public option

Update -- A friend correctly points out that the gripes here are with the negotiations in the Senate. The House bill treated young people quite well and on par with seniors. My apologies for failing to distinguish.

Original Post:

If one needed proof that the importance of youth has yet to really penetrate the minds of Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill, look no further than the deal cut on health care. Substantively, I'm one of those heretics who thinks that the public option had been so watered down that its removal doesn't condemn the bill. The insurance regulations -- preventing pre-existing condition discrimination and rescission, for example -- and subsidies plus the longer term efforts at cost containment make the bill a big net win for the country.

But as the public option was stripped out, Democrats saw a need to take care of at least one demographic:

Beyond that, the group agreed--contingent upon CBO analysis--to a Medicare buy in.

That buy-in option would initially be made available to some uninsured people aged 55-64 in 2011, three years before the exchanges open.

In other words, young voters got a public option...for their parents.

The fundamental decisions around this legislation shouldn't simply be about constituencies pursuing their own narrow interests. And, even without a public option, the vast, vast majority of young people will be significantly better off with the passage of this bill than they were without.

But it is disappointing that Democrats would turn their back on a generation that placed so much trust in them. Beyond that, it is politically stupid. Democrats are preparing a narrative that won't work to reach one of their biggest target audiences. Given the heavy overlap between all three of the Rising American Electorate constituencies -- youth, unmarried women, and people of color -- the reality is that Democrats are setting themselves up in a less-than-great way politically.

So the question young people may want to ask themselves is, How can we get Democrats to pay attention to our self-interest? We can't even convince them to care about their own.

I hadn't really thought about the possibility of creating a WPA-style agency as part of a stimulus program until I read a post about it by Paul Krugman. I also read another blog post about it where a commenter said something along the lines of “Jobs, jobs jobs. The government should create jobs directly, indirectly, ANY way possible!”

I agree. Maybe it is time for another Works Progress Administration style program in the US. I've seen some convincing articles on both sides of the discussion but overall, the WPA worked. It (and other direct job creation and training programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps) created jobs and enhanced our nation by creating numerous public works.

Another example of this type of public option economic stimulus from the new deal - The National Youth Administration, which provided grants for young High School or College students in exchange for work. It also provided vocational training and work for youth no longer in school. These programs trained more than 2 million young people and provided employment for another 2.6 million.

It just feels like our current recovery efforts (in which funds are funneled through contractors and corporations) aren't doing enough to counter the issue Americans are most worried about: jobs. The Recovery Act passed earlier this year is working, in my opinion, but perhaps it could have been better.

If we were going to try something like this, it probably should have been part of the first stimulus. But it's something to keep in mind for the future.

Photo Credit: Josh Landau/Young Invincibles

Even though you might not get it from today's Senate Finance Committee vote, far more than a simple majority of Americans support the addition of a public option to health care reform.

Thanks to Speaker Pelosi for the image above.

The President spoke to the University of Maryland yesterday pitching his health care message and specifically tailoring it to young people. He mentioned the mandate that would require insurance compainies that cover children to do so until they are 26 to ensure that all young people will still be covered even throughout their educations and until they are able to get jobs that ... ideally ... will have plans of their own.

He praised the University which now requires all students to have health care to enroll. This is a new policy that some in the audience booed when it was mentioned. The policy was enacted the University says in efforts to limit a students liability and prevent them from incurring additional personal debt in the event of an emergency - which could keep them from being able to continue their education. Obama echoed this concern and saying that 40% of young people are in debt because of medical bills.

He also repeated the unfortunate mime that young people believe they are "invulnerable" saying its what he thought when he was young, and thus we as a generation don't think we need health care. Again.... this is a common mistake.

Its not that young people don't want health care, its that we graduate with over $23,000 in debt on average and enter into jobs that aren't providing a living wage or any benefits. With individual policies now about as much or more as a semester of college to some, I'm afraid the options are a bit grim. And a family plan is up 5% to about the same as a new car.

Interestingly, Karl Rove commented on the newly release Baucus bill and Obama by saying that the President's approval ratings among youth

"may drop more when those voters discover that the plan put out by Sen. Max Baucus (D., Mont.) this week would fine them up to $950 a year for not being insured. Young people are 9.9% of the population. Fining them only antagonizes them."

At the Netroots Nation panel Getting Ish Done, Christina Hollenback of the Generation Alliance echoed a sentiment I know I share and many of my friends share - that if Congress and the White House doesn't pass a comprehensive health care reform package that provides a public option for young people, they will have done nothing for us.

