Healthcare reform: For the people or the corporations?
"My worst fear is that they are going to pass something that they're going to claim is something good, and it's perhaps going to be even worse than what we have now," said the Bloomington Hospital Emergency Room doctor and advocate for a single-payer healthcare system.
Specifically, Stone is worried the public option that is supposed to offer competition to private insurance companies -- "the people who are going to the trough and sucking money out of our health care system" -- will instead enable them to insure the "healthy and the wealthy" and dump the poor and sick onto the public plan.
Eventually, such a system would inevitably fail, he said, and "the people will look at it and say, 'That was a failure. We're just going to dump the public option.'"
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Yup--This is what we all fear.
Speaking to Conyers' aide this afternoon was a bit depressing: Bright, articlulate guy telling me that at least getting a vote on a single payer bill would be a start. I asked about how many die each day from lack of good coverage or any insurance, and he had the stat on the tip of his tongue, 22,000 a year. About 60 people each day. Not sure what leap year does to the average.... Then he went on to say we should get something passed and then try to make it better.
I forgot to ask if that would be like No Child Left Behind? Medicare Part D? The Patriot Acts?
I couldn't get across that a bad plan which deeply disappointed people would make "improvements" very difficult. A bad "public option" will mean no trust in government run health care plans. Forgot to mention that a lousy plan, or no help, might mean a loss of majority status for the Dems.
Actually, maybe I did get through...but it's not good to criticize the president to a constituent.... He did say he thought the WH staff had not been clear and direct enough, which was hurting with the public's perception of the program. As in, what program?