Progressive Block Leader Grijalva: No Public Option Means No Health Care Reform

By Big Tent Democrat, Section Other Politics
Posted on Thu Sep 03, 2009 at 12:58:30 PM EST
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Via Brian Beutler, the Chairman of the Progressive Caucus Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) said:

I truly expect the President to live up to the promises he has made to America about real change and that he truly stands for uninsured Americans and working families that need and are demanding a choice of a competitive public option when he addresses Wednesday's joint session of Congress.

Without a public option, this bill is not real reform. Real reform would lower and contain health care costs, precisely what inclusion of a public option would achieve. Without a robust public option, reform will enrich pharmaceutical and insurance companies because it will lack any significant competition and incentives to drive down health care costs for consumers.

I wonder if Beltway Dems are paying attention. Grijalva is saying that President Snowe's health care reform is not worth capitulating for. No bill without a robust public option.

Speaking for me only

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Progressive Block Leader Grijalva: No Public Option Means No Health Care Reform | 23 comments (23 topical)

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Oh (5.00 / 1) (#1)
by Ga6thDem on Thu Sep 03, 2009 at 01:06:51 PM EST

hurray! Hurray! Is all I can say!!! Well I'm with him 1005 on that after reading that article about Snowe!! Thank heavens there is somebody who doesnt think that all us peons should be forced to buy junk insurance.

Oops (none / 0) (#2)
by Ga6thDem on Thu Sep 03, 2009 at 01:07:22 PM EST

I got so excited I forgot to use the % sign after the 100.


I've said this before (none / 0) (#16)
by moderateman on Thu Sep 03, 2009 at 01:57:20 PM EST

This is why the only chance anything will pass is if you add tort reform. Everyone made fun of me last time, but that's going to look a lot more attractive in the coming weeks when it's public option + tort reform vs. meaningless piece of crap that gets labeled as reform.

now that kennedy's out, you need at least 1 republican on board.


: Find me one Republican (5.00 / 4) (#19)
by Steve M on Thu Sep 03, 2009 at 02:16:36 PM EST

who says they'll support it if tort reform is added. Bill Bradley does not count as a Republican for this purpose.
I don't see any negotiation at all taking place from the Republican side, let alone a demand for tort reform.

It's a good thing (5.00 / 3) (#3)
by Steve M on Thu Sep 03, 2009 at 01:13:41 PM EST

that the Progressive Caucus does not subscribe to the "make me do it" school of thought, because there sure aren't that many people making them do it. Kudos to them for doing it anyway.

I don't know (5.00 / 3) (#7)
by MO Blue on Thu Sep 03, 2009 at 01:26:12 PM EST

There has been some fairly good organizing going on to put pressure on them to stick to their position. FDL's (and others) effort to get a firm commitment in writing from individual members of the group and organizing campaign contribution has been one of the better efforts I've seen coming out of the blogs.

Then you have the single voices crying out from the wilderness like me putting pressure on our Representatives who are member of the caucus.

Just hope there are enough of us to make a difference.


Well (5.00 / 2) (#8)
by Steve M on Thu Sep 03, 2009 at 01:28:57 PM EST

you're right that I am overstating. The unions have been making a lot of noise and there are still some Democrats out there that listen to the unions, imagine that. I am just frustrated with the folks who have no clue about how to negotiate, or even that negotiation is important in politics.


: Boy do I share your frustration (5.00 / 2) (#11)
by MO Blue on Thu Sep 03, 2009 at 01:42:15 PM EST

I am also somewhat encouraged that blogs like FDL are getting better at organizing on important issues. The noise from the unions is also encouraging and I'm hoping that they stick to their guns.
Then again I need things to be encouraged about when I read statements like this by Grijalva:

"I have grave concerns about calls reportedly being made from the Administration to health care reform advocacy organizations supporting the choice of a public option insurance plan," Grijalva said.
Grijalva said the White House is telling health care reformers, "they will cease supporting the public option portion of the upcoming health care reform legislation"

In case you haven't guessed this is a very important issue to me. I just hope that Progressive Caucus, unions and health care reform advocacy organizations stand firm.

Again, more 'change' is more of the same (5.00 / 3) (#21)
by FoxholeAtheist on Thu Sep 03, 2009 at 03:14:55 PM EST

A bad bill or no bill...both mean that it's business as usual for private insurers and the entire corporate health care complex. The question is whether that is the outcome Obama and Rahm et al have been aiming for all along.

