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Heritage: ‘Public option is neither public, nor is it an option’
By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Local Opinion Editor
11/03/09 10:38 AM EST
The Heritage Foundation has a significant analysis of the rhetorical legerdemain that passes for public debate on health care reform.
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/11/03/morning-bell-the-public-option-is-neither-public-nor-an-option/
Berkeley political scientist Jacob Hacker and the Lewin Group – an independent health care analysis firm – were the first to discover the unintended consequences of a government-run health care plan: Employers would gladly dump their expensive private health care benefits, leaving 88.1 million Americans without coverage. They would then be forced into the government plan against their will. So much for “option.”
“The latest version of Obamacare in the House ‘fixes’ this problem by severely limiting who the government can enroll in the government plan,” according to Heritage.
“Under the new bill, only employers with 25 employees or fewer are allowed to enroll in the plan in year one (2013), in year two (2014) individuals and employers with 50 employees or fewer become eligible, and in year three (2015) employers with at least 100 employees become eligible. In other words, the vast majority of Americans will not be eligible to enroll in the allegedly ‘public’ plan.”
As for the poorest people - who are supposedly the driving force behind any health care reform - Heritage senior analyst Dennis Smith points out that they are specifically denied access to the so-called “public option.” All they get is a chance to stand in line behind the thousands of other Medicaid patients who are still waiting for care.
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