In a post today at Daily Kos, DemFromCT discusses some data from the most recent ABC/WaPo poll (don't even bother reading the article -- youth are skipped over in the analysis), specifically covering health care reform. The post was inspired by a WaPo analysis, found here. What I found to be interesting was the comparison of the 18-29 year old crosstab with seniors:

On the top you can see that youth in June supported -- either strongly or somewhat -- the addition of a public plan to our health care system at a 71 percent clip. Two months later, the number has dropped to 61 percent. Much has been said in the blogosphere over the last week regarding the fading of Obama's base, the youth vote included, so this drop -- especially with President Obama on vacation the last week -- isn't surprising. The GOP has been able to run with the death panels meme without being challenged by the media, and until the last week or two, the DNC and OFA sat on their laurels, watching HCR opponents turn town hall meetings into a mush consisting of hyperbolic warnings of America ending and disruptive and undemocratic tactics.

But even with all of this, according to this poll, youth aren't changing their mind about the benefits of health care reform. Responses to a question not published in DemFromCT's analysis but published instead in the WaPo write-up show that 18-29 year olds, when presented with a chance to evaluate whether or not government-inspired reform of the health care system would help or hurt, still believe that it would be a positive development -- their response didn't change over the course of two months. Seniors, though, disagree. 48 percent of those polled believe that government health reform would harm the system, up from 39 percent in June. Furthermore, the percentage of senior respondents strongly feeling reform would do more harm than good surged seventeen points.

The bottom question in the initial set asked whether or not the health care system would lead to improved care for the respondents in particular, and the affirmative responses from June to August nearly doubled among Millennials. 15 percent believed their health care would be better in June, with 28 percent answering the same way two months later. The "betters" seem to draw both from the "worse" and "same" groups. Seniors, again, differed from youth. More seniors believed that health care reform would lead to worse health care.

So, as on many current political issues, there's a generation gap. While both young and old are at least feeling queasy about the public option -- much thanks to GOP/insurance industry-led obstructionism and timid Democratic leaders -- the two groups begin to diverge from there. Elder voters, already feeling lukewarm about Obama, do not believe health care reform will benefit the system or their own health care. Youth, meanwhile, still widely support government-led health care reform, while maintaining a belief that, in the end, the government will get it right.

Youth can still serve as a base to Obama. The big question is whether or not Obama has any nerve left to ratchet up the debate, and whether or not Democratic members of Congress have the chutzpah to strongly support a public option. There is a still-formidable cohort of young voters waiting to see some political courage from Obama and the Democrats.

Heather Box the Deputy Director of the League of Young Voters has a piece up on the Huffington Post I highly recommend: Young Voters Are Obama's Best Hope for Healthcare Reform.

It features Matt Singer a good friend of FM who, like many youth faced problems being uninsured.

"When Matt Singer was 19 years old he decided he needed a break from college. He left Whitman College and moved home to Montana, working part time to support himself. He was doing fine until one day when he woke up with intense stomach pain and had to drive himself to the hospital. Three hours later, after a CAT scan and blood tests, it was confirmed that Matt had a kidney stone. Young and healthy, he recovered quickly and was back at work the next day. One week later he received a $1200 bill in the mail for the hospitals services. "When I opened the bill my mouth dropped to the ground, $1200 was what I was making in a month!" says Matt Singer."

...
"A new SurveyUSA poll released yesterday shows that Singer is not alone in his call for reform. Singer's a member of the age group (18-34) that both expressed the strongest desire for reform and the strongest support for a public option. According to the SurveyUSA poll, 60% of those 18-34 support Obama's plan -- including 66% of 18 to 24-year-olds and 74% of 25 to 29-year-olds -- compared to 51% overall. "This is our generation's shot at real reform, we aren't going to let it pass us by," says Singer."

Go read the rest if you have a moment. And if you have a few more moments promote it on the social bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit, YahooBuzz, and Stumble.

I had a serious problem trying to upload video at NN but here are the rest of those that I posted on Friday are now here!

Panel Part 2

Panel Part 3

Panel Part 4

The most meaningful comment out of this I believe came from Christina Hollenback who said that when it comes to young people and health care if they don't pass the Public Insurance Option then as far as she's concerned they didn't do anything. For young people who have few options the Public Insurance is the only thing that will work for most of us. Without Public Insurance she's right, they may as well have done nothing.

And for a president who was elected because of young people, I'm not sure this is the best political strategy.