Remember when Rachel Maddow first started, and she used to have a segment where she asked some expert pundit to come on and talk her down about something she believed that was disturbing?
I'm going to lay out my case why there will be no public option. I know I risk being called a pessimist, defeatist, traitor, and a buzzkill, but I seriously would like for someone to tell me how I'm wrong, besides saying that obviously, I'm an idiot.
I admit I'm an idiot. But I have worked hard for single payer or a public option, spent money I don't have to reward ActBlue, Health Care Now, National Physicians Alliance, and Rep. Anthony Weiner from New York, even though I'm from Wisconsin. I whole-heartedly support the work of people like Nyceve and Slinkerwink, to just name a few, in promoting the public option.
However, I don't like the way the stars seem to be aligned, and here's why.
- The composition of the Senate Finance Committee. Putting pro-health industry Democrats and Republicans (the Gang of Six) together, while excluding the progressives that wanted to participate, like Jay Rockefeller, seems to be a move that was intended to signal to the health insurers and drug companies that there is no need to panic.
- Baucus took single-payer, i.e., "Medicare for All" off the table without even holding discussions about the pros and cons of such a measure.
- If Democrats really wanted the Public Option, they would have started negotiations by demanding a Single Payer bill, and then would have compromised to allow the Public Option to emerge.
- Instead, their starting position are, on the left, "possibly a Public Option" if the House gets their way, and on the right, no health care reform bill at all.
- Meeting somewhere in the middle means that each side jettisons their starting positions. For Democrats, that means giving up on the Public Option.
- Since Baucus has declared that there are not enough Senate votes for the Public Option, he can proceed with that as if it is a non-starter.
- There has been no effort to whip the Democratic Senators into supporting the Public Option. In reality, some Senators who supported the Public Option are now backing away from it.
- Despite Grassley, Enzi, and others voicing their intent to kill "Obamacare", the Democrats have been pretending to be working on a bi-partisan compromise.
A spokesperson for Senator Chuck Grassley is clarifying his claim in a fundraising letter that he’s working for the "defeat" of "Obamacare," saying that the Senator was only referring to defeating the public health care option.
As I noted below, a fundraising letter from Grassley to his constituents starkly proclaimed his desire to defeat both "Obamacare" and the proposal from Ted Kennedy’s committee — raising yet more questions about what, exactly, Grassley is prepared to support.
No one that achieves high office is that politically naive. They know that the Republicans are not going to support any measure of health care reform. The Democrats are making it seem like they are negotiating, when the real intent is to slow-walk the bill, and either defeat health care reform, or water it down so much that the insurers and drug companies still win:
Conrad's fixation on federal spending is legendary; it's easy to imagine him waking in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, praying that those Medicare cost projections were only a nightmare.
And it is his fear of runaway spending that has made him extremely cautious in his approach to health care negotiations. Conrad has been a consistent and loud voice on the Finance Committee -- and within the bipartisan "Gang of Six" -- pushing a go-slow approach.
He has repeatedly rejected deadlines with the mantra that "we'll be ready when we're ready." He fought against the Democratic leadership's attempt to include language in the budget that would allow health care reform to be achieved using the reconciliation process, which only requires a simple majority rather than 60 votes. He lost that fight, but was able to make it much harder to pull off the legislative maneuver by insisting on a five year window rather than ten -- meaning any changes achieved through reconciliation will lapse in five years and need to be renewed.
Bill Moyers said:
MOYERS: I don’t think the problem is the Republicans... The problem is the Democratic Party. This is a party that has told its progressives -- who are the most outspoken champions of health care reform -- to sit down and shut up. That’s what Rahm Emanuel, the Chief of Staff at the White House, in effect told progressives who stood up as a unit in Congress and said: "no public insurance option, no health care reform."
And I think the reason for that is -- in the time since I was there, 40 years ago, the Democratic Part has become like the Republican Party, deeply influenced by corporate money. I think Rahm Emanuel, who is a clever politician, understands that the money for Obama’s re-election will come from the health care industry, from the drug industry, from Wall Street. And so he’s a corporate Democrat who is determined that there won’t be something in this legislation that will turn off these interests...
- More and more Representatives are voicing their support of the Public Option. They must do this because of elections occurring every two years in the House. They cannot afford to anger their Democratic base.
However, this is a cynical ploy, because as they all know, the Senate will not adopt a Public Option, and usually gets its way in conference committee negotiations to iron out differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill. The Senate will say that they don't have the votes for the Public Option, so that the choices are either to dump the Public Option or not have any Health Care Reform pass in Congress.
The House of Representatives can be all for the Public Option, as it costs them nothing, and benefits their standing with their progressive base. However, it leaves them in the enviable position of gaining support from the public while explaining that the Senate and House Reconciliation committee took the Public Option away. The Public Option was something they wanted, but to get a bill, they had to bow to the corporate Senate Democrat's wishes. Even Rep. Anthony Weiner has not said that he would reject a bill without a Public Option.
- We hear a lot about reconciliation and how the Republicans pushed through Bush's tax cuts for the rich through the reconciliation process. Why can't we do the same with Health Care Reform?
TPMCafe addresses this:
Now, a lot of my fellow Liberals are fond of saying "just ram Health Care Reform through reconciliation", but the problem with doing that is a little thing called the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (I've heard it called the Byrd Rule, but he's been around so long, there are quite a number of Byrd Amendments out there, so...)
In short, the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 restricts any bill going through reconciliation strictly to budgetary matters only.
Thus, before our dream Health Care Bill hits the floor for a vote, it will pass into the hands of the unelected, non-partisan (but highly, highly trained) Parliamentarian of the Senate, who will...without hesitation or prejudice cut out anything from the bill that doesn't have to do with the budget, as per the Byrd rule.
This would leave us with a bill that had the guts effectively ripped out of it, and might be worse than even a watered-down bill. Reconciliation may not be a viable option, even with the bill split into two parts as some have suggested.
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That's my case. Perhaps the dynamic will change with Obama's address to both houses of Congress. He could demand the Public Option, however, I doubt he will do that. He will limit his remarks to "supporting" the Public Option.
If you've gotten this far, then I need for you to tell me why the reasons above are false, or how my understanding is faulty.
If I am correct, then the bigger question becomes: What drastic measures do we progressive voters have to undertake to get the Public Option passed?
Even if we know the odds are stacked against us, we must not quit fighting. We Progressives need to be recognized as a voting bloc that cannot be ignored. Then, and only then, will we see real change.