I've only written a handful of health coverage reform diaries, such as this one for which the headline should not fool you: Can No One Rid Us of These Single-Payer Advocates? The health care arena is not my bailiwick and I can't cite chapter-and-verse of every potential piece of the legislation, though I have read big chunks of it.
Single payer, universal-coverage, Canadian-style, is still my first choice. Perhaps by the time my grandchildren - now toddlers - are old enough to have grandchildren of their own the situation will have gotten so bad that a majority of Congress will make that move, braving the shrieks of "socialist" and "Nazicare." By then, unless there is some longevity therapy breakthrough that I can afford, I'll long since have had my ashes cast to the winds.
My back-up choices are Medicare-for-all, followed by an inclusive public option (one that anybody can opt for, whether s/he already has insurance or not), and, finally, my last choice, no further substitutes being acceptable, the weak-tea version of public option. Since that one is really a last-resort plan for people who can't get any other kind of insurance, it's problematic to say the least. But at least it's got one thing going for it, as DallasDoc and others have said: It's a foot in the door. From there we can use our knees and elbows to - maybe - pry it into something more substantial over the long haul. It's less than half a slice compared with the single-payer loaf, but it's not nothing.
Until today, I thought public option was probably not going to happen. Not that I have surrendered in the fight. I make phone calls. I send letters. I harangue my friends to do the same. I also favor a hard progressive fight for the inclusive public option in the weeks left to us, a fight that should also include a push for much tougher regulations on the health insurers. But I pretty much figured we were screwed. And we may still be. (You'll notice I've put a lot of maybes into this essay.) But, after today, there's a piece of me that believes - even though I'm skeptical of my own belief - that we might actually get a version of a public option that can be leveraged in the long run into something better.
What brought me to this perspective? Max Baucus. Don't flog me. Hear me out.
I actually think Baucus may have done us a big favor. Not on purpose. He likes his paper-over-the-problems, make-the-insurance-companies-happy proposal. He was glad not to have single-payer on his plate, and was instrumental in chopping any version of public option out of the plan he concocted with kowtows to the insurance companies and concessions to Republicans who never had any intention of voting for this gigantic surrender in the first place.
But now all that effort put into getting a bipartisan plan has shriveled and the we-gotta-deal-with-those-guys-across-the-aisle meme is not just moribund; the stink from the rot is starting to reach previously untouched nostrils.
Some people had this figured out a long time ago. If the two years of Democratic majority from 2007 to 2008 didn't make it clear, the "negotiations" on the stimulus bill surely did. But now the sentiment of the GOP dead-enders cannot be denied. Better late to this realization than never.
Baucus should get some credit. Salon's Mike Madden speaks to this:
Chuck Grassley, it turns out, was the one who got away. For that matter, so was Mike Enzi. And Olympia Snowe.
In the end, after months and months of negotiations aimed at winning bipartisan support for a healthcare reform bill in the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus was all alone on Wednesday as he announced his draft proposal. He stood, looking lonely, in front of a backdrop that could have accommodated his entire so-called Gang of Six -- if, that is, the talks had worked out. As it was, he showed up as a Gang of One. But don't tell Baucus his work had come to naught. "No Republican has offered his or her support at this moment," he admitted. "But I think by the time we get the final passage in this committee, you'll find Republican support. This is a bill that should enjoy broad support."
Right now, though, it doesn't. Republicans -- including the ones Baucus has been painstakingly courting -- bashed it mercilessly.
Why he stayed at it for so long, when the outcome seemed so predictable, almost doesn't matter anymore. Now Democrats may feel they have the political cover to go in a more explicitly partisan direction. (There's still a chance that Snowe could get on board with some form of reform legislation, but that's not certain.) No Republican could seriously claim Baucus didn't listen to their concerns; he can point to a long line of angry Democrats to prove he did just that.
"Even though [Baucus] has shown a willingness to jettison provisions important to many Democrats, Republicans have shown no interest after months of good-faith discussions," said Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat and a strong supporter of a more liberal bill. "If we are going to provide Americans with peace of mind that their health insurance will not be priced out of reach, it looks like it is going to be up to Democrats to do so."
Nearly four decades ago, I watched, helplessly and infuriated as a conservative city council majority dating back to the 1920s was replaced by liberals, most of whom believed in consensus policy-making, that being the word for bipartisanship on their nonpartisan decision-making body. For years, yes, years, those six liberals made deals with the three conservatives on the council, gutting one proposed ordinance after another in a search for unanimity, or at least 8-1 or 7-2 votes. They didn't need them to pass new laws, enact new policy. And they never got them, except on innocuous measures such as resolutions praising firefighters and the like. Over and over, often after months of giveaways, the vote was 6-3. Worse, they never seemed to learn that they could set policy exactly as they wished without the conservatives. It was almost as if they couldn't count. Or didn't want to.
Their constituents, including the activists who had made the campaigns of these elected officials successful, were dumbfounded. At first they cajoled, then nudged, then screamed, then threw up their hands, disgusted. Policy after policy was diluted, all for the sake of a phantom feel-good outcome that never appeared.
Obviously, in Congress right now, Democrats - and certainly liberals - don't have a 6-3 margin. While nodding a vigorous assent to Senator Brown's go-it-alone approach, we are all too well aware of the opposition within our own ranks, Baucus himself being the prime example, but not the only one. Fifty-one Democrats out of the 58 in Senate, the bare minimum needed to pass a reconciliation version of a semi-robust public option, may not come around because too many of them will see such a proposal as too left wing despite the polls in their own states.
So the outcome remains dicey. Still, from here on out, on health coverage reform and quite a number of other issues, when anybody suggests that the Republicans have to be part of the mix, we've got Senator Baucus's Sisyphean effort to point to. He hacked great chunks off that stone he kept trying to push up Capitol Hill, and the GOP rolled it back on top of him every time. Senator Brown gets it. Senator Russ Feingold gets it. Will enough other Democrats finally get the message?