I just read a great comment from dansac on the public option campaign:
Kossacks worked backwards on their reasoning
Everything became about the public option, therefore arguments were constructed to work backwards to explain why anything other than the public option was a catastrophe.
It's not just on the blogs - there was an amusing episode of "Countdown" on Wednesday when Keith O. tried to bait Ezra Klein over and over into saying the bill is a disaster, and Klein gently (too gently IMO) refused, defended the mandate, and said the bill as it is already stands to be a massive progressive win.
When I've tried to tell people the story of my out-of-work brother-in-law who suffered from a pretty horrific cancer this past year - but was saved ONLY because of COBRA which allowed him to keep (gasp) private insurance. But when COBRA runs out he will be denied the right to buy new coverage unless this bill passes (cancer is the ultimate pre-existing condition).
And I can't tell you the amounts of replies I got saying that without the public option it would be better for my brother-in-law not to have insurance at all. Ironic considering private insurance saved his life.
There are next-to-no real experts on this bill resident on this site. Instead it's ideological arguments with tunnel-vision focus on the public option issue mixed with the unfairness of having private insurers benefit from a mandate and subsidies.
Well, I've seen first-hand how private insurance (aka "junk" insurance to so many here) has saved lives. I'm not defending private insurers and I'd much rather have a public option, but to become so obsessed over this clause that you'd rather deny people health insurance IF it denies any revenue to private insurers is...as Silver put it...bullshit.
That comment crystallized my frustrations over the last few months.
I'm not a healthcare wonk. Very few on this website are healthcare wonks. Like me, most of you dabble. Even the most practiced experts in healthcare policy have NO IDEA how a public option would play out in real life. Or how these reforms will play out. There are too many moving parts. We can't predict the future. And yet, the public option has been treated like this silver bullet and the only thing worth fighting for in this debate.
For me, the nearly century-long healthcare debate wasn't about screwing over private insurers. It's about covering more people, not a proxy war against insurance companies.
The progressive Netroots is a strong entity. Many on here have predicted that the insurance reforms will be rolled back or that loopholes have been put in this bill that will render it weak. I say, if that happens, then we work to close those loopholes and beat back regressive changes to the bill. We're strong, organized, and smart. We just need to keep our eyes on the ball. Tens of thousands of activists are now plugged into the healthcare debate. They can be mobilized! The question is - how are they mobilized effectively?
I think this whole public option debate has been both helpful (in exposing the evil of private insurance companies) and a distraction that fractured the party. Nate Silver is right when he says that the push for the public option may have given progressives something to trade for stronger provisions in the bill (like a higher cap for Medicaid). If that's the case, then I suppose the public option debate had its merits. But I'd estimate that 90% of the people on this site who proclaim the greatness of the public option really have no idea how it would work, who it would cover, and WHETHER it would work. We just don't know. To put that much faith in an untried idea - to the detriment of everything else that is good in this bill - was a mistake from the beginning. And to simultaneously claim that insurance companies will continue to drop sick people while claiming that the public option will BRING DOWN COSTS is somewhat contradictory, as the public option will therefore be skewed towards a sicker pool of people. Arguing backwards doesn't work if you're arguments contradict each other.
Now here's my somewhat controversial final comment: With the GOP out of power, there are progressive interest groups whose fundraising prowess is now FIRMLY TIED to creating discord on the Left (and often to rally people against Obama). Scaring people about the GOP doesn't raise the big bucks anymore, so these groups needed to find other targets to fill their coffers. I'm not saying that these groups don't do amazing work, or that their founders intentions are bad. Actually, the leaders of the progressive grassroots groups that have been working on healthcare are great, committed people. I'm just saying that there is now an institutional incentive for progressive groups to keep progressives as angry and riled up as possible, because that's their best way to raise money from small donors...and that we should keep this in mind...
Finally, some supporting arguments from Ezra Klein:
Letting insurers 'win'
"We WIN," some insurance industry insider crowed to Ben Smith. "Administered by private insurance companies. No government funding. No government insurance competitor." Similarly but oppositely, a few anxious e-mailers have written to ask whether Medicare buy-in isn't just a gift to the insurance industry, freeing them from having to insure older, sicker people.
Well, so what if it is?
Health-care reform is not a competition between liberals and insurers. It's a question of outcomes. If insurers don't make a profit insuring people over 55, and people over 55 generally can't afford to give insurers enough money to cover their costs, and bringing these people into Medicare will actually improve the financial outlook of Medicare, then that's a win. More than that, it's a win-win-win. Medicare itself was a huge boon to the insurance industry, but it was also a huge boon to every American over age 65.