I'd certainly say so, especially in view of Greenwald's 8/27 column:

the strategy of the White House from the start has been to ensure that the health care and drug industries are pleased so that they continue to use their ample largesse to fund the Democrats rather than get behind a GOP takeover in 2010; and that Emanuel built his career and power base by controlling the Congress through the expansion of the Blue Dogs and other "centrist" and "conservative" members and by pleasing corporate donors, thus rendering the image of him as a helpless, passive bystander in the health care debate transparent fiction.
More important than all of that is the fact that there is one principal reason that Blue Dogs and "centrists" exert such dominance within the Party: because the Party leadership, led by the Obama White House, wants it that way and works hard to ensure it continues.
When the White House genuinely wants a bill to pass -- rather than paying irrelevant lip service to it -- they know how to apply pressure on the defiant members of Congress:

The White House is playing hardball with Democrats who intend to vote against the supplemental war spending bill, threatening freshmen who oppose it that they won't get help with reelection and will be cut off from the White House, Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) said Friday.
"We're not going to help you. You'll never hear from us again," Woolsey said the White House is telling freshmen.

Not only are such threats never issued to "centrists" and Blue Dogs who are supposedly impeding the President's health care agenda, but the White House does everything it can to protect those ostensible obstructionists and further entrench them in power.
Isn't all of this fairly strong evidence that the White House knew, accepted and likely even desired from the start that -- despite the President's public assurances to progressives -- the "public option," understandably despised by the insurance industry, would be dropped from the bill?

Still, all power to single-payer/public option advocates who soldier on against such odds.

Can't advocate effectively for any issue (none / 0) (#22)
by MO Blue on Thu Sep 03, 2009 at 03:21:50 PM EST

unless you are willing to go down swinging.

Have to keep getting your position out there and stay in peoples faces. Need more people to soldier on regardless of the odds, not less.


: Agreed, but I get the impression (5.00 / 2) (#23)
by FoxholeAtheist on Thu Sep 03, 2009 at 03:32:46 PM EST

that there are some prospective activists who are just now coming to terms with the dawning realization that Obama is evidently working for the other side.

this person (5.00 / 1) (#4)
by Capt Howdy on Thu Sep 03, 2009 at 01:14:01 PM EST

deserves our support

Grijalva (5.00 / 1) (#5)
by NealB on Thu Sep 03, 2009 at 01:14:28 PM EST

Had to look him up. He's the Rep for southern AZ bordering Mexico. Solid Democratic district since at least 2000.

So (5.00 / 1) (#6)
by TeresaInSnow2 on Thu Sep 03, 2009 at 01:26:06 PM EST

is this the madman position or the line in the sand?

"Robust" means what again? (5.00 / 2) (#9)
by lambert on Thu Sep 03, 2009 at 01:31:18 PM EST

The public option in HR3200 is going to have 9 or 10 million enrollees by 2019 according to the CBO scoring. That may be "robust" -- at least, it's as robust as anything else on offer, which is to say, about as "robust" as a wet noodle -- but it sure isn't enough to be competitive with the insurance companies.

Rather than break out the pom poms because a "progressive" used words that appeal to us, how about we look at the details of the proposal?

I mean, is Grijalva planning to improve HR3200?

If so, why not just accept the Weiner amendment to replace the text of HR3200 with the text of HR676 (single payer) -- and go with a solution that's actually proven to save lives and cut our costs in half?

I think the public option (5.00 / 2) (#13)
by waldenpond on Thu Sep 03, 2009 at 01:45:53 PM EST

is the great break through for incrementalism. The categories in the pool will grow just like social security. Increases to the pool can be made before Obama is even out of office simply by raising the number of employees in small businesses that are eligible and increases in the income levels that qualify. Match that with adjustments to medicaid programs. The Republicans know this is open to incrementalism, it's why Repubs want to kill it.


: I don't think we have that kind of time. (5.00 / 1) (#15)
by masslib on Thu Sep 03, 2009 at 01:49:37 PM EST

SS started out with millions of enrollees, not a paltry ten at very best. This plan actually grows the market of private insurers. Further, if it can not compete it won't drown out private insurers. There are better ways to do this incrementally, like that quaint old idea of expanding Medicare a generation.

