Sen. Schumer's "Compromise" - Killing The "Public Option"?

Echoing last week's "cramdown" mortgage reduction debate, where 11 Democratic senators crossed the partisan divide to vote gainst a bankruptcy reform bill that would have allowed judges to reduce the mortgage payments of homeowners facing foreclosure to 31% of their monthly income, today Sen. Charles Schumer of New York introduced a health care reform "compromise" to protect the "vulnerable" health insurance industry. To preserve private insurers' market share in the coming "reform" environment, Sen. Schumer's proposal would compel any government-run program to comply with all the rules and standards that private insurance companies must follow. Said rules include:

The public plan must be funded by premiums and co-payments ONLY. No tax revenue or government appropriations.

The public plan should pay doctors and hospitals MORE than Medicare pays. Medicare usually pays less than private insurers.

The government cannot coerce doctors and hospitals to participate in a public plan just because they accept Medicare reinbursement.
Officials who manage a public plan will have no stake in regulating the private insurance market.
Seems as if Sen. Schumer is bound and determined to create a public plan that is as unpalatable as the privatized insurance market. Way to go, Chuck!
For some background on what's at stake here let's turn to a recently published report by the Center For American Progress entitled The Erosion of Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance. After detailing how Chrysler retirees could lose their health benefits depending on how the current Chapter 11 proceedings shake out, the report goes on to note how since the start of the recession 2.4 million laid-off Americans have lost their health insurance coverage. In March 2009 alone 320,000 workers lost coverage, numbers that don't include wives and children of the newly unemployed. Call me a bleeding-heart, but I think these numbers tell a far more compelling story than the trials and tribulations of private health insurers. Will the American people be satisfied with inclusive mandated coverage which has proven only to drive up health insurance costs to the point that coverage becomes unsustainable? Do privatized insurers and the AMA give a damn? And why are single-payer advocates being arrested at Senate Finance Committee hearings? After the cramdown fiasco Sen. Dick Durbin remarked how banking interests "run this place". I guess private health insurer shills like Chuck Schumer prove that bankers aren't the only "special interest" that controls Congress.