Tweet
As quixotic efforts go, I’ll take Alan Grayson’s HR 4789, a four page bill which “allows any American to buy into Medicare at cost.” You cannot possibly get more simple than that, it would not add one cent to the federal deficit, and it would offer people the option of purchasing Medicare (and its provider network) or purchasing an insurance product from a private company.
Howie Klein writes:
This evening Alan Grayson, Orlando’s spectacular and effective fighter for ordinary working families in a Congress that overwhelmingly caters to wealthy and powerful special interests, introduced the most real and straight forward healthcare reform bill that’s come up so far. Unless Obama makes the House leadership kill H.R. 4789– a distinct possibility– this should pass the House more easily than anything that’s been proposed for healthcare reform so far. And I bet it could even win cloture in the Senate! His bill offers the opportunity for everyone in the country to buy into Medicare. “Obviously,” said Grayson, “America wants and needs more competition in health coverage, and a public option offers that. But it’s just as important that we offer people not just another choice, but another kind of choice. A lot of people don’t want to be at the mercy of greedy insurance companies that will make money by denying them the care that they need to stay healthy, or to stay alive. We deserve to have a real alternative… The government spent billions of dollars creating a Medicare network of providers that is only open to one-eighth of the population. That’s like saying, ‘Only people 65 and over can use federal highways.’ It is a waste of a very valuable resource and it is not fair. This idea is simple, it makes sense, and it deserves an up-or-down vote.”
I’m not as sanguine about its prospects, but I don’t expect HR 4789 to go away. This bill, like other public option or single payer bills, ought to be introduced year after year, with a movement built around them, and stands taken in primaries, and discharge petitions attempted. Grayson seems like a better candidate to actually accomplish this – under his leadership, an audit the Fed bill that Ron Paul had sitting on a shelf somewhere for two decades got well over 300 co-sponsors in the House.
I’m also thoroughly unsurprised that Grayson pitched the most readable, simplest, most intuitive health care proposal of this entire two-year debate.
UPDATE: And there’s already a companion website at WeWantMedicare.com.
12 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About FDL News Desk
He definitely plays the kabuki game more effectively than the House Progs’ alleged leader, Lynn Whatshername.
Same here.
The name and nature of this bill would make it difficult for republicans to fight as effectively against, although I’ve no doubt they’d try. ‘Medicare’ seems to be the one thing they’re vulnerable on with their base. That said, two bits says either dem leadership forces Grayson to withdraw it, or it passes the House and we get another dem Senator throw a loud enough hissy fit that it gets dropped there.
Silly Congressman, how the hell will the insurance companies make any money off of that?
This is the public option I support and a good way to go, I believe. Between expanding Medicaid card eligibility up from the lowest to lower middle-class incomes, allowing kids up to age 27 on their parents insurance, and lowering (or even better opening to anyone) Medicare, we can get to single payer for everybody who wants it. It’s a great idea. Time to fire up the phone lines to Washington again.
Insurance companies are dropping customers everyday and it raises their profit margin. If they don’t want these customers anyway, how does covering them through a Government program hurt these companies?
This simply looks like cover for so-called progressive House members (that’s you, Lynn Woolsey) to allow them to vote for a Senate bill that they’re on record as opposing.
In the real world, what’s the point when you already know the votes aren’t there for a public option in the Senate…even by a simple majority (reconciliation)?
These folks aren’t fooling anyone.
You say “under his leadership, an audit the Fed bill that Ron Paul had sitting on a shelf somewhere for two decades got well over 300 co-sponsors in the House”
Grayson was barely in the first 10 sponsors of Ron Paul’s bill, and he did not convince any GOP to sign on (every single GOP Congressman in the House is a sponsor.) Also, without calls and letters and ads organized by Campaign for Liberty’s 200,000+ plus members as well as by progressive groups, Grayson wouldn’t have gotten far.
I don’t mean to take from Grayson his great championing of the bill nor his influence with Democratic congressmen. But, it is pretty dismissive of huge organization by Ron Paul’s people to lay the bill’s entire success at Grayson’s feet. I KNOW how much went into that.
As to this medicare bill, I’d have to read it to see if it is better or worse than Obamacare (which is putrid). I don’t automatically trust it is the kind of bill Kucinich would write. I’m a bit torn on Grayson. He was a champion on HR 1207 but DID vote for the patriot act, as I understand it. What does he stand for?
Well played Grayson. Its a buy-in to the existing Medicare system. Its similar to Sam Gibbons “Universal Medicare” bill (co-sponsored with John Lewis and the inevitable Pete Stark) except that Grayson’s bill is 4 pages long and funded by premiums while Gibbons’s bill is 3 pages long and funded by the tax code, it eliminates the monthly Part B monthly premiums while its at it.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/24875006/Medicare-Universal-Coverage-Expansion-Act-of-1991
Gibbons is a sharp old bird, he retired from Congress years ago but I see his recent 90th birthday party made the news. Grayson should buy Gibbons lunch and pick his brain next time he’s in Tampa.
http://www.wusf.usf.edu/news/2010/01/20/sam_gibbons_celebrates_with_some_friends
Hi-yo Grayson, Away!
And the reason for waiting would be? We all know the ORahma whitehouse will sell out on “Reforming” the Senate bill once it’s passed. We’ll be stuck with this insurance company bailout and indenturing act for years, while like Nfta, it sucks what’s left of life out of the middle class.
If the author actually believes that it was Grayson, not Ron Paul, who got Audit the Fed the 100% cosponsorship of every Republican in the House, then he can surely explain why Grayson hasn’t gotten the same support for Obamacare.
By the way: the GAO estimates our Medicare obligations are approximately $20 trillion with a T. So unless Grayson’s new Medicare buy-in bill puts the buy-in price at $100,000, it’s not going to be fiscally sound any more than Medicare ever was.