Here’s the case of an actual small business owner (as opposed to the apocryphal small business owners so frequently cited by large corporate interests) who supports the public option on health care and is speaking out.
Taylor, part-owner of TNT Software, will be a featured speaker at a major health care reform rally June 25 near the Capitol Mall. Sponsored by Health Care for America Now, a coalition of a thousand groups representing small businesses, health care providers, community organizers and labor unions, the rally will advocate for a government-run “public option” modeled on Medicare as part of national health care reform.
“Our message is that we need to support President Obama’s plan for a public health insurance option,” Taylor said last week. “Our feeling is that a public option should be available to every person in the U.S. As small business owners, that will give us another option, rather than having to rely on a single health care option.”
Funny, once you get outside the Chamber-AMA-right-wing-noise-machine nexus people actually like the public option. I’ve been wondering when more business folks would make the argument that health care must be dealt with in some practical fashion, this is great.
Cue the slime machine in three…two…one.
Yup. It was part of GM’s undoing as well.
There are a hell of a lot of companies that would rather not be in the healthcare business.
Current public opinion polls put support of “public option” at around 70%, with single-payer almost as strongly backed.
Would that Max Baucus, Kent Conrad, et al. followed the will of the people instead of the will of PhaRxma.
The fact private-sector health industry advocates are afraid of competition from government-run health care tells you just how bad private health insurance is.
When your customers would rather do business with government bureaucrats than with you, you’ve got a problem.
if health is killing small business, or any business, like gm, the public option is going to do the same to the us economy. the only reason obamas handlers want nationalized healthcare is the same reason that new york jews went to russian in 1917, to advance socialism.
Since you know so much about NYC’s garment district in the early 20th century, do you know why Woodrow Wilson sent 11,000 American soldiers to Russia in 1917?
Probably because Obama’s Jewish grandmother told him to:
“Heah ya go, Bubuleh, have some soup and send some troops.”
drum roll, please!
@5
Good one!
Jon–
Too Funny!
If health care is killing small business in your anti-business opinion,
JUST THINK ABOUT THE IMPACT OF HIGH LEFTIST TAXES & EXCESSIVE REGULATION!!
Jon…you are a PINHEADED KLOWN!
We should get rid of Labor and Industries and Employment Security and spend that money on health care. Private healthcare. Add it back on our employees checks so they have the money to pay for it. Tax free. Private, not bloated uncaring government cocksuckers.
@9
Yeah, ’cause the greedy for profit world is so much better and compassionate!
Every first world nation except the U.S. has universal healthcare.
Hell, are we still a first world nation? No healthcare, crap public transit, a gizillion gun deaths a year…
@8
Yeah, the folks that lived at Love Canal really liked how poorly regulated waste dumping worked out for them. WaMu and Lehman Brothers seem to have just thrived with the lacks banking regulations and enforcement of the Bush Regime.
@4 Bullshit.
Roger Rabbit Quiz
The preening parrot @4 got his tripe from:
1. Rush
2. The GOP playbook
3. The Wingnut Weekly Talking Points
4. Free Republic
5. His rectum
@8 Nothing kills small business faster or more completely than laissez faire capitalism. See, e.g., the 1890s, the 1930s, the 1980s, and of course the current George W. Bush Depression.
@9 I have a better idea. Let’s get rid of you! I think you should be the first man on Mars. If our government won’t donate a rocket to this worthy cause, I’ll look for one that will.*
* Just kidding! I’m trying out some of that Coulter-style wingnut humor to see if I get the big applause she does.
@11 You gotta wonder what keeps wingnuts like Mark going in the face of overwhelming evidence of the moral and practical bankruptcy of conservative ideology. It must be the $7.25 an hour they pay him to sit in a boiler room and pound out this crap. You can tell he’s writing from a script because his comments are exactly the same as every other troll comment.
I shouldn’t diary pimp, but, as a small business owner trying to provide health insurance for my employees, I recently wrote a rec-listed dKos diary on this very subject.
@5
well, i know obama doesnt have a jewish grandmother, because if he did, the msm would have tripped all over each other reporting her heroic life story.
health insurance issue iz pleasant anecdote to obama war policy dissonanz, no? murray cantwell mcdermoot all in.
What the fuck do you know about small business Roger, you’re a fucking communist.
It’s like getting marriage advice from a Catholic Priest.
Michael@11: Puddy suggests you read “The Environmental History and Politics of Niagara County: Industrialization to Post-Industrialization” by Nicole Manning http://www.niagara.edu/environmental/theenv~1.doc
It’s interesting…
What a crock,hahahahahahah!!!!!!!!!
