With all the media attention to health care this weekend, I wanted to write to you again to urge you to join Congressman Grijalva in taking a stand on the public option. President Obama apparently needs a little help maintaining his resolve on this issue, and at this point it looks like the only thing that will do it is a solid progressive bloc in the House.
The current version of the public option has already been compromised down to the point where it is weaker than it should be. Eliminating the public option completely will virtually guarantee that health reform will fail and Democrats will be blamed for it.
A mandate bill that does not include a public option will be a disaster for the Democrats. The insurance companies aren't going to suddenly start providing adequate care to the neediest people - they will do what they have always done, which is take the money and then deny care. Forcing the taxpayers to bail out these ripoff artists is even worse than the banker bailouts. Unlike the banker bailouts, every citizen who is mandated to buy private insurance will be able to see exactly how much they are being ripped off every time they write a check to the insurance company.
Co-ops can't get the job done. Who is going to fund the start-up of these co-ops? The states are broke. The opponents of a public option claim the federal government can't fund one start-up, so how are you going to fund fifty? And local co-ops are simply too small and weak to provide competition to the giant health insurance companies.
I realize the bill contains some regulations that are supposed to improve the private system, but I have no faith in that whatsoever. We are three years into a banking crisis, and the loss ratios are getting worse every time the FDIC closes down another bank. It is too late for tinkering at the margins. The only way the government is going to fix the system is by designing a single program that actually works. Anybody who doesn't want to get with the program can stick with the private insurers.
The Democrats would be better off to take a stand and get nothing than to pass a bill that forces individual consumers to write checks to private insurance companies that provide inadequate care.