Conrad's co-op proposal the big threat to health care reform.
Tell your senators that anything other than a strong public health insurance option is unacceptable—including the weak co-op proposal.
Patrick Schmitt, MoveOn.org
President Obama's public health insurance option—the key to lowering costs and helping cover everyone—is in danger. The threat? The so-called co-op plan.
If you have no idea what that means, don't worry. This stuff is confusing and changing quickly. So here are three great articles laying out the case for the public health insurance option, and against the co-op plan.
After you read one or all of them, can you call senators? Tell them that anything other than a strong public health insurance option is unacceptable—including the weak co-op proposal.
After you call, report your call so we can track our progress.
- "Health Care Showdown," by Paul Krugman, Nobel prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist
- "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," by Jacob Hacker, author of Health Care for America and U.C. Berkeley political scientist
- "[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," by Robert B. Reich, former secretary of labor and professor at the University of California
- "...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."
Experts agree: the co-op doesn't cut it. But some senators are in danger of bargaining away our best chance at health care reform in a decade.
Can you call your right away? After you call, let us know how it went.
Thanks for all you do.
Related:
Dems: Obama Open To Dropping Public Option, Rachel Weiner, The Huffington Post
Obama is "open to alternatives" to a new government insurance program in order to get legislation overhauling the health-care system to his desk, said Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota.
Obama Running Scared, Helen Thomas, Common Dreams
Obama clearly has no stomach for the political battle that any single-payer plan would ignite. So he's endorsed a step that would allow the government to provide health insurance coverage -- not health care -- to eligible people