Michael Michael Michael, we’ve gone through this before…
Blame is everywhere. From the Congressional Hearings of 2004 where Dummocrapts called it racism through 2008. Are you NutsTooTight leetle brother?
re 18: Can’t fool you, huh? What about Woodrow Wilson’s 11,000 troops in Russia? What do you think of that?
re 20: “It’s like getting marriage advice from a Catholic Priest (or any other educated person).”
Something you know nothing about.
@24
ferrante,
i’m not sure what point you’re trying to make about woodrow wilson. my point is, jews are always at the forefront of socialism. trotsky’s real name was lev devenovich. most of his top echelon operatives were jews from new york. now, they see national healthcare as a way to force scoicalism on america.
Stop blaming the Jews for the world’s ills! It’s Protestant Socialists!
17 That’s interesting stuff, Sarge…especially the part where there’s a whole layer of businesses that have sprung up to serve as go-betweens and figure-outers between small businesses, their employees and the insurance carriers, because there’s no way either of the first two could possibly comprehend the whole mess.
I find it interesting that you’re thinking about switching from Primera to Aetna. The company I work for just switched from Aetna to Primera. Whatever way you go, it seems you’re not trying to find “the best” but to merely seek the lesser of evils.
If this is the best way “the best health care system in the world” is supposed to work, I’ll eat my hat.
What would happen if someone found them selves on goverment health care and said I will not take part. I refuse to be a part of this system. that is what I plan to do. I believe that goverment health care is a violiation of the 10th Amendment to the Constitution. Seriously, what are they going to arrest me for not going to a doctor. Fine me for hanging up on a goverment counselor. Ha, I don’t think so.
The same thing that happens if someone decides not to use the private health care they get from their job now and pay for everything out of pocket.
How many ‘principled’ right wing anti-government Congress members have refused to take part in their free government run health care system?
29: What would happen? Well, when you get sick and don’t have insurance, you would probably get treated anyway, either under the current system where you get dumped at the emergency room door, or under a new system where they would treat you and bill the government. The main difference being, that it will cost the taxpayers a lot more because you waited too long to see a doctor in what might have been an easily curable minor illness which through neglect morphed into a life-threatening one.
By the way, while everyone is moaning about how the U.S. automakers and other U.S. businesses can’t compete with the “low wages” paid overseas, remember:
1. Japanese wages are now higher than in the U.S.
2. Korean wages have pretty much reached parity with those in the U.S.
3. Both countries are doing much better at selling their automobiles in the U.S. than the traditional U.S. automakers.
4. Both countries have a form of universal health care, so automakers don’t have to worry about paying for health care for either current workers or retirees.
The best thing we can do for our businesses is to solve the health-care problem in the country.
@29 Will you refuse to drive on government-provided roads, too? Good! If everyone who thinks like you stays off the taxpayers’ highways the congestion problem will be solved.
While you’re at it, you also should refuse to apply for Social Security and Medicare when you get old, you shouldn’t accept unemployment benefits when you’re laid off, and you shouldn’t eat government-inspected meat!!
C’mon, do you screwballs really think anyone pays attention to you anymore? Just keep spewing … please!
29 No, you idiot. It means that even if you go squat in a shack somewhere in the mountains with your guns and your barefoot kids and call yourself “FNU LNU”, and then come racing into the ER when little three-year-old FNU LNU Jr. spikes a 105 temp and has a grand mal seizure, the rest of us are going to be picking up the tab…just like we do now. And yanno….I’m perfectly happy to chip in, for little Junior’s sake. After all, the poor kid’s already started out with the disadvantage of having you for a father.
First to 29. If I could I would opt out of Social Security and Medicare. However, the goverment takes my money every paycheck. Goverment should build roads but the federal goverment should only build (or give money to build) interstate roads. Also I do not drive I take the bus.
Since I am divorced, I will not have children, it would be a sin to re-marry. I really do not need goverment run insurance even if my insurance drops me or my company refuses to pay for it. I just pay cash. That is what I do most of the time now.
35: Cash sometimes works for small medical problems, some of the time.
But eventually you get to the point where a doctor won’t even schedule an appointment for you until your insurance is confirmed. They are worried about discovering you have an illness, like cancer, which will require long-term and expensive treatment. If your money runs out, it puts them in the ethical quandry of either abandoning you in mid-treatment, or doing the work for free. Most avoid that simply by refusing to schedule appointments until your staff has confirmed that you are insured.
That’s one of the reasons why emergency rooms are so full of non-critical patients – if you don’t have insurance, you can’t even schedule an appointment, even if you can pay for the visit in cash.
George F. Will Admits Public Option Will Cut Costs
Will’s argument is apparently this: The government does not need to make a profit and will have greater leverage with providers; therefore it will deliver the same service for less money. That’s unfair!
Is this really the best argument that one of the most prominent intellectual conservatives can mount against the public option?
–Quoted from FiveThirtyEight.com