Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold issued a statement today in support of the public option as a part of any health care reform package:
Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold
In Support of a Public Health Insurance Option“A public option is a fundamental part of ensuring health care reform brings about real change. Opposing the public plan is an endorsement of the status quo in this country that has left tens of millions of Americans uninsured or underinsured and put massive burdens on employers. I have heard too many horror stories from my constituents about how the so-called competitive marketplace has denied them coverage from the outset, offered a benefit plan that covers everything but what they need or failed them some other way. A strong public option would ensure competition in the industry to provide the best, most affordable insurance for Americans and bring down the skyrocketing health care costs that are the biggest contributor to our long-term budget deficits. I am not interested in passing health care reform in name only. Without a public option, I don’t see how we will bring real change to a system that has made good health care a privilege for those who can afford it.”
I want to personally express my support for health care reform that includes a public option or better yet a single payer system.
Without this, there is no way to control the insurance industry pricing. While on the surface this industry may appear competitive, the pricing bandwidth is strategically ever increasing. The DNA of the insurance industry is profit driven. As such, the elimination of these profits from the food chain is essential in true health care cost reform.
However, given the existence of the private insurance industry, we must establish “standard” policy documents. This is the only way to be able to compare insurance products apples to apples. There is no way that the average citizen can price shop in today’s market.
Please do not allow yourself to be influence by powerful special interests apposing the public option.
Thank you! The Democrats – all of them, our President included, need to remember this is why they are in office. This is why they won and what the majority of the people want. Change is always hard in the beginning. The people who are yelling the loudest about not changing anything would be the same people who would be screaming the loudest if you could fast forward time 50 years and try to tack away their public option. They just don’t want change esp. from the other side.
Thank goodness SOMEONE has the honor to stand up and state that a public option is essential or we can forget any real health reform. True reform to bring down costs would have been a single payer plan. I have Canadian relatives who are on the Canadian single payer plan. They get the health care they need and more. My 92 year old Aunt was admitted to the hospital in Montreal for Anemia. They kept her over a month longer than required medically to help her condition because they understood she could not return to her house and they waited for the daughter to arrange a convalescent home. They did this even though they needed the bed. Try and get that kind of humane treatment here! But if we can’t have single payer since no one seems brave enough to push for it, at a minimum we MUST have a public option, a robust public option! Thank you Senator for your principled stand.
I agree completely. As a constituent of Sen. Feingold’s, I’m very proud of his leadership and courage. This is a battle that we can not afford to lose.
Thank you Senator Feingold. That is why I continue sending my monthly contributions to you. You are probably the only senator who has the courage to say what even Mr. Obama is afraid to say. We desperately need the public health care plan. I pay $1,200 a month on private health care which is supposed to be very good. However, any time I want to go and see my “doctor”, she is never available. Now the practice is to go to a “nurse practitioner”. I don’t have anything against nurses. They are as qualified as doctors, in my book. But, why is it that my doctor is never available?!!!!!
I work in a public option health care system — and it has become an extremely desirable provider of care which is now exceeding the private sector experience in many ways. At one point in my career this was not the case, but I can with good conscience state the VA Health Care system is now one of the best values and options out there.
We need however to provide ANY kind of relief and option to the working poor out there who are insurance starved or enslaved. It is pathetic when a country as our own, claims greatness but can not address the basic needs of it’s citizenry and inhabitants. The American public needs to wake up and work for real justice and equity for all – not just sing about it.
Thank you Senator. I echo “the finally a democrat with spine.” I worked hard for Obama last year along with many others in order to see hope for universal health care. Now, not only that, but a failed public option looms. Disgusting. I have good health care right now, but my 28 year old daughter with a pre-diabetic condition and learning disabilities, has poor hopes for a job that will ever pay health care. It frightens me. We are senior citizens and like all of us, mortal. What happens to my daughter then?
Thank you, Russ, for your integrity and hard work in doing what is right, not what is easy… you make me proud to be from WI
Here’s my analogy regarding the health insurance public/private issue:
I’m the parent of two college students with two more coming up. I recall the days of National Defense Student Loans, federal direct loans. 3% interest. Manageable, repayable in a reasonable amount of time. Fast forward to the past decade and private lenders taking over the student loan market. Origination fees, interest rates over 10%, plus higher tuition costs have almost buried this generation in debt BEFORE they can even contemplate graduate studies. How sad to see talent inhibited by the spector of 20 years of debt repayment!
