Russ Feingold: What Liberals Want is a Single-Payer System
By Heather Sunday Oct 25, 2009 2:00pm
From Face the Nation, Russ Feingold has to remind Bob Schieffer that the "public option" is not a "liberal" position on health care reform. It's a compromise. What liberals want is single-payer.
SCHIEFFER: Let’s talk a little bit about health care. Where do you think health care reform stands in the Senate right now? I know you want the public option, the government-run insurance program, like Medicare for older people. The majority leader now seems inclined to include that in the bill that he’s going to bring to the floor. Do you think that has any chance at this point of passage? Because for a while now, people have been saying the votes are just not there in the Senate.
FEINGOLD: Well, I want to give my majority leader, Harry Reid credit for seriously considering putting this public option in there. I think it’s very important. It’s a sign of strong leadership on his part that he has the guts to do that. Because the American people are for some alternative that will create some competition for the abuses of the insurance industry. So I believe that there’s a good chance it will be in the bill that comes before us in the Senate. I think we have some chance of prevailing in the Senate on it and if we don't I think there's a chance it will come through the House. So I’m becoming increasingly optomistic that we will have a health care bill that will not frighten the American people, that they'll be able to see as reasonable -- it's not a complete government take over health care, but will provide an option for those that don’t have health care or are unhappy with their health care to do something else and I'm frankly getting excited that we may have some momentum for something very positive.
SCHIEFFER: As I understand it, the liberals want the, want the public option. The conservatives don’t. Do you think there’s a possibility that this thing may just end up in a log jam, that liberals won’t vote for this plan without the public option and the conserves won’t vote for it if it includes the public option, and so we wind up with nothing instead of something?
FEINGOLD: Well, that could happen, but the truth is, what liberals want is a single-payer system. Medicare for everybody. So the idea of a public option is really a very moderate idea. Within the current context of a continuing private system, it’s a tough one to swallow for many people who want a single-payer system. So this is a very reasonable approach that I would think people who are both conservative and liberal and in the middle would say, let’s try this; let’s see if this can control and bring under some reason of measure that the insurance companies could finally improve their act.
That is exactly what -- what this is. It is not a liberal or left-wing concept at all.
SCHIEFFER: But could you yourself vote for health care reform that did not include the public option, if it came to that?
FEINGOLD: To me, that would be a very serious gap and it would be a very strong reason not to support it. We need a public option. We need something that will cause some control over the abuses that have occurred in the insurance industry.
SCHIEFFER: Would we be better off without anything if it did not include a public option?
FEINGOLD: At this point, I think we need to do something fundamental. When people start talking about having a trigger that we might have a public option in two or three years, to me, that’s just an invitation to the insurance industry to manipulate the situation for a couple of years just so they can avoid the trigger and so they can convince members of Congress to delay it again.
We need to do something now. These costs are overwhelming people. They are -- the actual -- the current system is actually a system of rationing through the insurance industry. We need to take action now.
SCHIEFFER: All right. Well, Senator, thank you so much for joining us this morning.
Login or Register to post comments.
That is what we need single payer!
republicanism/conservatism is a mental illness!
physicians run their own practices and set their own fees.
Compete for customers sort of speak?
Beyond the MD and family practitioner into the specialties, the healthcare technologies are far too expensive for such a proposal to work.
Single-payer is fine for me.
there are so many obvious holes in that idea that swiss cheese is jealous.
The Republicans are reduced to one liners. Bad one liners. Old one liners.
They know not how to legislate.
To entrust Republicans with the government now would be madness.
To entrust government to the Republicrats is madness.
HR 676 single payer is the minimum we should accept.
The other proposals are massive corporate giveaways that will not reign in costs and will guarantee the booming profits of the for-profit health insurance parasites.
I'm thankful that FINALLY someone made it clear to the viewers that the support of "the public option' is a TOTAL compromise to most Democrats!!!
To "liberals" (I prefer to be called a "Progressive"...thank you very much), the public option is a total sell out by the so-called Progressive Caucus. They supposedly are Single Payer supporters to the core.
