Ben Nelson To Oppose Public Health Care Plan
by Todd Beeton, Sat May 02, 2009 at 05:45:09 PM EDT
Not only does Ben Nelson intend to oppose President Obama's public health care plan, which is central to the president's health care reform policy, but he's using stupid right wing talking points to do it.
From The Huffington Post:
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said Friday that he will oppose legislation that would give people the option of a public health insurance plan. The move puts him on the opposite side of two-thirds of Americans. [...]Nelson's problem, he told CQ, is that the public plan would be too attractive and would hurt the private insurance plans. "At the end of the day, the public plan wins the game," Nelson said. Including a public option in a health plan, he said, was a "deal breaker."
You see, for Republicans and their allies, the corporate Democrats such as Nelson, the very fact that the public plan is cheaper and more efficient and thus more appealing to consumers, means it must be crushed because it represents a threat to the private insurance industry. And really, that's the constituent Nelson is most concerned about.
As Jason Rosenbaum writes over at The HCAN blog:
The company Nelson finds himself in is laid out clearly: business, the insurance industry, and Republicans. Of course, this isn't surprising, considering his campaign donation history. Open Secrets says Nelson received $608,709 from the insurance industry in 2007-2008, making the insurance industry his biggest donor group, more than lawyers and even lobbyists.
And guess what Nelson intends to do to galvanize support in the Senate for his opposition to the public plan? That's right, create a "coalition of like-minded centrists," although how one can argue that opposition to a public plan is a centrist position is a mystery when polling shows clearly that support for a public plan is overwhelmingly popular and hence the mainstream and -- dare I say -- centrist position.
A poll released this week by Consumer Reports National Research Center showed that 66 percent of Americans back the creation of a public health plan that would compete with private plans. Nelson, in comments made to CQ, joins the 16 percent of poll respondents who said they oppose the plan.
I imagine once upon a time centrist meant "in the middle" on some perceived left/right spectrum. Now, thanks to shills like Nelson, it's become synonymous with "corporate."
But luckily we have a coalition of our own, a large group of congressional Democrats including 16 Senators ranging from true centrists to liberals who have stated plainly with no ambiguity their support for a public plan:
A new public insurance plan is an essential part of reforming the U.S. healthcare system, 16 Democratic senators declared in a letter to two powerful committee chairmen Wednesday. [...]"As members of key committees and leaders on health care issues, we write to support a public plan option as a core component of this reform," the letter said. "There is no reason to believe that private insurers alone will meet the public purpose of ensuring coverage for all Americans at affordable prices for taxpayers."
Below is the full list of Senators who signed the letter:
Sen. Sherrod Brown
Sen. Dick Durbin
Sen. Bob Casey Jr.
Sen. Kirsten GillIbrand
Sen. Tom Harkin
Sen. Daniel Inouye
Sen. Ted Kaufman
Sen. Carl Levin
Sen. Jeff Merkley
Sen. Jack Reed
Sen. Jay Rockefeller
Sen. Charles Schumer
Sen. Debbie Stabenow
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse
Sen. Jim Webb
Sen. Bernie Sanders
With such wideranging support as this and a budget resolution that preserves the option to use reconciliation for health care legislation, hopefully Ben Nelson's opposition to the public plan will be next to irrelevant.
Tags: Ben Nelson, health care reform (all tags)
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