Last night came a confused mass of reports trumpeting "the public option is dead" (AP), followed by "the public option is NOT dead" (Reuters). Senator Bernie Sanders of VT was unable to call the PO live or dead BUT did say a) the Gang of 10 piece of work is being scored by the CBO, b) the PO in the Senate bill was pretty watered-down anyway and c) various government health care programs already in place (like MedicARE (for seniors) and MedicAID (for the poor)) could well be expanded, bringing many millions of Americans into "government-run/socialist/fascist/closet Kenyan" publicly funded healthcare.
As someone who could directly benefit from this proposal I am opposed.
As I understand it (subject to much more detail and analysis forthcoming in the next few hours and days) one part of the reform would LOWER the enrollment age for Medicare from the current 65 to 55 (a couple months ago I heard Howard Dean even flirting with age 50.) People aged 55-64 number something like 10% of the population, so in round numbers, about 30 million. (Full disclosure: I am currently 55 and ready to improve my health coverage, so this would affect me directly.)
Now a LOT of these people have health care because a very large chunk of these people work, so they are covered by their employer's insurance plan. But some fraction (lets pull a number from a hat and say 1/5, so 6 million) are not covered or are covered inadequately. Presumably these folks would directly benefit from the chance to be covered by Medicare. Furthermore, if the reform would be done right (a HUGE "if", given the workings of Congress) employees who are currently covered by private insurance could also opt into Medicare. This would put some serious pressure on private health insurers in the form of competition and could (again, if done right) have a nice effect on costs. (Mind you any such lowered premiums would benefit the business offering insurance to their employees. The business would then have to decide what to do with company funds NOT being spent on healthcare premiums. "Tiffany! It looks like we CAN afford the second Bentley after all!")
Finally, a non-controversial portion of both the House and Senate bills would RAISE the age for children to be covered under their parents' health coverage to 26 or 27 from the current 18, or 22 if a full-time student. Numbers are hard to come by but certainly several million young Americans would be covered this way (albeit via existing private plans and with no real change via competition. OTOH insurance companies know that as a group, people in their 20's have few health problems (compared to, say, those in their 70s) and have few claims that cost insurers money, so all in all insuring these folks is a bread-and-butter play for insurers.)
"But what about everyone else in between?" you ask. "Only the crumbs that might fall off of expanded MedicAID programs would give any help."
Rightly you ask!
At the top of your lungs with furious outrage you ask!
All the talk about "another step forward", "we can fix it/expand it later", "take what we can get", "politics is the art of the possible", DOES NOT HELP those age 28 to 50/55. That would be the generation born primarily between 1961 and 1982, GenX.
GenX is the latest of America's hard-luck generations (the prior one, nicknamed the "Lost Generation," was cursed to hit their peak earning years beginning in 1929 and during the 1930's.) In honor of Generation X the Pill was invented (1959, on sale a few years later), condom use expanded (1965, Griswold v. Connecticut) and Roe v. Wade (1973) promulgated. In other words this is a generation people took Pills, wore condoms and had abortions NOT TO HAVE. (Some estimates reckon GenX would be 1/3 (!) larger had these 3 events not happened.) Lost Generation's WC Fields remembered a phrase from his youth for this attitude: "Go away, kid, ya bother me!"
When wages hit their plateau beginning in 1973 the only way to keep family incomes rising was for Mom to go to work, so the message came down, "You're on your own, kid." The number of states with no-fault divorce laws went from 0 in 1969 to 45 in 1975, so tons of these children came down to strangers at the breakfast table. ("Who did Dad bring home from the fern bar?" Who is Mom's boyfriend of the month?")
This generation went to crumbling public schools ("A Nation at Risk" report, 1982). To keep them crumbling California passed the notorious Proposition 13 in 1978, freezing property tax rates (the main source of school funding) and touching off a wave of "me too" property tax freezes across the country. (California schools have never recovered; California, the home of Silicon Valley, Apple, Intel, Cisco, Google, and all things dot.com, spends less per student on technology than does Mississippi! Way to go, Howard Jarvis.) "You're on your own, kid."
When the Xers started joining the workforce through the 1980's, the Reagan assault on unions had begun and "2-tier" wage systems were moving into place (guess who got the lower tier.) Pension benefits from companies ("defined benefit"--company took the risk) were being aggressively replaced by IRAs/401k/403b plans ("defined contribution"--YOU take the risk.) Jobs were off-shored and out-sourced at the (GenX) entry level and benefits curtailed from such jobs.
In the 1990's and on into the 00's decade military volunteers from this generation were sent to Iraq (twice) and Afghanistan. They were indifferently paid and sent for repeated tours without rest. Often they went with inferior body armor while the military forbade them from providing better on their own. Their vehicles were vulnerable and forced them to improvise their own protection from IED's ("hillbilly armor"). When they were wounded they were treated at times in neglected hospitals (Walter Reed). When they came home dead they were kept out of the public eye (Dover Airbase off-limits to press for 8 years) and ignored by Boomer-age officials (Bush, Cheney, and the other bastards.) "You're on your own kid."
All this has been a life-long cruelty to this generation. (The New Deal of the 1930s likewise aimed programs directly at the favored youth of the day (The GI generation: CCC and WPA for 2) or for the Idealist/Boomer aged of the day (The Missionary generation: Social Security, even though the elderly had paid in little or none.) But the middle-aged "Lost" got only the scraps they could garner from general programs like the REA or FHLB.)
And NOW the US Senate is poised to tell this insanely hard-working, trashed and dis-respected generation: "work your asses off with no good health care options so those (Boomers) older than you can get covered, and that favored generation of Millennials younger than you (born 1983 to 2004) can stay covered."
Is that what is happening here? Is this being seriously proposed? This is not only unfair and unjust.
This is cruelty.
This is demonic.
This should be stopped.
Don't tell this generation again, "You're on your own." Enough.
Please, people in Congress, get this one right. Don't beat down this generation any more.
Shalom.