I have written a series of diaries about how we needed to push for a strong national coop which would satisfy Snowe and the conserve dems. Folks here screeched - as they are today - that if Obama would just get off his ass and wave his magic wand all those senators from states where he lost by a landslide would throw over their biggest contributors, political futures and presumably closely held ideologies and do what he says. Oh and so would Lieberman who actually spent a whole year trying to destroy Obama - remember?
I pointed out that this was crazy and we might end up with nothing. They said - sign my petition! Make sure the progressive caucus draws lines in the sand! The conserve dems will cave! I said - they wont cave because they really dont care if this passes. Folks here rambled about Rahm and a rubber hose.
Now we get absolutely nothing in terms of a public option and so instead of finally admitting their strategic error the folks here want to throw over the board and make sure the status quo remains and Republicans are triumphant.
The arguments made all over the site today are just plain sad. Poblano called them bat shit crazy - I call them childish and immoral.
There are dozens of wild theories being spread around - but lets focus on the most salient ones:
- Kos says: Mandating people to buy private insurance is bad. This argument makes no sense and really undermines Kos' standing as a reasoned wonk. The best Public Option in any bill would only cover a few million people and was projected to cost about the same as private options. The regulations covering the private plans and the public plan would be exactly the same. Many of the "private" plans available will be not for profits. There is no compelling argument that these private insurers will be an order of magnitude worse than the Public Option as imagined in the House bill - in fact the vast majority of American with Health Insurance are very happy with their current plans - and that is before these strong regulations will come into place which restrict many of their worst practices.
The only argument here is that somehow the CBO was completely wrong and that the Public Plan would dominate the market and be much cheaper than private plans and therefore transform the experience of the American people with health care. There is absolutely no evidence to support this and if this is why some progressives supported the Bill before - then Poblano is right about their mental health.
- Dean Says: Lets do it in 5 years when Obama is reelected! His argument basically is that the system is so broken that we will have to address it at some point. His stance is that if we do this bandaid now it will postpone the collapse of the system and make the "real" reform - read single payer - come much later. You cant really argue with his logic - but it is a big gamble, what if Huckabee wins and we get a more conservative congress - and his argument is rankly immoral. He sacrifices hundreds of thousands of lives and a sea of human misery in pursuit of an ideological goal which may never be achieved. Is that a progressive position? (See "the great leap forward" and Soviet collectivization)
- Slink Says: Its too damn expensive! Slink obviously is approaching the bill at the most nitty gritty level and I have no real idea whether her arguments are salient or not. I imagine those Democrats who wrote the bill could make strong counter arguments on each point. I do know that not one of them has anything to do with the public option . The insurance would not be cheaper, better or cover more people with the public option as imagined in the house bill This is from the CBO, CMS and effectively every other health care economist who has written about it. Slink's argument to kill the bill boils down to an assertion that middle class people are better off with no insurance than the subsidized insurance they will get through the exchanges
whether from Public plans or private ones. I hope she is wrong - but she should have been shouting Kill the Bill for months now if that is so.