This just out from the Employee Benefits Research Institute: The 2009 Health Confidence Survey (link).

And because apparently I’m into making tables today…

That’s right: 83 percent support a public option. So why is it looking so iffy in Congress?

Definitions:

National Health Plans: Allowing major health insurance companies to offer national plans that anyone can purchase. 
Public Plan Option: Creating a new public health insurance plan that anyone can purchase.
Guaranteed Issue: Having national rules requiring insurance companies to cover all people, regardless of their problems.
Expansion of Medicare & Medicaid: Expanding government programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid.
Employer Mandate: Requiring all employers to pay toward subsidized health insurance for employees.
Individual Mandate: Requiring everyone to participate in some kind of health insurance.

Related PBC Books:

Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform, by Howard Dean with Igor Volsky and Faiz Shakir

Sick: The Untold Story of America’s Health Care Crisis — and the People Who Pay the Price, by Jonathan Cohn

Best Care Anywhere: Why VA Health Care Is Better Than Yours, by Phillip Longman

Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis, by Sen. Tom Daschle

Related PBC Book

So many people have taken the government up on its Cash for Clunkers program — which lets consumers to trade in their old, gas-guzzling vehicles and receive vouchers worth up to $4,500 to help pay for new, more fuel efficient cars and trucks — that the initiative has almost burned through the $1 billion allocated for the year. (It launched just a month ago!) Yesterday there was talk of the program’s being suspended, but now lawmakers from Michigan are pressing to add $2 billion to continue it. Unfolding…

Meanwhile, if you’re not sure how Cash for Clunkers works, here’s a handy chart to help you sort it all out. Note: the program divides these new cars and trucks into four categories.

Source: Committee on Energy and Commerce (link)

Suite Française, a book of two novellas by Irène Némirovsky, may be the first work of literary fiction to come out of World War II, and it’s certainly one of the greatest. Written in the midst of German-occupied France, as events like those it depicts were happening, the manuscript was unfinished at the time of the author’s arrest by the Nazis (for being “a stateless person of Jewish descent” ) and death, in Auschwitz, in 1942. It lay forgotten in an attic until a few years ago, was published in 2004, and became an international bestseller. To give you a flavor:

The first [novella], “Storm in June,” begins in the tumult of Paris as Hitler’s troops close in on the city, and Parisians grab what they can of their belongings and flee en masse. Focusing on a few characters, some admirable, others not, Némirovsky conveys the personal dramas unfolding amidst the surrounding chaos.

The second, “Dolce,” is set in the village of Bussy, where a garrison of Wehrmacht troops is billeted. The local men of fighting age are gone. The women and children and the elderly must make their accommodations with the occupiers who reveal themselves, many of them, to be human beings, not the monsters of French propaganda. (The growing affection between a French woman and a German officer distills the situation’s contradictions and tensions — between head and heart, duty and love — especially acutely. (More here.)

All of which is by way of introducing our latest video — the fruit of a recent visit to New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage, where curator Ivy Barsky was kind enough to walk us through a wonderful exhibit, “Woman of Letters: Irène Némirovsky and “Suite Française.” I think it’s an excellent introduction to the extraordinary life and work, and tragic death, of a woman La Croix of Paris called “one of the great 20th century authors.”

Thanks again to Gov. Dean, Phillip Longman, and everyone who participated  in last night’s blog chat on healthcare reform. Great questions, great answers.

Don’t miss Countdown with Keith Olbermann, guest hosted one more time by Gov. Dean. Meanwhile, here are some highlights from last night’s show.

Start of the show; interview with Chris Van Hollen (D-Md). Dean asks why the Democrats haven’t taken a stronger bargaining position on healthcare reform.

Interview with Phillip Longman, who says government-run healthcare — courtesy of the Veterans Administration — provides the “best care anywhere.”

Thanks everyone for tuning in and for joining me on the PBC blog tonight. I hope you’ll tune in tomorrow night. Remember, we can win this fight if we work hard and stick together.

Brian writes:

I just want to say thank you for a great show. I am concerned about the misinformation coming from the right. My mother is a watcher of a certain news channel and believes some of the darker theories being proposed. What can we do to combat the misinformation being broadcast? Why is there no penalty for lying to the public and misleading them?

Answer:

At the risk of being self-serving, you should join the PBC right now and get my book.  There are chapters in there that explain exactly how we need to talk to our friends and family about the myths that republicans and the health insurance industry use to attack real healthcare reform.

Thanks for all these terrific questions and comments. Just a heads up: we have the governor for about five more minutes.

Thanks for all these great comments and questions.

Melissa writes:

A 71 yr old woman was protesting against health reform outside the local office of one of our senators and told a reporter that under a public option she’d never be able to see a doctor. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that anybody explained Medicare to her. The media treats truth vs lies as just 2 different viewpoints. Your thoughts?

Answer:

As the President pointed out today, Medicare is a government a run program, and in fact its a single-payer.  The truth is republicans hate Medicare.  They didn’t want it in 1965, and they’d get rid of it now expect that they a) are in the minority; and b) got that way in part because they tried to get rid of social security under President Bush.  Programs like tonight’s show underline the truth which is that “socialized medicine” already exists in America, taking care of our veterans, and all Americans over 65.  Since the evidence that it works better than the private sector is so strong, the question is, why wont our elected representatives give the rest of us the option to try it as well.  I’m afraid that the answer may be that they are well paid by the health insurance industry to vote against the people who pay their salaries.

Pierre writes:

Why does the press continue to give the republicans air time. it continues to give legitimacy when they are in fact obstructionist and owned by big business. I have for many years stated that the military (I am a veteran) receive the best health care – your show tonight confirmed that. Why aren’t the rest of Americans, who foot the bill, entitled to the same quality health care at affordable rates?

Answer:

That is exactly the question that our members of Congress, particularly in the Senate and particularly in the republican party need to answer.  They benefit by tax-payer funded programs themselves.  Why can’t those of us who pay their salaries have that kind of healthcare as well?

Eric writes:

Governor Dean, thanks for being here! I for one, am sick and tired of seeing ads all over television for prescription drugs. When did it become acceptable for drug companies to push drugs on TV, in print and on the internet? Do you feel these ads should be banned? Thanks!

Answer:

You are correct that drug advertising is not good for medical costs or for rational healthcare delivery.  unfortunately the supreme court decided some years ago that ads were considered commercial free speech and therefore protected under the first amendment.  There is a group in Congress which is attempting to make these ads non-deductable as business expenses.

Tony C in NOVA writes:

Great job, Gov.Dean!

If we can liberate our choices of insurance from our employers, it will make our choices cheaper and more plentiful and make the cost of doing business less expensive.

Answer:

You are correct, employer based healthcare is more expensive than a public option, and is making America less competitive. However, many Americans like their employer-based insurance and surprisingly many employers want to keep their system the way it is. That is why we want to give Americans choice between a public and a private option rather than make that choice for them, as the republicans want to do.