Like many of you, I’ve been following the health care reform debate quite closely. But maybe you missed the latest news:
I just found out my health insurance premium is going up 12 percent next year.
How about yours?
If you’re courageous enough to pull out a paycheck stub from a couple of years ago and compare what you were paying for health insurance then to what you’re paying now — that is, if you’re lucky enough to still be getting a paycheck — I have a little advice: Make sure there’s a certified medical professional nearby.
I bring this up only because — 12 bleepin’ percent? — I just got back from a health care forum, sponsored by 9News and The Denver Post, and maybe 500 people showed up. It will not surprise you that many attendees were angry.
It was funny. Not Balloon Boy family funny. Not the new Coen Brothers movie — “A Serious Man” — funny.
But, still, funny.
There was lots of shouting, and one guy had to be forcibly removed. Host Adam Schrager, of 9News, tried to play the role of crowd whisperer. At one point, though, he finally told the noisy crowd, “Folks, stop. You’re embarrassing yourself.”
Someone yelled back: “Adam, you’re embarrassing yourself.”
And so it went. Maybe you’ve seen this show before. I know I have.
But this forum was slightly different because six of the nine members of the state’s congressional delegation — John Salazar, Doug Lamborn and Betsy Markey somehow couldn’t make it — were on hand to take questions.
What was not so different is that most in the audience seemed not particularly interested in either the questions — which were, for the most part, pre-selected — or, for that matter, the answers. Shouting, however, was of high interest.
We seem to have reached an unusual place in public discourse. We’ve agreed to turn off our cellphones in public places but think it’s OK to scream virtually anywhere.
To be fair, there wasn’t much new to hear. Ed Perlmutter did say he wants to tax Wall Street stock transactions to help pay for health care. That’s fine with me, although I’d prefer the sugary-drink-tax option, because, as a diabetic, I don’t drink them. In fact, for my purposes, you could have a sugary-drink tax and tax PepsiCo stock transactions too.
Mike Coffman, the lone Republican on stage, stayed on script. He was for tort reform (which Barack Obama is trying to co-opt as an issue) and for letting insurers compete by selling across state lines (which Democrats, cleverly, are turning into a bid to take away the insurers’ anti-trust exemptions.)
Diana DeGette, meanwhile, told a tragic story of a childhood friend who had prostate cancer and dropped his insurance just as the cancer returned and had to sell his house to qualify for Medicaid. He finally qualified but eventually died. As she was telling the story, a guy in the row in front of me was miming playing a violin.
As I said, there was little new here. Many of the old health care fights — death panels and illegal immigrant status — are over, if not the old attitude.
But the war is now all about the public option, which is also funny, but in the ironic sense.
Once, for liberals, the public option was a luxury, one that seemed negotiable. It was a weak stand-in for single payer, which was a non-starter in this year’s health care debate. Conservatives picked up on that, and, for them, “public option” came to stand for “government takeover.” You know where we went from there.
But we’ve ended up someplace different. To get there, you need to go back to that 12 percent cost increase in my health care plan and whatever increase you’re facing.
The 12 percent is between your employer, your insurance company and me. Or you.
That’s for now. How about tomorrow?
If the Democrats pass health care legislation — with universal coverage, with an end to exclusions for pre-existing conditions, with an end to lifetime caps, with mandates so the insurers can make this work, with subsidies to make the mandates work — there’s still the question of ever-rising costs. Of private insurance. Of Medicare. Of Medicaid.
As Michael Bennet points out, we’ve had a 97 percent increase in insurance costs over the past 10 years.
That’s why I think the public option, in some form, will have to pass. It could be Olympia Snowe’s trigger or it could be Tom Carper’s plan allowing states to opt out. Whatever, Democrats have to control insurance costs or health care fails. And the public option is their only real option.
The six or seven so-called centrist Democrats needed to get 60 votes in the Senate to block a filibuster can almost certainly see the danger — for health care and for them.
Here’s one thing you can be sure of: If Democrats pass health care reform and insurance costs keep ballooning, the next time it won’t just be the town hallers screaming bloody murder.
Mike Littwin writes Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-5428 or mlittwin@denverpost.com.
