer under the bus. If you read the Obama transition report on the health care hearings, you will see that nobody even bothered to ask, in order to find out, if people supported single payer. Yet, as the report states, some people did in fact speak up and say they did support single payer. We will never know how many or what percent of the people who cared enough to show up on winter nights wanted single payer because the report didn't bother to quantify those people. They didn't count, see?

Then one of the power players repeatedly made the comment that Americans don't want single payer, and the local newspaper showed that Senator up as a liar. In fact people attended meeting with staff people from that Senators office yet he decided those single payer people don't count.

The White House acted in kind, again.  When they held a much publicized  and very important summit meeting on Health Care Reform, single payer people didn't count. We had to beg and demonstrate to get a couple of last minute seats.

Then doctors and nurses were arrested trying to be able to present testimony at a Senate Hearing as the Chair laughed that they needed more police, ha ha.

Now, Baucus, the Unions, the White House, the Dem elected officials want the single payer people to get their back. Everyone sees that the health care reform being offered is a top down elitist back room solution that has no track record of containing costs, that will have all kinds of means testing, that is still job based,  and that is essentially, at it's core, Romney Care II. If only the single payer people had gotten a seat at the table, gotten a chance to present our case, gotten the chance to have our plan compared contrasted, analyzed by the GAO for cost and benefit in comparison to the other plans, and we couldn't muster the votes in the Congress, then we could have gracefully, and together with our partners, moved on to our back-up plan. We would have owned it, not felt like it was shoved down our throats.

As I recall, when I mentioned this to people at the meetings back last Winter, at the Obama inauguration, at various venues, they were sympathetic, but not really interested. They already had their statedgy and marching orders and were working their plan.

My friend in Oregon who was the host of an Obama meeting on Sat told me the same thing happened there, but worse. The people voted to raise money and to send it to Physicians For a National Health Program (PNHP) whose leaders Baucus had arrested.

I suggest you take JC's advice and quick. Sorry about your health care Jay, I really am, And I'm sorry about mine too. But you can't turn a sow's ear into a silk purse.

People want real change, not manufactured change. They want authenticity.

Maybe i'm wrong. Maybe this can be pulled off just the way it was planned. I don't know. I can't say I'm very confident. But I don't count, so maybe it doesn't matter.

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by: Steve W. @ Mon Jun 08, 2009 at 19:14:15 PM UTC

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