Remembering the Public Option: Gone, But Not Forgotten

There is evidence that the public option was purposely sandbagged. (4.00 / 1)

Without pointing any fingers, it is notable that Senator Rockefeller is, after all, the Finance Committee's Health Care subcommittee chairman. So just stop and ask yourself this: Why didn't he even bother to mention that the CBO had projected that over 10 years, his public option would have saved the federal government another $50 billion?

After all, Rockefeller's health care policy advisor Jocelyn Moore, who also happens to be the Honorary Chairman for the nonpartisan Alliance for Health Reform, should well have advised her boss that he needed to present the CBO score before a FINANCE COMMITTEE especially considering her ALLIANCE's own stance that the CBO score would be crucial to passage.

As it turns out, Rockefeller's "passionate plea" without a CBO score basically did no little more than harden the resolve of the Blue Dogs and the GOP to defeat his bill. Unless you wish to count paying hollow lip service to the left as something "positive".

It was like bringing a knife to a gun fight.

Now if you're considering a rant that I've got Rocky all wrong, then somewhere you could slow down just long enough to explain why he decided to publicly undercut efforts to add the public option back in during budget reconciliation. Because he did so not only by calling it "too partisan," ignoring that the health care bill had already passed out of the Senate without a single Republican vote, he also amazingly missed the opportunity to again mention that including his public option would actually have lowered the deficit by another $50 billion.

For the record, the Republicans on his committee used the CBO and boatload of other stats to defeat his public option. Sp to his opponents, Rockefeller's talking points must have sounded like an annoying high-pitched nasal librul whine. He was so wrapped up in slapping around insurance providers that he completely forgot to address that annoying "PAYGO" thingy.

Whether or not the public option was sandbagged because of a pre-existing deal with the Hospital Association or just because it's in someone's investments portfolio we'll likely never know.

All I'm saying is, if it's up to Rockefeller, just don't hold your breath for the public option. And don't forget that although he pledged to "never stop fighting to provide competitive prescription drug pricing" back in 2002 and practically every session since, our junior senator somehow completely forgot to include it on the Senate markup of the current health care reform bill.

Perhaps that was just "too partisan" as well.  

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by: One Citizen @ Sun Mar 21, 2010 at 05:08:05 AM UTC

I'm just sayin' (4.00 / 1)

When I mention someone's portfolio, all I'm sayin' is before you hold your breath on the public option or single payer or even competitive pricing for the pharmaceutical industry, it would be wise to consider the historical influence of the pharmaceutical interests.

In the early half of the 20th century, petrochemical giants organized a coup on the medical research facilities, hospitals and universities. The Rockefeller family sponsored research and donated sums to universities and medical schools which had drug based research. They further extended this policy to foreign universities and medical schools where research was drug based through their "International Education Board". Establishments and research which were were not drug based were refused funding and soon dissolved in favor of the lucrative pharmaceutical industry. In 1939 a "Drug Trust" alliance was formed by the Rockefeller empire and the German chemical company I.G. Farben (Bayer). After World War II, I.G. Farben was dismantled but later emerged as separate corporations within the alliance. Well known companies included General Mills, Kellogg, Nestle, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Procter and Gamble, Roche and Hoechst (Sanofi-Aventis). The Rockefeller empire, in tandem with Chase Manhattan Bank (now JP Morgan Chase), owns over half of the pharmaceutical interests in the United States. It is the largest drug manufacturing combine in the world. Since WWII, the pharmaceutical industry has steadily netted increasing profits to become the world's second largest manufacturing industry after the arms industry.

The Rockefeller Foundation was originally set up in 1904 as the General Education Fund. The RF was later formed in 1910 and issued a charter on May 14, 1913 with the help of Rockefeller millions. Subsequently, the foundation placed it's own "nominees" in federal health agencies and set the stage for the "reeducation" of the public. A compilation of magazine advertising reveals that as far back as 1948, larger American drug companies spent a total sum of $1,104,224,374 for advertising. Of this sum, Rockefeller-Morgan interests (which went entirely to Rockefeller after Morgan's death) controlled about 80%.

I'm getting to be an old-timer who used to be a real CAG activist long before David Grubb left there, and it's been my long-term observation that sandbagging and flop-flipping is apparently in senator Rockefeller's political DNA.

