“So I think Congress is realizing that it’s gonna be trouble if they try to roll us,” and “I’m sorry that things have gotten to the point where we’re having to beat up on members of Congress.” Was this guy nurtured on “The Sopranos,” or is he the real thing?

Regardless, are the owners of America’s businesses really as heartless as this jerk implies? Do they really believe that their workers would be “getting the shaft” by having health insurance with adequate benefits?

To rephrase the very important point that Paul Starr brings to this debate, it is not the design of the public option that is crucial to successful reform under the model being advanced in Congress, but rather it is that the design of the insurance exchanges must be absolutely compliant with the rules of social insurance. If the exchanges are poorly designed, the public option would become a Medicaid-like dumping ground for low-income people with high-cost problems, and would suffer from a lack of willing providers because of chronic underfunding. And poorly designed exchanges could never meet the test of social insurance.

By now you must be annoyed by those on the right who repeatedly claim that we do not have a problem with uninsured individuals. They say that the actual problem is that we are not counting them properly. Most of the uninsured would be insured, if only they showed a little more personal responsibility.

Wendell Potter, a former CIGNA executive, provides an insider’s view as to what type of behavior we can expect from the private insurance industry after reform is enacted. No matter the details of the reform legislation, the industry will always find innovative ways to advance the interests of their executives and their investors. It is absolutely inevitable that these innovations will be to the detriment of patients and payers.

The heated debate over the proposal to offer a public plan option is certainly warranted, but the much of the debate misses the point. While most people are arguing over the design of the public option, they are neglecting the fundamental flaws of our multi-payer system.

Single payer is now a part of the dialogue in Congress. Now if only we can convert the single payer dialogue into single payer policy.

You state that John Sheils has shown that building on the existing system is the single most expensive option for reform. What you didn’t state is that Sheils has also shown that a single payer national health program is the least expensive, and is the most effective in achieving the goals of universality and cost containment.

With the release of the discussion draft of the House Tri-Committee reform proposal, the progressive community is celebrating the decision to include a “strong public option” within the health insurance exchange. Its innovative feature, different from other public option proposals, is that it would use lower Medicare-based rates for the first three years, enabling the public option to displace some higher-premium private plans within the insurance exchange. Then in the fourth year, rates would be adjusted to provide a level playing field with the private plans.

The Senate Finance Committee members were informed by the Congressional Budget Office that the impact their preliminary reform proposal would have on the federal budget would be much greater than a bipartisan consensus would permit. Before moving further forward with the legislative process, the committee is considering changes to reduce the amount of funds that would have to be budgeted. The draft proposal cited above is not a definitive recommendation but merely presents ideas for discussion.

In a landmark 1980 New England Journal of Medicine editorial, former Editor-in-Chief Arnold Relman warned us of the new “Medical-Industrial Complex,” referring to “a medical care system that had begun to attract investors, and in which business interests had started to reshape the behavior of doctors and health care facilities.”