Breaking: Carper On Board With Public Option!?
It’s the current lead story on Talking Points Memo:
Guess he’s been getting the messages left at his office. He still sounds a little weaselly about it, and decidedly unenthused, but it doesn’t sound like he’ll be off the reservation.
Tags: Carper, Health Insurance Reform
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This is very interesting news. I wonder if the pressure on Carper from constituents was part of it? There was a lot of anger at Carper at a lot of the meetings I’ve attended lately. He went from his staffer not even being sure that Carper would vote for cloture to a public option?
Whatever, keep making phone calls. It’s not over ’til it’s over.
Actually, Lizard, many people are in the “no health care for you” boat.
Are you one? If not, perhaps you’d like to pay for my son’s policy this year — which will NOT fund one dime of his health care for 13 months because everything is pre-existing.
You pay his premiums this year and subsidize our for-profit insurer; we’ll pick up the premium in month 13. Meanwhile, we’ll pay for his heathcare bills. We wouldn’t want to be unfair to you.
Deal?
The opt-out is a canny saddle point. It reminds me how, in his first year in the House, Carper helped prevent back-up withholding of interest and dividends, mandated in the previous year’s tax bill, from taking effect – by the breakthrough, now universally-accepted, alternative of 1099 reporting. It ended a big source of tax evasion, prevented a citizen’s uprising and reduced compliance costs.
If this goes through, it will be a success that will have, in JFK’s words, a thousand mothers. UI will be one of them.
Well, I didn’t do very much but John is right that a lot of people will be able to take credit for the success. It’s all those people who called and wrote to their Congresspeople and Senators telling them that they wanted the public option that is making this possible.
I’m just hoping now that progressives (hopefully) have gotten a taste of success that we will keep on pushing to get other priorities through Congress. Pressure works! But only if you really, really push.
Nice to know speed dial is good for something. 😉
A note of caution on the public option.
“Medicare (entire program). In 1967, the House Ways and Means Committee predicted that the new Medicare program, launched the previous year, would cost about $12 billion in 1990. Actual Medicare spending in 1990 was $110 billion—off by nearly a factor of 10.”
Mike Protack
The word on cable this morning was that the Senate’s version of a public health option is the opt out with a trigger.
That means that there is no actual support for actual challenge to the status quo-big insurance from Mr. Carper.
But, if it sounds good enough and gets the votes to close filibuster and a run on the floor, an eventual actual public option will appear on what crosses Obama’s desk.
According to the inflation calculator at the Dollar Times, $1 in 1967 bought the same amount as $3.83 in 1990, meaning that $12 billion estimate would have cost just under $46 billion in 1990 dollars. So they were off by a factor of about 2 1/2, not “more than 10.”
@Geezer – Protack would actually have to know something about, you know, public policy and economics, to understand that,