... then why don't Republicans support it? Why don't they, at a minimum, get Snowe and Collins to toss in their support to the Democrats? Think about this for a moment. The notion that on balance the Senate bill helps insurers and hurts Dems doesn't quite make sense. If that were true, it would pass.
If Snowe and Collins -- and even Lugar and Voinovich, if need be -- agreed to support cloture, then the Democrats would still be blamed for the bill. We'd still be the large majority of the support for it. The insurers -- given the assumption being made by many on this blog -- should also want this bill to pass; they should be pressuring Republicans, whom they no doubt would prefer to be in power, to send out a few sacrificial lambs to make sure that it happens.
And yet, that doesn't appear to be happening. Something doesn't add up here. There's something we don't understand. Maybe the Republicans and insurers think that they're better off without the bill.
If that's true, that's a great reason to support it.
Anyway, that's just the introduction. Below, I offer a cunning -- and I think unifying -- plan.
(Key phrase: "triggered universal mandate"!)
Now I'm not convinced that the Senate bill should be accepted overall -- even though every time mcjoan posts a front-page story talking about how the bill really wouldn't rein in insurers the way that we hope, I wonder once again why they then aren't happy to see it pass. I think that we should want to see if we can improve it. To me, that means that we should pass it in the Senate, send it to conference -- I still oppose any ping-ponging -- and then let it sit there for a while. Reid and Obama will just have to agree to this. They don't have the votes to pass it (unless enough Republicans relent to make up for Sanders and Burris.)
Why? Well, for one thing it lets us get away from the heat (and defeatism) of this moment. For another thing, it let's us plan some badly needed strategy and try to whip up some support. But there's another reason, too.
I'm on record and not believing that reconciliation will get us what we want -- partially because I think it implements the plan too late, partially because I don't think that we have, or are going to get, 50 votes on some of the important stuff. But I also accept that I could be wrong about this, and I respect the judgment of people like mcjoan and slink who think that it's the better pass. So, I'm willing to see us try it -- if we hold the popular aspects of the bill in deep freeze in the conference committee. (We have a pretty good excuse to do so: we don't have the votes to pass it.)
In other words, I do not want to see Senators told not to vote for the bill, but I do want to see House Members told to block it. I want it in deep freeze, ready to pull out, if necessary, if reconciliation fails. I feel that way because (1) I think that we still have another path to get what we want, if reconciliation fails, and (2) not passing a bill this year is unacceptable to me. (I'm not a cockeyed optimist; I don't assume that we'll have this much wind at our back for years.) And, for me, part of the reason I do want a bill passed is that the Republicans and insurers sincerely do not appear to want it to pass, despite all the real and potential flaws we can identify.
So, here's my recipe for success:
(1) Pass the bill, in whatever form (except for the abortion amendment) through the Senate, to get it to conference.
(2) Clone it.
(3) Put the current "to-be-reconciled" versions of the bill into the freezer.
(4) Send the parts that we want to (and think that we can) get through reconciliation to the Budget Committees. Let Senator Conrad know that until it comes out, the other part of it stays in the freezer.
(5) Pass what we can with 50+Biden votes.
(6) Pull the rest out of the conference committee freezer and pass what's left.
(7) If nothing makes it through reconciliation, then we enact whatever bill we can, even if it's Liebercare.
(8) The next day, introduce legislation scale back the Liebercare mandate so far that it makes the insurers howl. I proposed something like this earlier, but David Waldman's suggestion about "holding the mandate hostage" is even better.
Side note!: I had an idea today about this that I don't think I've seen before: a triggered universal mandate! Insurers want to see a universal mandate, that's fine -- we'll put it back in after we take it out, but it gets triggered only if certain conditions (primarily for controlling the cost of premiums) are met.
(9) Bring up other amendments that will be both good and popular with the public -- such as the insurance anti-trust exemption -- one by one. Once we do that, we win either way. Either Republicans vote with us, and we improve the bill, or they block us, and then they own the bad parts of the bill. And if we're successful in attaching a trigger to the mandate first, we're more likely to get what we want out of the bill.
This is an elaborate dance that I'm proposing, but I think that it -- especially as your suggestions improve it -- may allow all of us who want to see reform be pretty satisfied, and all of those who don't want to see reform be dissatisfied. That's the present I want this year.
We hold more cards right now than we imagine, and the tensions that divide us -- passing the bill versus trying reconciliation -- need not actually divide us if we play those cards right. We can proceed down multiple tracks at the same time. And -- if this makes sense to you -- this plan is, I think, worth agitating for. The time for fighting among ourselves, for our pet theories, has passed.
Let's try everything, as suggested above, until something works. Let's use our power.