Is Senator Lieberman Kidding?
July 1, 2009 at 8:49 pm Judith Stein 1 comment
I am appalled that Senator Lieberman has announced his opposition to a public plan in health care reform. Can he really believe a PUBLIC option can’t be afforded after our experience with Medicare and Medicare private plans! As Medicare has shown, private plans are what we can’t afford. Study after study shows that Medicare, our only experience with a national health insurance, is spending about 14% more in private plans than it would pay for the same care in the traditional, public Medicare program. The extra payments to private Medicare plans equal about $15 billion a year! Come on – if we really are worrying about cost, a public plan is what we CAN afford. It’s private insurance that’s killing Medicare and that will bankrupt health care “reform”.
Entry filed under: Health Care Reform, Public vs. Private Health Coverage. Tags: Health Care Reform, Public plan.
CMA Health Policy Blog 
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Vicki Gottlich | July 2, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Compare the statement of New York City Mayor Bloomberg with the position of Senator Lieberman. Mayor Bloomberg wrote an Op Ed in today’s (July 2) New York Daily News in support of including a good public health insurance option in health care reform. He bases his opinion on his experience as a businessman and as a mayor. He even cites Medicare as an example of a public plan with lower costs than private plans.
As Mayor Bloomberg says, in many areas, including most big cities, the market is dominated by one or a small group of insurance companies. The public plan is needed to ensure competition in those areas, and to keep costs down.
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2009/07/02/2009-07-02_a_public_insurance_plan_will_help_heal_a_broken_system.html