If that is true they should be ADAMANT that they will stop a piece of BAD legislation that is discriminatory and probably un-Constitutional. They have the votes to stop it. But do they have the courage of their convictions??? Or are they more worried about pissing off the DNC and about their re-election campaigns next year???
If health care reform, even with a "public option" passes Congress, there will be court challenges to the fact that Congress is MANDATING that the public pay private money to for-profit corporations.
My hope is that The Progressive Caucus will vote down any bill that is regressive and is yet one more carrot thrown to corporate America, because they KNOW that Single Payer, as Alice suggests, is THE MINIMUM WE SHOULD ACCEPT.
My feeling is that NO BILL would be better than a BAD BILL. Give the Progressives a few more years to educate the public. Let's see the Congressional Budget Office's scoring of H.R. 676 - Single Payer. Let's have the debate on the House floor.
Who knows??? If the media is even slightly fair and the public gets wind of how great Single Payer would be, the Congress might just get inundated with calls to vote "YES"!!!! for Single Payer!!!
with a real crummy public option tossed in to just shut people up.
and the public gets wind of how great....
Abby, I hate to be a pain in the ass but do you ever go to right wing sites? It doesn't matter how good single payer would be for everyone, what matters is that uppity so and so and Dems in general fail. That's it. That is the mind set you are dealing with. You cannot fix stupid. You are giving the American public way too much credit.
In any case, I will continue to bitch about Obama's apparent change of heart on single payer.
Stupid looks attractive compared to todays modern bud lite rethug.
We've gone (down) from Miles Davis to this . .
http://www.inkkc.com/?q=system/files/imagecac...
A sociologist would ask him if he thought he could resist corporate advertising, to which he might say yes.
I was wondering if we would ever hear anyone state this simple truth.
Liberals want single payer for these reasons:
1. everyone is 'insured'.
2. if properly implemented, we would be paying less per capita just in the taxes that we are already paying for health care in this country... not to mention how much would be saved for companies and individuals who are now buying one of the crappy policies from the insuropolies.
3. it has already been proven to work in every other industrialized nation (and ours as well, but only for those of a certain age...)
It was nice to see the good Senator allowed to present the Dem side for a change, and get to go last also!
The 60 Minutes report on Medicare fraud was enlightening! The lack of enforcement tells me the Republicans didn't care how much money the crooks stole from the taxpayers, because it made an entitlement program they hate look bad.
that CBS would choose now to air this program. In his introductory remarks, Croft said something to the effect that 'this government run health care program for senior citizens and the disabled has been fraught with billions in fraud'.....not his exact words.
But, the reason they ran it now was to reinforce in the "minds" of the Repugs and slugs the notion that any 'government run' health care payment program will be subject to enormous fraud and cost even more than the private system. Even though they did have Holder on briefly to say that the Dems are now stepping up oversight, the vids and sound of the fraudster talking about how easy it was to scam Medicare (for $20 mil in his case) is what will register with cretins.
This from the non-biased MSM...
I thought this might amuse y'all:
http://www.unl.edu/sbehrend/html/sbsite/texts...
http://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff6/fran...
I've gotta confess folks, I'm pretty fucking tired of this political kabuki dance. Let's get it over with already! You know what piece of shit is going to come out of Washington, dont you? It will be "reform" where the average citizen is compelled to buy insurance or face penalties; Businesses won't be required to provide insurance to their employees;they'll be no caps on the amount of premiums the insurance companies will charge but oh, if your income is low enough (which if you're single or married without kids means you'd better not have made more than starvation wages last year)they'll be a "subsidy" of a couple of hundred bucks (ie more taxpayer dollars shoveled into the pockets of the insurance industry, on top of the windfall it's going to have from mandated coverage for individuals). Somebody tell Obama and the Dimocrats to forget it - don't bother trying to "help" us.
Enough Said.
I am so torn at the options available to help cover all under a sustainable health care program. The show tonight, 60 Minutes, exposed that the government can not protect us against the crooks who find Medicare cheating 'like taking candy from a baby'. Billions lost in fraud. Another option is to have insurance companies in the middle layer making unnecessary costs. Just too many with their fingers in the pie.
Login or Register to post comments.