One of the most frustrating things about the health care debate is that virtually everybody who is discussing it is lying through their teeth. The president says he would rather have a bunch of Republican votes for 85% of what he wants than a party-line vote for 100% of what he wants. That’s bull. He wants a bunch of Republican votes for 100% of what he wants. The question is whether he will settle for 85%, but that is not what he wants. He’s trying to sound conciliatory, but a time will come when he needs to crack heads.
Then you have a bunch of Democrats, like me, who know that the single-payer system is the way to go but who, seeing the writing on the wall, are rallying around a public option instead. If we say a public option is the Real McCoy, we’re just saying that. It’s bull.
After that, we get these wavering Democrats who claim to be concerned about the cost of a public option. That’s bull. They’re concerned about facing down the health insurance providers and the American Medical Association.
On the Republican side you have a bunch of people who are pretending to negotiate in good faith when, out of the other side of their mouths, they are saying they will fight a public option to the death. They’re full of it.
The only honest people in this whole dispute are the single-payer hardliners on the left and the open opponents of any bill on the right. Neither of them want to see whatever weak-assed health care bill emerges out of the Senate’s bowels become law. They have different reasons for this, but at least they’re not full of crap.
And all the pundits, like David Broder, who say the really important thing is that the bill have bipartisan support are either painfully stupid or painfully dishonest. What’s most important is that we pass a health care bill that lowers costs while covering the 40-plus million uninsured people in this county. Nothing else matters. There are right answers in this policy dispute. I think that single-payer is the right answer and hope that a public option is a step in that direction. In any case, I’m not willing to let people die because we can’t pass the bill that is the right answer.
Bipartisanship has nothing to do with it.
