| In the beginning of the movie Wedding Banquet, a gay Taiwanese man living in America (with his boyfriend) gets a "gift" from his parents (who don't know he's gay): a subscription to a Taiwanese heterosexual match-making service. So he fills out the paperwork specifying the kind of woman he wants to date... She must be at least 6 feet tall, speak 5 languages, be trained as an opera singer, and have 2 PhDs - one of which is in physics. What a nice way to avoid coming out to his parents without actually having to date a woman.
Well, our esteemed leaders in Washington (with the help of the insurance companies who fund their campaigns) have come up with a similar tactic in order to appear to support health care reform and a public option without actually having to support one. As Mike Lux writes:
the idea is to write a "trigger" that will allow for a public option only under certain conditions, but write the legislation so that those conditions would never get met in the real world.
The conditions for the trigger are like the gay man's specifications for a woman he's willing to date. What a clever way to appear "moderate" and still keep Americans from enjoying the health care that the entire rest of the industrialized world enjoys. Just like the gay Taiwanese man would "compromise" to date a woman with practically inhuman qualities, the politicians are ready to compromise by giving us a public health care option in the face of impossible-to-meet conditions that will never occur.
While I am first and foremost an advocate of single payor health care, I like the idea of the public plan option as a politically feasible way to pass a reform bill. The idea is that all Americans would be eligible to buy into a public health care plan that has low overhead costs and provides adequate care. If you already have insurance with a private company and you like your insurance, then you can keep your insurance. There's no requirement to sign up for the public plan - it's just an option. However, because all private companies have to pay overhead for things like marketing and outrageous CEO salaries (and they make their money by denying patients care), the public plan will no doubt be a better deal than any other option. It's a back door way to get to single payor, and I support it.
This is a food blog, but health care IS related to food. Intimately. Because you need farmers if you want food, and our employer-based health care system represents an enormous disincentive to anyone who might wish to become a farmer. The Center for Rural Affairs has been beating the health care drum more than any other issue for this very reason. You can see a blog post about it by ag policy expert Steph Larsen here. |
