Dean: 56% of Dems Say If There's No Public Option, Drop The Mandate
By Susie Madrak Saturday Dec 19, 2009 12:30pmJust got off another blogger conference call, this time with Howard Dean, former CIGNA exec Wendell Potter, and Mike Lux.
Dean announced the results of a DFA poll that is "really quite stunning," he said. (You can read the results here.) The Senate cloture vote is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve, he said.
Democracy for America's "No Option, No Mandate" campaign to contact Harry Reid clocked 7000 calls in four hours, too, he said.
Dr. Dean opened the call by saying "this bill has always been a giveaway to the insurance industry, but we were willing to compromise" to get the public option.
He recapped all the compromises we made: "We wanted single payer, but that was taken off the table early on. That was a mistake. We had to get to the place where we had health insurance for all Americans." But now, he said, there's no public option, and no Medicare option.
"You're forced to pay money to an insurance company or get fined $750 by your government, while 27% of your money goes to CEOs who are flying around in these private jets," he said.
He talked about the compromises made for pre-existing conditions, the most disturbing one the ability to charge you 300% more, merely for being older. "It's guaranteed issue, but if you’re making $65,000 a year for a family of four and you’re paying $20,000 for insurance, how is that reform?"
He said the real bad stuff in the Senate bill was
"hidden in the weeds, so you can’t find it."
Dr. Dean brushed aside the "Get a bill, any bill" mentality in Washington. "Any legislation passed will have a huge impact on American healthcare. If they can’t fix it, it shouldn’t pass."
Wendell Potter, former CIGNA executive and reform activist, said the insurance industry got "every single thing they wanted" in the Senate bill.
"There's no individual mandate, no public option. There's also three words, 'benefit design flexibility' in Senate bill – that means the freedom to design plans that will pass more and more of us into ranks of the underinsured - and charge up to 22% of income if someone gets sick," he said.
In Massachusetts, they have a 2 to 1 premium ratio, "and they're already having trouble finding affordable, adequate insurance. The industry wants to shift even more costs to individuals and families, having the government pay them half a trillion dollars. The Senate bill meets every one of their requirements," Potter said.
"They will continue to shift the cost burden to consumers and get around not using preexisting conditions by charging for certain factors like high cholesterol."
Dr. Dean pointed out the House bill "is the compromise, we didn’t think it was right to take the option of an employer-based system away if people liked it."
In Vermont, he said, you can't be charged more than double the lowest premium.
Dean listed some more of the insurance company wish list the Senate was so eager to fill. "Getting rid of the anti-trust provision. This contributes to the predatory effect of the insurance companies – they're essentially unregulated. We need to get the provision in, get them regulated.
Wendell Potter talked about something you often hear pushed from the Republican side: "Just let us sell across state lines and let the market decide." As he points out, insurers would go to the states with least regulation.
Paul Hogarth from Daily Kos asked them to address criticism that if the bill is killed, "there's no reform and we’re worse off, the momentum is gone."
"I don’t know that we’ll be worse off," Dr. Dean said. "We ought to strip down this bill and get rid of the mandate. It should have been done by reconciliation."