: Before anyone gets all tingly over the (5.00 / 3) (#20)
by Anne on Thu Sep 03, 2009 at 02:32:18 PM EST

possibilities of the "public option" in any of the forms currently proposed, let's remember that when this all first started, Kathleen Sebelius stepped up almost the moment after the first person raised the specter of any reform plan being a bridge to single-payer and assured the insurance industry and the GOP that reform would be written to foreclose that possibility. No one from this administration ever teased reform as a path to what Obama has openly admitted would be the best plan: single-payer. Single-payer advocates were not allowed a seat at the table, no one in the administration wanted to hear from them, they were not even permitted, until all the water had passed under the bridge, to even testify at any hearings. So, let's stop dreaming that the reform that is on the table is designed to be built upon and improved when it isn't even set to begin implementation until 2013, with another 4 years to get all the elements established.
It's not public - because all of "the public" will not be allowed to enroll. And is an option that isn't an option for everyone still an option?
I find it hugely frustrating to still read and hear people whipping the public option as if it is actually what people have been waiting and praying for, and equally frustrating that so many people have still not done the research that would have set them straight on what it will mean if any of these so-called "public options" ever come into being. Junk insurance, balkanized exchanges that can and will vary from state to state, administered not by the government but by non-profit arms of private insurance companies approved by HHS - it goes on and on and on, and yet...people are still acting as if the public option they might be losing is equivalent to a Medicare-style program. Or the beginning of one. It's not.
Honest to God, Democrats have had years and years to be planning for this time, when we had solid majorities in Congress and there was a Democrat in the WH, and we could do what needed to be done, finally. There's just no excuse for the garbage being shilled, for the lack of leadership, for the panicked, we-have-to-pass-something hysteria. Flogging the public option that is in these proposals is only putting a stamp of approval on the new, It's Better Than Nothing Party.
Maybe that works for some of you, but it's not workin' for me.

: The Republicans know (none / 0) (#17)
by Capt Howdy on Thu Sep 03, 2009 at 01:58:32 PM EST

precisely. but there are solid arguments to make based on how much SS and Medicare are loved and depended on now and who opposed them from the start.
I dont understand why they are not being made.

Given the extremely poor showing (5.00 / 2) (#10)
by inclusiveheart on Thu Sep 03, 2009 at 01:39:23 PM EST

on the part of the Democratic "centerists" and of course the GOP in this debate to thus far, I think that no bill would probably be better than any of the junk they've been putting forward. Remember that if there is a public option included, the next BIG battle will be whether or not it actually will work. I've seen a lot of poison pills and otherwise misguided thinking during this debate. I really worry about whether or not these people will completely mess this up - proving to those who believe government (and promote the notion) that they are correct.

If this is a line in the sand, (none / 0) (#12)
by Cards In 4 on Thu Sep 03, 2009 at 01:45:27 PM EST

HCR is not going to come up again for another 20 years. There is no way the Senate will pass it with a public option even if they try the reconciliation route.

The thing is this is all the dems fighting among themselves in the House and not working with the Senate dems. Obama gets his share of blame for sitting back and letting Congress do their thing. The line in the sand should have been drawn by him back in January instead of having to do another speech to the nation next week. The only ones he needs to talk to are in the senate and have Ds after their names.

The problem is the way Congress works involves listening to their contributors to make sure everyone gets something. And that's why you get these 1,000 page bills that no one can explain in the town hall meetings.

: Don't agree (5.00 / 2) (#18)
by MO Blue on Thu Sep 03, 2009 at 02:06:45 PM EST

I am of the opinion that no legislation is better than what Donald describes:

Otherwise, I'm deathly afraid that all we'll end up with is a robust and unfunded public mandate, coupled with worthless insurance exchange and vague promises of better behavior from people with a noted history of crossing their fingers behind their back.
The current system is unsustainable unless the Dems prop it up with government funds.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported this week, "Americans with employer-sponsored health insurance can expect to pay a bigger share of health care costs this year than ever before -- 41 percent." For families in Minneapolis, they estimate, that will come to almost $7,000 out of pocket per family. That's the world we live in now. We also know what the world will look like tomorrow, as the Center for American Progress has put together a projection based on Congressional Budget Office data: average premiums will rise more than 70% in the next 8 years, even faster than they have the previous 8 years. Snowe may think employer-based insurance can turn this runaway train around voluntarily, but a Hewlitt Associates survey says as many as 20% of businesses are contemplating dropping health benefits in the next 3 to 5 years if this trend continues. So, good luck with that. link
Once the real cost of health insurance impacts more of the population (3-5 years), it is my opinion that they will demand REAL reform of the system.

why public option? (none / 0) (#24)
by diogenes on Thu Sep 03, 2009 at 07:05:15 PM EST

There's no public option for car insurance or life insurance. There's only public flood insurance because the govt wants to underprice the real cost of insuring people who insist on building in flood plains.
The fact is that public insurance (Medicaid and Medicare) are just checkwriting machines which pay for any procedure billed for without care management. They only seem to save money because they pay much less per procedure than private insurers do.