Speaker Nancy Pelosi: Public Option Best Way to Control Costs, Promote Competition
BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
September 3, 2009
Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi released the following statement on health insurance reform legislation pending before Congress:
“Any real change requires the inclusion of a strong public option to promote competition and bring down costs. If a vigorous public option is not included, it would be a major victory for the health insurance industry. [Bolded by BuzzFlash]
“President Obama has said that a public option will keep the insurance companies honest. If someone has a better idea for promoting competition and reducing health care costs, they should put it on the table. But for the past month, opponents of health insurance reform have demonstrated that they are afraid of the facts. They have only offered distortions, distractions and misrepresentations to try to kill this historic legislation.
“A bill without a strong public option will not pass the House. Eliminating the public option would be a major victory for the insurance companies who have rationed care, increased premiums and denied coverage.”
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The solution is Single Payer
Public Option is a distraction.
The solution is Single Payer.
Here are the facts.
Pelosi? Obama?
If Barack Obama doesn't fight strongly for the public option in healthcare reform, I'm for Nancy Pelosi to run for the presidency in 2012. She speaks for the Democratic Party that must have an injection of testerone (if Obama doesn't have it) to combat the destructiveness of rabid, radical ranting, anti-patriotic (former definition) domestic terrorists who speak for an offshore nation opposed to the resurrection of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
So let's see Obama's change in America, his frequent calls of alarm, of it's precipitous decline to insignificance, will match his campaign rhetoric. He may yet show us that campaign promises mean something......
@ Mike5000 - The Solution is Single Payer
I agree that single payer is the optimum solution, but we also need to acknowledge reality. Had President Obama proposed such a plan, it would have been DOA.
Truthfully, no one in Congress wants to touch healthcare. Not only are there consequences with their constituents regarding this, but the insurance and pharm industries have lined their pockets and have a strong, powerful lobby.
I do not know President Obama's future plans with healthcare reform. But I am hoping that the public option is one small step in a series to reform this mess and ultimately move us to Universal Healthcare. So I don't think public option is a distraction. At this juncture, it's a necessity.
Really, the solution is Single Payer
The corporate media doesn't want you to know but the solution really is Single Payer.
Single Payer is far more popular than Individual Mandate (except among health mafia tycoons). That's why the health mafia is spending hundreds of millions to push "Obama-care".
HR3200 is horribly regressive. The tax-penalty-but-no-health-care provision is particularly hard on the Democratic base. Passage of HR3200 would be viewed as outright treachery by the people who actually go door to door and get out the vote. HR3200 is about the only thing that would be guaranteed to resurrect the Rethug Party.
Single Payer is enormously popular (90-95% approval) wherever it has been enacted. Enactment of Single Payer would pay political dividends to the Democratic Party for decades.
But more important than any of that - Health Care is a Human Right. Tens of thousands of lives every year are on the line. Single Payer is the civil rights battle of our generation. This is a fight that we must win.