Hey Democrats, liberals, progressives, moderates, etc. Don't kill this bill. It's not a perfect bill. It may end up not having the public option in the end. But don't kill it. There are too many good things in this bill, too much good effort put in by a lot of people under highly severe circumstances, that if it gets derailed by the liberal end of the caucus, it won't come up again for a long time.
I plead with you to consider the political ramifications of killing this bill. For the past three years or so, we've had a public debate about health care. It has been a vibrant all out debate with both facts and with lies. As a nation, we made a vote in November 2008, and it is my view that health care was on the minds of most voters when they went to make a choice. Voters wanted something accomplished now, and they chose Democrats and Barack Obama to get the job done. When the legislative process began, President Obama presented Congress his ideas, and the current Senate bill largely conforms with what he has been campaigning on (I don't really care for whether he actually campaigned for the public option or not). This is what we signed on when we voted for Obama in November 2008. We knew his ideas and were happy enough with them that we went to the polls and put his name in.
What Obama and the Democrats faced during this process was a Republican party wholly and completely unwilling to do anything at all to be productive. In fact, the very opposite is the case. Any way they can slow things down or disrupt, they've done. It cannot be stated strongly enough how lucky Democrats are that they have 60 votes right now, or they would have absolutely no chance in hell of passing anything remotely close to as good as we've got right now! Unfortunately, this also provides no wiggle room in the Senate, and because of the Senate rules, the process is beholden to the corrupt desires of moderate Democratic Senators who come from small rural states and are not really representative of a large enough percentage of the American population to wield the kind of power they do. Sadly those are the circumstances which faced Democrats through this process. But once again, it must be stressed, one less vote and Democrats would not be able to accomplish this health care bill. Maybe one day Senators will be willing to revisit the usage of the filibuster (or hell, the threat of the usage of the filibuster). In the past Democrats were able to get divisive bills passed because enough Republicans were actually willing to be mature and legislate. This is simply not the case today. Republicans choose to hijack the process and not get anything done at all. They will hopefully pay a political price for this, but this is not certain.
This bill has a number of good provisions in it, most importantly, it is paid for, and not simply added to the deficit. It also has some bad parts to it, added in order to obtain enough votes from those who are not liberal. This is the process of getting a broad bill passed, particularly under the circumstances which presents itself to us today. If this bill is passed and signed into law, it can be revisited to be revised and improved. This is probably the second most important point to support the passage of this bill. It is changeable. The most important reason is that voters will reward the Democratic party in the next several elections, because they can go to the voters and say, "Look, we get the job done." This is exactly why Republicans are so dead set against this bill. Because they KNOW voters will reward the Democratic party.
Let's consider the downside of this bill passing. I don't consider the current health care companies' stock going up as a downside. After all, we will be mandating that they increase their customer size by another 30 million people! Of course their stock is going to go up. They're going to make money off this. It is a given. One downside is that abortion coverage will be harder. Because that provision is nowhere on my horizon in any way, I've not studied the effect either way on that provision, whether women will get more or less. Frankly, I do not know how abortions are covered today and don't really care. Like I said, it's just not my priority. There is no public option, so this bill will rely on the good graces of the current crop of pretty poor private insurers to somehow do their jobs better. That's pretty wishful thinking. There are a good number of provisions in this bill that reduce their ability to screw over their own customers, but it's not enough. Clearly a public option (a good competitor) would force these companies to shape up. The votes are simply not there yet. A public option can be revisited at another point. Not having studied this bill in detail (relying more on news and blogs), I cannot think of other downsides to this bill (though I am quite sure there are plenty).
That all said, let's consider the downside of killing this bill.
- No reform now. You essentially tell voters now is not the time to reform because what you get right now is not up to the standards you desire. How will voters really feel about that come election day? What will Democrats run on? What will they say in their ads? We tried, but didn't think it was good, give us another shot. What do you think Republicans will say in their ads? Democrats suck so bad even when they have clear majorities they are incapable of passing a popular bill! Meanwhile, health insurance companies will continue practicing the same abhorrent policies, and tens of thousands of Americans will continue to die each year because they couldn't afford coverage.
- Health care legislative burnout. Tell me which political leader is going to want to try and raise this issue again if it fails now. Do you think Barack Obama will say to America, "I want to try it again." Do you think he will want two failed attempts tied to his legacy? Which Democratic Senator has the political influence to get Congress to restart the process? Who actually thinks that if you restart the program, that Republicans are going to sit on their asses the second time round because they got burned out? They'll make the same effort to kill the bill as they are doing now. No one will want to talk about health care again for another ten years or so. Maybe 20 years. That's just not an acceptable outcome.
- Dominos. You fail at health care and the malaise will spread to the other important initiatives such as Cap and Trade and Financial overhaul.
- Finally, you play into Republican stereotypes of failed Democrats. Why would you want that? I bet you Republicans are laughing their asses off anytime they see Jane Hamsher or Howard Dean on the air talking about sabotaging the Democratic bill. Can't tell you how embarrassing it is to see Jane Hamsher on FOX NEWS railing against Democrats just because the bill isn't what she wanted. Talk about spoiled!
Conclusion
In Conclusion, don't kill this bill. Politically, it makes most sense to go forward with this bill and fix it up over the coming years. Democrats will be rewarded at the polls and peoples' lives will be saved.