Briefly: Health Care Reform: Week of July 5
6 Items
David Culver, ed. Evergreene Digest
Nick Anderson
Conrad's Co-op Proposal the big threat to health care reform, Patrick Schmitt, MoveOn.org
Tell your senators that anything other than a strong public health insurance option is unacceptable—including the weak co-op proposal.
The Democratic Party, blowing a once-unbeatable lead, P.M. Carpenter, BuzzFlash
All this, despite former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean's acute, astute warning, which I quoted in yesterday's (June 30) column: "I think it's going to be a catastrophic problem for the Democratic Party if they can't get this [public option] bill out."
Health Care Showdown, Paul Krugman, New York Times
"For the record, neither regional health cooperatives nor state-level public plans, both of which have been proposed as alternatives [to the public option], would have the financial stability and bargaining power needed to bring down health care costs."
Un-Cooperative: The Trouble with Conrad's Compromise, Jacob Hacker, The New Republic
"[The co-op plan is]...not going to have the ability to be a cost-control backstop, much less a benchmark for private plans, because they are not going to have the reach or authority to implement innovative delivery and payment reforms."
Why We Need a Public Health-Care Plan, Robert B. Reich, The Wall Street Journal
"...cooperatives would lack the scale and authority to negotiate lower rates with drug companies and other providers, collect wide data on outcomes, or effect major change in the system."
The jagged little pill that is media health care coverage, Media Matters
This week (June 14-20), the Congressional Budget Office released a partial analysis of the Senate health committee's draft health care reform bill. And immediately, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, David Brooks, USA Today, The New York Times, and ABC's Jake Tapper all misinterpreted its findings, claiming that the legislation would cost a trillion dollars while still leaving nearly 40 million Americans uninsured. When House Majority Leader John Boehner advanced similar fallacies on The Situation Room, Wolf Blitzer didn't challenge him.
