I think the idea of getting a European/Canadian style universal public plan is dead on arrival, even though the fact is that they are providing a lot better care for a lot less money in those countries. The fight right now is whether or not we will be allowed a single public plan as one of the many options amongs hundreds of privately owned plans being offered. The CEO’s of the private health companies are scarred to death of the idea that they would have to perform better in a fair competition with such a plan. The only way they would ever accept it is if they can weaken the legislation such that they are allowed to dump sick patients into the public option (the way they now dump them into Medicaid and Medicare).

The way to sell the public option to people with private insurance plans is to ask them:

1) who would you rather have standing between you and your access to health care a government employee who has to answer to your elected officials, or a private employee who gets bonuses for the number of request he can reject per hour.

2) when your insurance reject your request for letting your cancer stricken child have the newest most effective treatment, who would you rather appeal to your president and/or congress representative who’s re-election depends on what you and your naboers think about his/her performance, OR a CEO who’s bonus depend on letting sick people die as soon and with the least expenses possible.

3) when your insurance company have left you waiting 3 month for approaval of that colon cancer surgery (always saying that they are still processing the request), who would you rather appeal to; elected officials or CEO’s whos personal income increase with your death.

4) when your small company is faced with a tripling of its premiums at the renewal of your health insurance contract because one of your employees got severely sick (and the company want to dump a looser), who would you rather complain to your elected officials or a CEO who feasts on small businesses.

I think I forgot to point out that the reference you gave at 12:20 is standard Fox / Cato false comparisons. Please note that “private industry” and private sector is two different things so the comparison is apple to oranges. The “private industry” happens to not include Wall Street, Law firms, Hospitals, etc. – all those high payed professions that use a lot of educated people, just like government. So if you cherry-pick a specific lower educated and lower payed private sector and compare it to the public sector you would expect to find that public employees are getting higher compensation. Now on the other hand if we only take the public employeed floor sweepers and compare them to Wall Street investment banks we can get the opposite result. Its very easy to swallow the sh*t served up by Fox / Cato and company because they put such a nice sugar coating on it – especially if you “want to believe”.

“No wonder the medical industrial complex is scared to death of the thought that they would have to get into a free and fair competition with the “public option”.”

excellent point- makes sense that with the profit motive removed- and the current middle man- the insurance companies- removed- it may be a cheaper way to do things-

the flip side is that the insurance being provided to those that are currently insured will probably be more expensive on a national plan because it isn’t required to cover anyone beyond the scope of the employers plan-

that is the dilemma- with those who are currently insured – there is no motivation to support a national plan-

what must be explained is – that with a universal plan you are covered- employed- or even after losing your job- that your kids are covered- even if you lose your job- that even if you quit to start your own company- guess what- your family is covered-

so their are ways to sell the universal plan- but people have to want it

I agree completely. One thing that does pi$$ off highly educated public employees who are making personal sacrifices to work for considerably lower compensation than they could get in private industry; is to hear those right wing talking points about lazy overcompensated public employees doing nothing else but wasting money and getting in the way of societal progress. Their sensitivity to that kind of BS may have been a bit increased after we have seen how these multi-million dollar excectives destroyed their companies and slammed our country into a mega-ressesion.

Houses and produce requires no big companies with multimillion dollar compensated CEO’s to be produced (nor does beer). One could actually arguee that those sectors would be a lot better off, if all of their producers were small companies and individuals.

When it comes to electricity, it turns out that public companies provide a better and cheaper product than the private for profit companies (who need to increase prices and lower quality to be able to afford the absurd compensations and profit to the share holders). No wonder the medical industrial complex is scared to death of the thought that they would have to get into a free and fair competition with the “public option”.

But just as I will admit that there are a few things in the public sector that are of little value, I will also admit that there are a few things produced by large companies with overcpompensated leadership that are doing good for society. The medical industry, free-loading on the results of public biomedical research and turning it into marketable and useful drugs, may be one of those

Government will NOT be able to increase taxes without somehow cutting the benefits of the public sector or matching them for the private side. All those taxpayers without a pension will refuse to pay for all those fully funded public pensions.

I’m betting that the politicans won’t have the balls to cut; they’ll match. And that’s why I believe we’ll get inflation. Like Ben said, he’ll just use the printing press.

There’s such a broad spectrum in both public and private employment realms that you just can’t generalize and it’s just not helpful to do so.

With that said, I think there’s clearly a problem with the commitments that have been made to many public employee groups that cannot go on without some modification. Many say that we have to, or should, uphold the commitments that have been made and only change things going forward for younger/new workers, etc. We’re too far down the road for that to be feasible.

We have to face up to the fact that things were structured in a false world of false profits produced by leverage. They have to change. But it’s hell politically, of course. And many will be hurt in the process. But that’s the world we live in now. No amount of wishing will change that.

One thing that this discussion/argument does clearly illustrate is the rift that is developing between public and private employees. I’m seeing this come up all over the place on blogs and it’s going to be just another factor in the social unrest that’s developing. It could get very ugly.

Funny how a dogmatic position glosses over stuff like that under the term “product.”