It Takes a Villain

As long as the healthcare co-ops are allowed to be big enough to make a difference through bargaining power, the idea fits nicely with our idea to turn the Democratic Party into a massive national healthcare union that puts its money where its mouth is and provides healthcare for its members.

It takes a villain.

(HuffPo)

"They are the villains in this. They have been part of the problem in a major way," Pelosi said of the insurance industry after her weekly press conference. "It's almost immoral, what they are doing," she said, referring to industry lobbying against a public insurance plan option."

— Nancy Pelosi

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It's written on a napkin somewhere... we were brainstorming a couple of years ago about a private solution to the current mess. We were like, "Hey man. get this...no really... the political parties should stop fighting about healthcare, and just build the damn system each of them wants for themselves.

"Offer a healthcare policy as a benefit of party membership. Upwards of one hundred million democrats could solve the healthcare problem for its membership... a DYI co-op... a massive healthcare union with enormous bargaining power. Poor religious conservative Republicans without healthcare would go, 'Gawd damn! I want that!'"

"They've had a good thing going for a long time at the expense of the American people and the health of our country," she said, adding that it will be tough to keep them from getting their way. "This is the fight of our lives."

We were inspired, ironically, by Hezbollah and Hamas, who attract members, not by blowing up Zionists, but by providing social services like medical care, school, food, and education. Even IF that's just their propaganda, it's a pretty good idea.

"Of course, they've been immoral all along. They are doing everything in their power to stop a public option from happening, and the public has to know about it."

We support a fully funded public option and a federal-payer, too, but we're also DIY types who think the DNC could put up or shut up when it comes to this subject and organize what might be the largest pool the insurance industry has ever had to face in America.

"I am for the strongest possible public option," she said. The Senate health committee bill "is one that I think would be okay. It's not my preference. My preference is a stronger bill. But it meets the test of having an effective public option."

Senator Kent Conrad's co-op plan is geographic, and we're leery of geographic pools, because insurance companies have been known to discriminate against particular zip codes, so Conrad's co-ops should not be rejected as a gateway, out of hand, but they should be rolled in with Obama's healthcare exchange, the fully-funded public option, the federal payer, and for-profit commercial offers.

Something from a reader:

"I have ALWAYS thought one of your most unfailingly brilliant of all unfailingly brilliant ideas was to have the DEMS do this. Maybe now is the time!!! HOWEVER, would their big corp fat cats ever let them? Or the blue dogs? Between fat cats and blue dogs what are we to do? What about having the Green Party or the Libertarians do it instead?

— Dr. S.

Isn't it about buying in bulk? The Greens and (to some extent) the Libertarian parties might be more philosophically inclined to do this... but does either party have enough members to have the impact that even a quarter of the Democratic Party would have?

Aside from that, isn't it a surprise that conservative Democrats, Blue Dogs and fat cats... the fat blue cats... are using the word co-op? It smacks of leftist cooperative grocers, checkers, stockers, and produce handlers who own the building, including the artists' live-work lofts up above the store. It's such ideologically loaded socialist term.

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