The headline on Huffington Post right now? "Leaderless: Senate Pushes for Public Option without Obama's Support."
This? Is some old bullsh*t.
At what point, and I must be clear, I am already tired of this, but at what point will it be acceptable to say that there a direction that the finer negotiations about the shape of the healthcare reform bill can take that will not infuriate progressives and the media? Because I haven't seen it.
This headline is ridiculous. Leaderless? Really? Harry Reid is the one standing up for progressive values and the President, who started this whole frakking conversation about a "public option" and who was opposed to the individual mandate (but compromised) in the first place-- is throwing us under Olympia Snowe's bus? Really? I suppose he was just fooling when he said "public option" in the first place. And he was also just fooling when he said there'd be no litmus tests, no making the perfect the enemy of the good, and no waiting until another Congress or another year. Yeah, he was just selling us down the river for AHIP and Pharma this whole time.
I know, I know, not until the President draws a line in the sand, holds up his veto pen (is that even a real thing? does he use like, four pens, and hand them out to people who opposed the legislation?) and says he will "not accept anything less than a state-level public option available to people without insurance or those working for small businesses with fewer than 20 employees which reimburses at Medicare +5% rates."
Leaving aside that the aforementioned holy grail would a) not include Ron Wyden's kickass proposal to have the exchanges open to everyone and b) not get off the ground for a couple years, or hey, c) not necessarily include the antitrust exemption but rather, rely on market forces to regulate insurance oligopolies... there is a wake up call coming when the President signs this bill: We do not live in the best of all possible worlds. We aren't getting single payer, and we aren't even going to agree on what we can get out of this process.
There's something breathless and self-defeating in the current "multiple sources" freakout. It's not the fear that we won't get a bill that troubles me. It's the freakout represented by Stein/Grim over the possibility that the President will, in fact, sign a bill. The fear that we might win, but that what we get may be all we get.
I have called my Senators and Congresswoman and I will call again. Hell, I've called and written your Senator if s/he's on the finance committee, when that was where the action was. Chuck Schumer is now my pen pal. I get his form letters, he gets my impassioned pleas. So no, I'm not going to settle until the dust does. But there is a very real possibility that we're going to get healthcare reform this year. No more recission, no more preexisting conditions, no more unregulatable rate hikes, and no more caps on what you can get covered even if you do have coverage. I realize it will displease many, but the secret is: I want all of these things even without a public option. I don't particularly want the individual mandate-- I want the employer mandate! But we're losing focus on issues like that, issues on which the President didn't draw a line in the sand but about which he has been open to compromise, within reason, and now we have to get the best compromise we can. That would be a public option with an employer mandate and no individual mandate, if I had my way. But if we're on the road to getting a mixed bag that isn't my preferred mix? I'm not going to say it's because we're "Leaderless" and the President sold out on his line-in-the-sand principles. Maybe it will be because I sold out on mine. But if we only get some of these things, and not all of them, and we get reform anyway? Even when we do get the public option--
Will you be able to handle it? Can we start to think about winning?