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by: One Citizen @ Sun Mar 21, 2010 at 05:54:25 AM UTC

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You knnow, I love you to death (0.00 / 0)

That is the speech I remember!

Baucus as Chair took health care away from Rathskeller's subcommittee and proceeded with all those months of fruitless negotiations in the Gang of Six looking for a GOP vote for a final bill.

Dorgan's re-importation fel to the 60 vote threshold by only getting 54 votes. The Senate a bitch.

The House started the reconciliation bill. Without 51 Democratic Senators in support of the public option it would not pass the Senate. So Pelosi did not include it. I don't think I saw Chris Bowers at Open Left nail that count down. He ended up with a separate bill later.

Maybe it was Rahm.

NFTT: Support My Team or I Will Dance

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by: CA Berkeley WV @ Sun Mar 21, 2010 at 10:37:16 AM UTC

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Speaking of sandbagging, CA Berkely, (0.00 / 0)

Not long ago you posted that the reason Senator Rockefeller didn't use the CBO score was because Republicans kept calling for the CBO to score different stuff, using it as a stall tactic (or your words to that effect). While I don't doubt the second part of your assertion that Republicans were delaying (as were Blue Dogs), I'm still wondering what led you to the conclusion that that was the reason he didn't use the CBO numbers.

Because the fact is that CBO had already scored Rockefeller's public option provision in detail.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that ... Over 10 years, Rockefeller's public option would save the federal government $50 billion source

Despite your assertion, it is abundantly clear that Rockefeller simply chose not to use the CBO report. So what I'm asking is, CA Berkely, just where did you get your information that avoiding more delay was the reason he chose not to use the already existing CBO report? Please don't treat this just a rhetorical question.

I want to know how you came to that conclusion specifically because Rockefeller's Health Care legislative assistant Jocelyn Moore is a member of the nonpartisan Alliance for Health Reform ("AHR"). Back in December of 2008 when Ms. Moore was a speaker at an AHR forum, she called health care "the economic engine of the twenty-first century," and noted that health care reform can go a long way to stabilizing the economy. source

She apparently knew what she was talking about because later, Ms. Moore's AHR also conducted a briefing called Show Me the Money: Options for Financing Health Reform wherein William Hoagland, former member of the CBO, demystified the "scoring" process of the Congressional Budget Office for AHR members.

An overview of that briefing begins:

As the key congressional committees draft health reform legislation, they are keenly mindful of the costs of various provisions. Congress will look to an array of options, including both savings from the health care system and new revenues, to finance coverage expansions and reforms to both the delivery system and insurance markets. source

So CA Berkely, there is strong evidence that Jocelyn Moore handed Rockefeller with more than a just a knife before he went into that rhetorical gunfight.

Now just in case anyone still believes that Rockefeller's rant against insurance providers was the right prescription to sell his public option to what we all know was a right-leaning FINANCE committee, Moore's AHR weren't the only experts who knew that taking care not to blow the budget was crucial.

If health-care reform gets to the table as an early and top priority for the next Congress, it faces two big obstacles. The first will be finding the money to pay for expanded coverage while Congress is focused on deficit reduction. This will be no easy task. source

Finally, back in January of 2009,

A report that outlines such a public plan is being touted by some Democratic lawmakers as essential to controlling health care costs and improving the quality of care. That plan, as outlined in a report by the Institute for America's Future and the University of California Berkeley School of Law's Center on Health, Economic and Family Security, would create a public health insurance plan like Medicare to compete with private health plans and could produce $1 trillion in national savings over 10 years by driving down costs, improving efficiencies, and fostering innovation.

Overall health care savings, according to Hacker, would come from private plans cutting costs to compete with a public plan that has lower per-enrollee spending. The basis for the argument includes previous research he cited that found Medicare spending per enrollee between 1997 and 2006 grew 4.6 percent a year, while the average private insurance spending per person grew 7.3 percent annually.

"If the private plans are really as efficient and effective as they say they are then they shouldn't be worried about competing with a public plan," said Jacob Hacker, a University of California at Berkeley professor and author of the report, during a December 2008 telephone press conference. source

CA Berkely, I'm hoping that professor Hacker's assertion above might help you to understand why it is important to be accurate when posting information about the public option since I think I recall reading that you were once affiliated with the University of California at Berkely. But I wouldn't want to jump to any conclusions.    

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by: One Citizen @ Sun Mar 21, 2010 at 17:01:19 PM UTC

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