A government run insurance option IS nonprofit, Lee. Nothing the congresswoman said was untrue or deceptive.

I await your inevitably non-sequitur reply.

Adding... The Politico is a Drudge link-trolling outfit. Nothing less. I'm surprised Feldman is taking them so seriously.

Bless you, Lee!!!!

I was JUST about to state this myself!

Adding, I have read from more than one source, that the Public Option ---if passed --- may not go into effect until 2013.

So much for addressing the crisis right now!

Jeffrey Feldman, by the way, attended that meeting last night and was reporting from that Town Hall, where Anthony Weiner also attended.

Bob: you are wrong about the non-profit status!

All our CURRENT insurance carriers (Blue Cross/ Blue Sheild, Kaiser, Cobra, etc.) are called non-profit; but they are all under a larger FOR-PROFIT umbrella.

They are using tricky language to deceive playing with the words "Private" "public" and "non-profit" and it is all deceptive word play.

The only system which forcefully address this (there's no profit making element) is Single Payer.

Terri wrote:

The only system which forcefully address this (there's no profit making element) is Single Payer.

The public option, as defined in HR 3200 and the Kennedy Bill, is non-profit in that it's government-run. Fact.

By the way, who do you think the "payer" in "single-payer" is going to be paying? The same private healthcare corporations the public option would pay. But I'm sure you know that. Likewise, I'm sure you know that single-payer wouldn't nationalize the pharmaceutical industry, and it wouldn't nationalize hospitals, doctors or medical tech companies either. All of which would continue to be for-profit enterprises under a single-payer system.

Wikipedia has:

A nonprofit organization (abbreviated NPO, also not-for-profit) is an organization that does not distribute its surplus funds to owners or shareholders, but instead uses them to help pursue its goals. Examples of NPOs include charities (i.e. charitable organizations) , trade unions, and public arts organizations. Most governments and government agencies meet this definition, but in most countries they are considered a separate type of organization and not counted as NPOs.

It's a term a lot of people (including I am guessing, the congresswoman mentioned in the article) use very loosely. Let's not get too caught up in semantics--the important distinction is whether it will be run directly by the government, or operate independently with government funding.

@fork-in-it... Right. The House member in Feldman's item was very likely using the term to describe how the government wouldn't earn a profit on the premiums.

>The public option, as defined in HR 3200 and the Kennedy Bill, is non-profit in that it's government-run. Fact.
_______

Prove it. Demonstrate this fact claim. Show the totality of the government-run element --- meaning that there is no profit making component to it.
_______

Yes to the other aspects of health care that will remain private and for-profit --- that should put law makers at ease, no? Those elements should help garner support for it as it retains a profit making component in the entities you mentions. The corporatists will be able to breath.

That is similar to some other single payer systems around the world: the single payer (gov't) gets the services provided by the private sector.

So what?

As far as the citizens are concerned --- from their participation and use of a single payer service ---- all would have access and there is just one entity who gets billed; the gov't.

The gov't can then control costs, install regs, etc. to manage the private sector so that it doesn't run wile with profit as we have seen.

This is how other countries do it: one payer, all covered, private industry provides the services.

Terri wrote:

>The public option, as defined in HR 3200 and the Kennedy Bill, is non-profit in that it's government-run. Fact. _______

Prove it. Demonstrate this fact claim. Show the totality of the government-run element --- meaning that there is no profit making component to it.

Whah? Prove that the federal government isn't a for-profit entity?

BAIT AND SWITCH

How did the mouse(Current,weak PO) replace the elephant(ORIGINAL PUBLIC PLAN: "MEDICARE PLUS")?

How did the “Medicare Plus” proposal of 2001 (when Hacker first proposed it) get transformed into the tiny “public options” contained in the Democrats’ 2009 legislation? The answer is that somewhere along the line it became obvious that the Hacker model was too difficult to enact and had to be stripped down to something more mouse-like in order to pass. Did the leading “public option” advocates realize this early in the campaign? Or midway through the campaign when the insurance industry began to attack the “public option”? Or late in the campaign when they found it difficult to persuade members of Congress to support Hacker’s original model? Whatever the answer, will they find it in their hearts to tell their followers their original strategy was wrong?

I suspect the answer is different for different actors within the “public option” movement. Hacker surely knew what was in his original proposal and surely knows now that the Democrats’ bills don’t reflect his original proposal. Hacker and others familiar with his original proposal were probably betrayed by the process. As the “public option” concept became famous and edged its way toward the centers of power, they couldn’t find the courage to resist the transformation of the original proposal into the mouse model.

For other actors within the “public option” movement, ignorance of Hacker’s original proposal and of health policy in general may have led them to rely on more knowledgeable leaders in the movement. Their error, in other words, was to trust the wrong people and, as the “public option” came under attack, to cave in to group think. This error was facilitated by the “public option” movement’s decision to avoid mentioning any details of the “public option” whenever possible.

What next?

Those of us in the American single-payer movement must continue to educate Congress and the public on the need for a single-payer system. We must also convince advocates of the “public option” that they have made two serious mistakes and, if they learn quickly from these mistakes, that real reform is still possible.

The first mistake was to think that a “public option” that merely took over a large chunk of the non-elderly market (as opposed to one that took over the entire market) could substantially reduce health care costs and thereby make universal coverage politically feasible. Any proposal that leaves in place a multiple-payer system — even a multiple-payer system with a large government-run program in the middle of it — is going to save very little money. Even if Hacker’s original Health Care for America Plan had taken over half the non-elderly market and then reached homeostasis (something Hacker swore up and down it would do), the savings would have been relatively small. The reason for that is twofold. First, any insurance program, public or private, that has to compete with other insurers is going to have overhead costs substantially higher than Medicare’s. (It is precisely because Medicare is a single-payer program that its overhead costs are low.) Second, the multiple-payer system Hacker would leave in place would continue to impose unnecessarily large overhead costs on providers.

The second mistake the “public option” movement made was to think the insurance industry and the right wing would treat a “public option” more gently than a single-payer. Conservatives have a long history of treating small incremental proposals such as “comparative effectiveness research” as the equivalent of “a government takeover of the health care system.” It should have been no surprise to anyone that conservatives would shriek “socialism!” at the sight of the “public option,” even the mouse model proposed by the Democrats.

The bait-and-switch strategy adopted by the “public option” movement has put the Democrats in a terrible quandary. Seduced by the false advertising about the potency of the “public option” to lower costs, Democrats have raised public expectations for reform to unprecedented levels. Failing to meet those expectations during the 2009 session of Congress, which is inevitable if the Democrats continue to promote legislation like the bills released in June, is going to have unpleasant consequences. Is there no way out of this quandary?

No, Bob not "the government" the Public Option plan.

Prove that. Waiting.

Terri wrote:

No, Bob not "the government" the Public Option plan.

Because the public option as defined in both HR 3200 and the Kennedy bill is a government-run program. I really don't get where you're going with this, Terri. An insinuation that the public option is for-profit is so off the rails and bizarre, I'm not sure there's any point in discussing it.

Also, if you're going to spam the comments with long copied-and-pasted articles, you should at least attribute them to the source.

For the benefit of everyone else, the article Terri posted above was originally written by Kip Sullivan, an advocate for a national healthcare system.