A few weeks ago I wrote a diary stating that the biggest obstacle to enacting public option is the President of the United States. For that statement, I got roundly panned in the comments, but since that time many progressives have independently understood the necessity to confront the White House on this critical issue.
The President renewed the hopes of many in his joint address to Congress with a deft, passionate and emphatic defense of liberalism, and the moral responsibility to enact reform. His speech galvanized independents, sane Republicans as well as Democrats. However, the President still appears open to negotiating away some elements of public option in order to appease so-called moderate Senate Democrats, even while liberals like Tom Harkin are feeling more and more confident that the President now has the leverage to force conservadems like Ben Nelson to compromise.
So the question is: Where will we go from here?
It is my hope that the President will follow the logic of his joint address to Congress and conclude that the lack of competition in the health insurance industry is pervasive, and that there are no credible alternatives to public option to insert that much needed competition. I also want him to make clear to all that he will demand public option in the legislation and force reluctant conservative Democrats to accept it in exchange for the insurance industry reforms which have been adjudged by the media and key interest groups as low risk political winners.
It is my concern, however, that the President is still unwilling to show a no-nonesense fighter's mentality on the issue of public option. Even after a 'game-changing' speech in which the weakness of Republicans was exposed and conservative Democrats now see the value in siding with the President's vision of a large scale reform bill, the President hedges on public option. He talks of a 4 year roll-out; of co-ops; of phased in public option. Though he has ignored Baucus' bill, he has not closed the door on the finance committee. He has not given a green light to Chuck Schumer, Jay Rockefeller and Tom Harkin to push a strong public option bill to the Senate floor. He doesn't emphasize is that public option has been scored by the CBO as saving $100 billion -$150 billion over 10 years and expanding coverage to millions. If people knew that piece of data, the popularity of public option would soar to 90%. He needs to tell conservative Democrats that the burden is on them to show that they have an alternative to public option that will achieve those types of results.
If he won't do those things, we will have to do it for him. So here is what I think we should do (in addition to what diarists like Slinkerwink recommend).
- Start writing to media sources about the cost savings of public option. The media refuse to acknowledge this aspect of the story. Our inability to communicate what the CBO has said of public option has been our biggest failure of communications. Even friendly shows like Bill Maher, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow rarely mention the cost savings aspect of public option and how there is no other alternative that comes close.
- Start emphasizing the cost savings to the average American family. We always talk about how much the government needs to save, but the real truth is that we need to lower the cost of health care to the average American family and business. Any money saved to American families through lower premiums is functionally equivalent to a tax cut and those extra dollars can be put to several better uses than to line the pockets of insurance industry executives.
- We need to emphasize to all Democrats that good math = good politics. Public Option is the reason why the HELP bill is $200 billion less than Baucus' bill and covers more people. If the President wants to bend the cost curve, those so-called fiscal conservatives in the White House and Congress have the burden to show that they can do better than public option.
- Finally, we need to follow Robert Reich's advice and make a stronger case that this debate is about the people v. the insurance companies, not liberal v. conservative, big government v, small government. To me, this is like the challenge we had in fighting big tobacco in the 1980s and 1990s. After a while, even conservatives realized that big tobacco was a bad industry that needed no government protection and that it was the people who needed to be protected from it. The President made great strides in advancing this argument in his joint address. We need to build on it.
In short, we need to alter the media narrative in order to win this debate. I welcome any additional thoughts or suggestions you may have.