[ORGANIZER] ... a government-run public insurance** option.
WORKER: Like Medicare?
ORGANIZER: Exactly like Medicare.
In reality, the "public option" -- or "plan" -- or, now, "public insurance option" -- is means-tested, firewalled, and if you've got employer-based insurance today, like Wal-Mart's junk insurance your policy will be grandfathered (Matt Taibbi), so you'll see no improvement, but won't be able to get out from under it. That's not "exactly like" Medicare. It's nothing at all like Medicare, which is available to all citizens when they reach 65. Period. And if "public option" is "exactly like" Medicare because it's government run, well, so is the Mars Lander "exactly like" Medicare, because it's government run, too.
Just unbelievable, that "progressives" would leverage the genuine popularity of Medicare -- and cream off all the effort of those who are pushing a genuine Medicare for All effort on behalf of a pissant so-called option that can't even be shown to work. Although it's "creative," I grant you. The "bait and switch" continues!
NOTE * Actually, he said that he really wanted to talk to the owner, and if they got 200 small business owners to sign the petition, they'd take it to our local Congressperson. Good idea, and worthy of a health care reform plan that would actually work, and wasn't sold through bait and switch tactics. Anyhow, since this is a family blog, I won't use the words "lying weasel," but feel free to think them...
NOTE ** So much for health care reform, eh? The rhetorical shift having been signaled by Obama himself, IIRC.
NOTE Which reminds me: There are those who view asking the question "What strategy would you use for single payer?" as the unsanswerable trump card. It now occurs to me that one possible approach would have been to give field organizers a script that bore a more than passing resemblance to reality. |
