National Health Care?

The “news” on television does not give a person any real information.  Instead, they parrot a “sound bite” which is a quick phrase that gives a powerful, negative, and opinionated bit of propaganda.  The sound bite usually does not have any basis in fact, does not need to be true, and is most effective with the ignorant and gullible.  A sound bite is like a rock thrown through your window.  It is a favorite weapon of the politicians.   Like a bullet out of a gun it is effective, it cannot be ignored, it does not need verification, and a response is futile.  A good example is one that I have heard repeated several times lately: “Obama’s Health Care Program is a job killer!”

An excerpt from Bishop Spong’s essay on 12/29/10:

“They exhausted the administration in the Health Care fight, while prohibiting the Public Option, which was the one thing in the original Obama health care proposal that had any possibility of lowering health care costs. Once that was defeated they began their attack on "the government's takeover of health care." It was strange logic and observers noted that the price of the stock in the private health care companies went up during and after the health care debate.”

Information from Wikipedia:

In the first two bills the public option took the form of a Qualified Health Benefit Plan competing with similar private insurance plans in an internet based exchange or market place, enabling citizens and small businesses to purchase health insurance meeting the minimum federal standard. Persons covered by other employer plans or by state insurance plans such as Medicare would have not been eligible to obtain coverage from the exchange and therefore could not obtain this form of federal health insurance. The federal government's health insurance plan would have been financed entirely by premiums without subsidy from the Federal government. The plans stated in the Senate HLP Committee and H.R. 3962, the two that contained clauses establishing a public insurance option, required the repayment of "seed money" to the Treasury over a ten year period.

Democratic Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee, who represents the 18th congressional district in Houston, has said, "Surveys show that nearly three out of four voters want a public health insurance plan." She also has said that "73 percent of doctors and 1,000 state legislators favor health reform legislation with a public option. The American people want a strong public option heard in Congress... because their voices have been drowned out by insurance company propaganda and disruptive tea-baggers at health reform town hall meetings."

President Obama elaborated on his reasons for a public plan in his seminal September 9 address to the Joint Session of Congress:

“I have no interest in putting insurance companies out of business... the insurance companies and their allies don't like this idea. They argue that these private companies can't fairly compete with the government. And they'd be right if taxpayers were subsidizing this public insurance option. But they won't be. I've insisted that like any private insurance company, the public insurance option would have to be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects. But by avoiding some of the overhead that gets eaten up at private companies by profits and excessive administrative costs and executive salaries, it could provide a good deal for consumers, and would also keep pressure on private insurers to keep their policies affordable and treat their customers better.”