As expected and predicted, an intensive campaign is being initiated by Establishment Democrats in support of a “public option” – offering the choice of a public, nonprofit insurance plan which competes with private commercial health insurance investment bank plans. 

A public option is a non-comprehensive, fragmented program that continues to prop up the commercial health insurance investment bank industry. A co-opted program falsely called “Medicare for All” will continue to prop up the commercial health insurance investment banks.

Following are a couple of points to keep in mind, especially when you hear promises that the public option is a giant incremental step toward Single Payer Universal Healthcare/National Improved Medicare for All.

It is not.

A public option will be only one more player in our costly, fragmented system of funding healthcare. It alone will bring us none of the important features of our Single Payer Universal Healthcare/National Improved Medicare for All bill such as efficiency, equity, systemic cost savings and universality. The profoundly wasteful administrative complexity will remain and commercial health insurance investment banks will continue to grift and cause ongoing preventable harm and death.

Previous efforts by Congress, heavily influenced by the commercial health insurance investment bank industry, to design a public option led to a highly flawed model that would prevent the “unfair” competitive advantage that a government program would otherwise have over the commercial health insurance investment bank industry.

This same commercial health insurance investment bank industry influence is precisely why the co-op models authorized by the ACA are failed.

And, there is absolutely no reason to believe that the commercial health insurance investment bank industry might change its tune now. They are the most criminal industry in the world in that their business model is to intentionally — deliberately — obstruct medical care for profit.

The public option has been characterized as a “Medicare buy-in.” But Medicare is an equitably funded social insurance program covering everyone who is eligible, whereas the public option would be just another individual plan in a market of commercial health insurance investment bank plans, likely with extremely high premiums because of adverse selection and the Denial of Care Harm-for-Profit model.

If a public option were to be enacted, some believeit would be only a matter of time before everyone would want in once it demonstrates its superiority, and then we would have a de facto Single Payer Universal Healthcare.

But you need look only at the experience with the conspiracy between Congress and the commercial health insurance investment bank industry in the establishment of the private Medicare Advantage plans that compete with traditional Medicare to know this will not happen.

For 45 years, members of the United States Congress have given the commercial health insurance investment bank plans an unfair advantage so Medicare beneficiaries move from the public program to the private plans in ever greater numbers – the exact opposite of what true Single Payer advocates have mapped.

The Affordable Care Act was a legislative checkmate by Obama, a temporary tourniquet. He wanted to get our National Improved Medicare for All bill across the line in 2010 and that is what Americans need to do now.

After the ACA was passed, health policy illiterate Americans were duped again, yet appeased. Thus, the clamor for comprehensive National Improved Medicare for All reform died down.
Don’t repeat history. Do not be duped again.

We are hearing again that our Single Payer Universal Healthcare/National Improved Medicare for All bill is not “feasible” or “affordable,” but the public option is.

When the public option is enacted, it will be mislabeled as “Single Payer,” to dupe the public, and then it will be exposed for the miserable failure that it will be because it was designed by the commercial health insurance investment bank industry to fail (like the ACA co-ops have).

In doing so, the commercial health insurance investment bank lobby guarantees the Single Payer Universal Healthcare/National Improved Medicare for All bill/model will have been tarnished, and it could be decades before our nation would recover and be ready for reform that really works.

In the meantime, millions will continue to be bankrupted by Denial of Care, millions will continue to suffer, business owners will continue to be screwed over financially and millions more will die merely because the commercial health insurance investment bank industry told you Single Payer was not “feasible” or “affordable.”

So, predictably, the Great American Healthcare Hustle shell game continues. The pages and airwaves are being flooded with misinformation, lobbyist talking points that date back to 1996 and lies about “taking away your healthcare” and “choice.

Will Americans again drink the commercial health insurance investment bank Kool-Aid?

Or will Health First/One Health elected officials and candidates finally take an ethical, moral and just stand to pass National Improved Medicare for All – Senate Bill 1506 & HR 3069? It is the only truly comprehensive, universal healthcare program for all. For all. For all…

Seventeen-thousand Minnesotans have dropped their ACA commercial health insurance investment bank plans since Jan. 1.

Eleven commercial health insurance investment banks have pulled out of the ACA Marketplace. The market is already shifting away from Denial of Care Harm-for-Profit, and business owners are on board with non-privatized Single Payer Universal Healthcare/National Improved Medicare for All.

Who has the moral courage and integrity to stand up to the commercial health insurance investment bank industry now?

And who will continue to be complicit in the ongoing preventable harm and death by rationalizing the practices of an industry that intentionally obstructs medical care to extract profit?

Kimberly J. Soenen is the founder and executive director of “SOME PEOPLE,” an organization that educates Americans about the need for lifelong health maintenance through investigative journalism and the humanities. She is the managing editor of The Fine Print Magazine.