Rep. Mike Ross Brags About Killing Single Payer Health Plan

Rep. Mike Ross, a Blue Dog Democrat from Arkansas, recently bragged (on camera) of killing a single payer plan, which would eliminate insurance companies completely.

Rep. Mike Ross gets enormous contributions from the health insurance industry (and recently was the guest of honor at a special “health-care industry reception” hosted by health care companies).

Rep. Mike Ross also bragged that the Blue Dogs “held (Obama’s health care) bill hostage in committee for 10 days.”

We insured that if there is a government option, it will be just that — an option — and it won’t be mandated on anybody. If it had been based on Medicare rates, I can assure you that it would have eventually ended up resulting in a single payer-type system, because Medicare has really good rates, because they’re negotiating for every senior in America. Private insurance companies could not have competed with that.

And so we would have at the end of the day ended up with single payer. Now we’ve leveled the playing field, if there is a government option they’ll have to go out again and negotiate with providers just like private insurance companies do. That was important to me to insure that we don’t end up with some type of single payer system.

Initially the single payer advocates on the Energy and Commerce committee had balked when the Blue Dogs insisted that a public plan not be tied to Medicare, but they backed down in exchange for a floor vote on single payer:

Committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) doubts the single-payer plan can garner sufficient votes to pass. But he said it’s important for the plan to be given a chance, in order to assuage the left-wing of the Democratic caucus.

So, the single payer advocates on the committee were “assuaged” and caved on tying reimbursement rates to Medicare, which Ross believed would have “led to single payer,” in exchange for a vote on single payer on the floor — which everyone acknowledges will fail, and the Blue Dogs had no problem with.