{"id":589,"date":"2009-06-02T19:18:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-02T23:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=589"},"modified":"2009-06-02T19:18:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-02T23:18:00","slug":"baucus-watch-public-option-issues-columbia-journalsm-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=589","title":{"rendered":"Baucus Watch, Public Option issues: Columbia Journalsm Review"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cjr.org\/campaign_desk\/baucus_watch_part_x.php?page=all\">Baucus Watch, Part X : CJR<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><em>Columbia Journalism review tries to get reporters to focus on the substance of the Public Option debate, rather than on the horse-race, who&#8217;s up, who&#8217;s down BS they generally like to cover &#8217;cause it&#8217;s easier and more fun.<\/em> <em>As a reminder of the thinking in general, you can read more about <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/cmhmd.blogspot.com\/2009\/05\/public-plan-options-strong-weak-and-mrp.html\"><em>the &#8220;weak&#8221; vs. &#8220;strong&#8221; public plan options here.<br \/><\/em><\/a><br \/>&#8220;To move this story\u2014and it\u2019s an important one\u2014beyond the process of reform to the substance of reform, we offer a few questions for reporters:<br \/>\u2022 Who will really be able to join a public plan\u2014everyone, or just those who don\u2019t have other coverage or are too ill for insurers to take them on as customers?<br \/>\u2022 Can workers with coverage from their employers go to a public plan if it\u2019s cheaper? In other words, is there a real choice for everyone?<br \/>\u2022 How will coverage be financed\u2014by taxpayer dollars, or by premiums from people needing insurance?<br \/>\u2022 Will the government provide the coverage, as it does for Medicare\u2019s hospital and doctor benefits, or will private insurers provide it, as they do for Medicare\u2019s prescription drug benefit? There\u2019s a big difference here.<br \/>\u2022 What will the benefit package look like? Which special interests are working to make sure that their latest gee-whiz technology gets covered?<br \/>\u2022 Will doctors and hospitals be paid the Medicare rates, or something higher?<br \/>\u2022 If they get the higher rates, then where will the cost-savings come from?<br \/>\u2022 If private carriers provide the benefits with more of the same inefficient billing costs, where will the administrative savings come from?&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Baucus Watch, Part X : CJR: Columbia Journalism review tries to get reporters to focus on the substance of the Public Option debate, rather than on the horse-race, who&#8217;s up, &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=589\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Baucus Watch, Public Option issues: Columbia Journalsm Review&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[118,108,87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baucus-plan","category-health-care-reform-debate","category-public-option"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}