There is a parallel in the private insurance industry. The costs rise until the consumer can’t bear it anymore, the old “what the market will bear” theory. Unfortunately it is (sometimes literally) killing us, and we are to blame for not helping educate others to see the alternatives. Ironically, the alternative is what is quietly serving our parents; Medicare. THis is do-able.
Thank-you Senator. What has happened to the sanity of our country and especially our elected officials??
the public option is the only moral option there is. anyone who would deny other American citizens proper care is NOT a real American.
Health care and for profit are oxymorons. They don’t belong in the same conversation. It’s time to call out the profiteers for anti-human, anti-christian exploitation. We have witnessed the “health” cabal corrupt elected officials and twist our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness into the mess we are in now.
It’s been a straight line from the “roll-up” of community hospitals into HCA and Columbia and Wellpoint and Blue Cross. If nothing else happens from this debate, health care profiteers should be taxed and regulated, and be held accountable for each death by paperwork, disqualification by committee, and refusal of coverage.
The largest single cause of bankruptcy has been medical emergencies. It’s difficult to work for social justice when your health care is arbitrary, based on your employment, not your rights.
When Medicare Plan D passed during the Bush Years, Big Phrma wrote the legislation protecting their profits from competition. That is criminality written into law, it is UnAmerican, and it must be reversed.
The entire scam of “in-network” and “out of network” is restraint of trade, makes a travesty of choice, and is also illegal – and immoral. Investigate and prosecute and “claw back” the profits derived from this conspiracy to deny us our choice, and punish doctors accepting Medicare.
The Obama Administration should direct the Department of Justice to indict, investigate and publicize the INSURANCE COMPANIES practices of overcharging, gouging, denying coverage, and illegally conspiring to thwart competition, public options, or the expansions of free trade.
There should be armed protesters showing up at Wellpoint’s meetings, peacefully expressing their rights to protect their health and freedom from the depredations of that company’s predatory practices.
Without a public option who will pay more medicare and social security and medical for the huge retiring population of boomers if there is no public option to reduce medical cost make insurance companies more competitive and real changes in medical care from treating illness to teaching wellness.
I agree with Senator Feingold, we need the option. If there are people who don’t want the public option, they don’t have to use it. But in the meantime, let the people who want it, need it, have that option.
Dear Senator Feingold: I am not a constituent of yours as I live in Oregon. I have contributed to your campaign fund because you have taken a clear & rational stand on the need for proper health care insurance which must include a “public option” as a component. I have medicare with Blue cross as the secondary insurer. My concern is not myself, but my children & my grandchildren. We must have a “public option” in the legislation under consideration. I am an ex-republican who has given up that party as a result of eight years pursuing very bad policies for our nation. I am a conservative and believe in fiscal responsibility. I hope that the final legislation suceeds in providing health insurance for all individuals and respects the fiscal responsibilities necessary for the nation to be solvent. The maddness that is currently exposed in the news & TV is not a vehicle for our well being or progress for the U.S.A.. G.J.Wasserburg
People are getting hung up on “public option” – why not describe it as medicare-like? Most of the hollering has been coming from older Americans who are enjoying the government run medicare insurance coverage. The others who are hollering are plants/hacks and need to be ignored – not encouraged by saying we may drop the public option. Don’t reward people who are actually disrupting the democratic process.
America needs more elected officials, like you Senator Feingold, who listen to their constituents and vote accordingly! We the people want a system that works. What is being proposed falls unbelievably short of reforming health care in this country. I personally feel that we should remove the word insurance from the whole debate. No one should profit off of our good or bad health.
Thank Heavens, there are some Democrats with spine. Without the ‘public option’, this bill is meaningless!
Have you been close or in one of these so called great foreign health care systems? Not so fast lets take a slower look. Get it right first in medicare then go beyond. If the goverment can’t stop waste in Medicare now how will it ever change anything with this massive amount of goverment spending and intervention. Control what you are doing and get it right then try more. But that would mean no flashy programs or less waste in Washingto with out any controls over our lives. That’s the bottom line not healther people. Think real hard about this the bigger picture. How long does it take to get a decission out of Washington now. Just wait that long or longer for the ok on treatment or no treatment for cancer heart problems or joint replacement.
Public option don’t mean you will have better care most likely much slower if any care. By the way if that would happen you can’t go to Canada. like they come down here now. They won’t treat you unless you pay in cash up front. All so you will need a doctor that will be willing to treat you first. Slow down! Change is needed yes! But correct wrongs With no goverment controls a very possible option. Come on use you head more. GET IT RIGHT NOW!!!!!!