MoveOn.org pushes Snowe for public option
A rally in the Old Port Wednesday tried to keep the heat on Republican U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe in the push for a public option in federal health care legislation, which the Maine senator has opposed.
Snowe told reporters Wednesday that she could foresee backing a "trigger" that would implement a public option if private insurers failed to meet targets for providing affordable policies. Members of the progressive MoveOn.org Political Action, who turned out Wednesday in Lobsterman's Park to hold up a cardboard cutout of Snowe and press her for a public option, said that's not good enough.
"We are here to say we're not going to get real health insurance reform unless we have a strong, viable not-for-profit option that's going to keep the insurance industry honest," said Bill DiGiulio, a volunteer with the political action committee that claims 5 million members in the United States.
DiGiulio argued that a trigger would not work because of the high threshold needed to meet it.
"There's a trigger right now in the Medicare prescription drug plan, and they've never hit the trigger," DiGiulio said.
Senate Finance Committee health care legislation shepherded by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., which was voted out of committee 14-9 Tuesday with Snowe as the lone Republican supporting it, includes a trigger as well, but don't expect the public option to ever take effect under its provisions, DiGiulio said.
Due to affordability definitions and subsidies in the bill, that trigger will never take effect, he said.
Snowe remains an important figure in the debate, MoveOn.org members pointed out, because she could be instrumental in how a final health care bill is brought to the Senate floor.
The only procedure by which the Senate can vote to place a time limit on consideration of a bill and overcome a filibuster is under the cloture rule, an option Democrats have weighed. That requires at least 60 votes from the 100 senators.
"She's important because she's our senator and we elected her and we want her to do the will of what her people want," DiGiulio said in an interview Wednesday. "What we need is a vote for cloture, we want a strong public option to get on the Senate bill, and then we want a vote for cloture, and then it goes right to a straight up and down vote."
Wednesday's rally combined a number of messages.
Figures in costumes of the grim reaper held up a banner stating, "45,000 die/yr No Health Insurance," referring to a recent study conducted at Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance, which found that uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts. Critics say the study ignored other factors and was conducted by medical professionals who publcly support the public option for health care.
"We’re here to ask Senator Snowe whose side she is on in the health care debate: the insurance industry’s or her constituents’?" DiGiulio said in a press release, which dubbed Wednesday's rally part of a national day of action, including over 100 rallies in 43 states.
The rally also argued that the country supports health care legislation — an assertion that depends on the poll being looked at.
DiGiulio said Gallup polls have shown that 63 percent of Mainers want a public option. On Wednesday, the Portland-based Pan Atlantic SMS Group (www.panatlanticsmsgroup.com), a self-described provider of market research and marketing consulting services in New England, released a poll of 401 Mainers who identified themselves as “likely” voters in the November elections. The SMS Group poll revealed that 53 percent of those surveyed said national health care is poor or very poor, and 57 percent supported the public option and 37 percent opposed it.
However, some national polls have shown a narrower margin of support for the public option, with some pollsters showing the country evenly divided. Rasmussen Reports (www.rasmussenreports.com) on Oct. 12 released the latest of its weekly polls and found that 44 percent of voters nationwide favor the health care reform plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats, while 50 percent opposed the plan.
Near the site of the rally, feelings were mixed by the few passers-by who would agree to stop and be interviewed about the national health care debate.
Joseph Ciampi, 20, of Portland, said he had his doubts about Congress ever reforming health care since members had their own insurance policies.
"We can go out there and try to change it, but if the senators in their simple-minded ways don't change what they're doing, health care isn't going to change," he said. "They're the ones who've got the private insurance, they don't have mainstream health care; if they had mainstream health care, a billion to one odds are they would change it within an instant. They would change it within a blink of an eye."
Ciampi, who said he's on Maine Care insurance, a state health care option that pays recipients' care providers directly, described himself as in between jobs after working in construction, fast food and other occupations. He said a federal public option could be a benefit — if it works.
"If it works, I'm for it, but the only thing I don't find right with it is if it's government run there's going to be a chance that it's not going to work that well like all the rest of the stuff the government does," he said.
Others were reluctant to speak on the record.
A resident of France, who said he was a tourist in Portland, declined to be identified but said the public option was a good idea.
"I think it's a very good thing that people care enough about it to have a rally," he added.
U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, has said she doesn't support Snowe's idea of a trigger for the public option, saying it would be too easy for a Democratic administration to impose a government plan nationwide.
"It would simply delay the public plan for a couple of years," she told The Associated Press.
