How Health Reform With No Public Option is Worse Than No Reform At All

The closer we get to the votes that really matter on keeping or rejecting a public option in health care reform, the more important it is to remember what the public option really is:

The only thing that makes any attempt to reform health care work.

Only a public option will reduce costs. Only a public option will avoid exploding the deficit. Only a public option will prevent a multi-trillion-dollar giveaway to insurance giants that will make the Wall Street bailout look like pocket change.

Jason Rosenbaum at Firedoglake explains:

The Los Angeles Times has a must-read piece today on the problems of an individual mandate without cost controls attached (emphasis added):

In the drive to bring health coverage to almost every American, lawmakers have largely rejected restrictions on how much insurers can charge, sparking fears that consumers will continue to face the skyrocketing premium increases of recent years.

The legislators' reluctance to control premium costs comes despite the fact that they intend to require virtually all Americans to get health insurance, an unprecedented mandate -- long sought by insurance companies -- that would mark the first time the federal government has compelled consumers to buy a single industry's product, effectively creating a captive market.

"We are about to force at least 30 million people into an insurance market where the sharks are circling," said California Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, a Democrat who served as the state's insurance commissioner for eight years. "Without effective protections, they will be eaten alive."

Soaring premiums coupled with millions of new customers forced to buy policies would likely mean higher costs for taxpayers to cover government subsidies for lower-income families and individuals.
...

"If the government is going to require people to buy an insurance policy, they have to guarantee it is affordable," said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog. "It is unconscionable not to."

The Baucus bill is a mandate with no price controls, because it lacks a public health insurance option to increase competition with private insurance.

SNIP

Without a public health insurance option to control costs, the Baucus bill gives private insurers license to raise their rates as much as they want. Families and taxpayers will have to keep up. Given the way private insurers raise their rates, this isn't right or sustainable.

SNIP

I think Americans understand the policy. They get that if the Baucus bill passes unchanged, we will be bailing out the private insurance companies that have screwed us for years, and we all will be forced to buy insurance that we can't afford. They get that without a the choice of public health insurance option to keep the insurance companies honest and keep prices down, and without decent subsidies and an employer mandate, an individual mandate is unconscionable.

Don't let anyone tell you the public option is expendable, something to negotiate away from repug votes that no reform bill will ever, ever get.

The public option is the only part of reform worth keeping because it's the only thing that prevents "reform" from being worse - far worse - than what we have today.