Which, with downsizing, unemployment will be a lot of people.

A couple major points of Medicare for All is coverage and subsidies.

I think we’re talking Apples and Oranges here. Can the public option as it exists in HR 3200 right now, for example, be competitive with private insurance? Your alternative public option concept might prove successful and I’d certainly accept it as a fall-back position with a glide path to “Medicare for All,” however, it’s not on the table now. In fairness, your post says that what Obama needs to do is to place it on the table and place all his effort behind it. But my view as developed here is that it would be better if he places “Medicare for All” back on the table because that idea is easier for people to understand and therefore is easier for him to sell. I’ve seen nothing in this extensive discussion to persuade me that my proposal is in error.

I agree with all portions of your post, but highlighting:

“Fact is, the biggest and most immediate, though hardly sufficient, benefits of HR 3200 — particularly, elimination of preeexisting condition clauses and most recissions — have nothing whatever to do with the public option and were part of the deal struck with AHIP since last fall or before….in exchange, of course, for insurance-purchase mandates partially subsidized by taxpayers.”

the question I was asking Jane, stated in expanded form, is:

Is HR 3200 with its elimination of pre-existing conditions and most rescissions and other improvements and also a public option that is most likely to fail, an insurance exchange whose workings according to the bill are quite obscure, along with (probably unenforceable) mandates for individuals and small business, what will probably prove to be inadequate subsidies from the Government, and a start date for the exchange and the public option of 2013, a bill that moves us down the road in a sustainable way, or does it primarily represent a giveaway to the insurance companies that will undermine our political capability to change it later?

And when is later, is it next year or the year after that, or does this bill, in fact freeze health care politics for at least 5 years until people can begin to see that the PO won’t work?

In short is HR 3200 good enough to work for and support; or should we work to defeat it instead, and bet against the smart money’s view that if we fail here to pass any bill, we won’t get another chance at health care reform for many years?

what can 85 cosponsors of 676 do to bring Congress to heel if they don’t get the support to pass it?

Strange bedfellows. [slaps forehead. Ce n’est pas mon métier…]

Is the whip software open source? Serious question.

The whole point is that a public plan can out compete private plans.

One very good operational test for whether that’s true: Wailing and weeping and gnashing of teeth from the insurance company CEOs that they’re being put out of business. And then another round of it, because the first round will be kabuki. I haven’t heard any of that.

Any enrollment figures on this? So we can hold people accountable and avoid another bait and switch?

You think Obama’s cowering in some corner of the White House because what — you’re making such a fierce showing in our comments section?

Er, no. Several like-minded people who were previously unknown to each other have discovered each other through their comments here, and may be able to work out how to take action for themselves on an issue of great interest to the left. That used to be how the blogosphere worked. Have you considered embracing it?

And as to Medicare payment rates they are far from prefect. One great example is home oxygen. Medicare pays for tanks to be delivered but not to rent people oxygen machines. If you need long term home oxygen it is way more cost effective to buy/rent a oxygen machine.