Ezra has been talking to staffers on the Hill, which is something I have not been doing for several months now. I’ve been preoccupied. So, I put a lot of stock in what Ezra has to say when he talks about the mood of the Democratic caucus. He made a point in his piece today that hadn’t occurred to me. One reason the Democrats don’t want to revive the public option is because it would basically constitute a broken promise and that is not something Harry Reid wants to do if he plans on being able to retain his position and effectiveness as Majority Leader:
Caucus politics present another dilemma: The public option died due to the opposition of Nelson, Landrieu, Lincoln, Lieberman and a handful of other conservative — and vulnerable — Democrats. Reid cut a deal with them, and they signed onto the final product. For many, that was a big political risk. The price was letting them say they killed the public option. Bringing it back to the bill will mean they voted for a bill that ended up including something they’d promised their constituents they’d killed. Cross them on this and you’ve lost their trust — and thus their votes — in the future.
It’s actually a kind of depressing realization, but I fear Ezra is right here. Of course, one of the advantages of using the reconciliation process in the first place is that it allows some red-state Democrats to vote against the bill. But, I don’t know that it would help a Blanche Lincoln or a Ben Nelson to vote against the health care bill now that they’ve already voted for it once. It seems to me that that would create a kind of worst-of-both-worlds type of situation where the base is upset and the opponents still can argue truthfully that they voted to pass a health care bill that has x, y, and z problems with it.
I don’t know exactly what Reid promised to get those 60 votes on Christmas Eve, and I don’t know if resuscitating the public option would cause a rift, with some members feeling they had been betrayed. But I think it’s a possible explanation for why Jay Rockefeller and Robert Gibbs say that the Democrats don’t have the votes to pass the public option. The other possibility is that it doesn’t make any sense to talk about a public option prior to the health care summit, since bringing it up undermines the whole point of the summit, which is to show a willingness to compromise on the Senate version of the bill, not to ram home something even stronger than what we can’t pass right now under regular order.
So, after the Republicans react with a bunch uncooperative nonsense, the rhetoric will change. How much will it change? I wish I knew.
Personally, I hope they drop the public option for now and instead, after the Republicans walk out of the Summit, the Dems just pass a clean-up package under Budget Reconcilliation to satify the House so they can pass the Senate bill. But the cleanup package should also drop the Medicare enrollment age to either 55 or 50 immediately.
This debate over the public option is tainted right now and we can’t really know if what they include and call a public option is as good as we need it to be in order to call it a success. Maybe we can create one in another year after insurance companies do something awful and piss alot of people off. (maybe next year, considering their track record.)
But lowering the eligibility age for Medicare right away will help us in many ways. It will allow millions of people who have enough money to retire but only keep their jobs for the insurance, opening up millions of jobs for the next generation. And it will create a whole lot more Medicare addicts who will never let those Republicans take away their new entitlement. It’s a twofer.
Now let’s sit back and watch them find a new way to fuck it up.
it could happen. Remember the Medicare expansion came out of nowhere last time and looked like it could be a magic fix until Lieberman nixed it.
And don’t forget .. dirtbag Joe was for the Medicare expansion .. before he was against it
Why do you continue to put the sole responsibility on Lieberman for killing the Medicare buy-in when noted liberals worked behind the scenes to kill it, most notably Russ Feingold? Lieberman was the public face of opposition, but he certainly didn’t accompoish it single-handedly.
Where is it written that “progressives” can’t be as self-serving or beholden to lobbyists as centrists? The hospital lobby has just as much influence over Russ Feingold as the insurance lobby has over Lieberman.
Any public option that’s a new program created at this stage of the game is going to have a lot of weaknesses, and the eligible pool is likely to be too small for it to succeed.
Allowing Medicare buy-in for 55-64 year olds would be way than a public option with a hand tied behind its back. Medicare isn’t perfect, but going that route would leave us with one system to fix instead of two.
Just get me some coverage that doesn’t cost me 800 a month. And I hate Ezra and the whole beltway BS access journalism that has swallowed him whole and is now spitting out pathetic little pieces.
I’m inclined to agree with you. No matter how I try to arrange the players, I can’t see how they will get the 50 votes necessary to get a public option through reconciliation. But lowering the Medicare enrollment age would be excellent.
If the Dems can’t get 51 votes for a Public Option in the Senate (including Biden) then they should not expect to get 51 votes in the next elections.
Pretty simple message for them that, hopefully, they will begin understand before the elections. But I am not counting on it.
I told Rep. Himes, the other day when interviewing him, that I think that if the Dems fail to pass a Public Option it will be political suicide for all of the Dems. They just don’t seem to get that there will be nothing anybody can do for them, in the Blogosphere or in their base and even if they wanted to, if they don’t come through on this promise – and some other ones too.
They can talk about political realities all they want… Even try to play games with it, which I have think they are, at this point. But the people expected and still expect certain things at a minimum.
Their broken promises to the people are going to cost them all a hell of a lot more than pissing off a few Conservadems ever could.
You may be right and you may be wrong, but I believe that is the whole and total explanation of why the various senators who signed onto the Public Option letter, signed onto it. Precisely because they know it doesn’t have the votes. So they want it on the record that they supported it — it’s popular in their states — and they face no actual risk from insurance pressure groups anyway because they know in advance that despite their support it’s not going to fly. In other words, posturing an opportunism. Posturing for a position nearly all of us here favor, and which most of them do too, but posturing nevertheless, because they know it won’t be in the final bill, so in practical legislative terms, this push has no point, they could have NOT done it and it wouldn’t have made any difference. But this way, instead of them getting the blame for “not pushing hard enough,” Obama gets the blame for “not pushing hard enough.”
Some of you may think my attitude is defeatist, but I think it’s the reality, in the sense that the votes (in the Senate, anyway) really aren’t there and never were. So PTDB and if all goes well, there will be ways to get a PO in later.
Medicare has a good brand name, a long track record, known benefits and weaknesses, high popularity across the political spectrum, etc.. I agree with Dean that lowering the age is a good place to start. I’d also get rid of the anti-trust exemption for insurers.
Even though a public option sounds good to me, creating something entirely new is fraught with danger and difficulties.
One reason the Democrats don’t want to revive the public option is because it would basically constitute a broken promise and that is not something Harry Reid wants to do if he plans on being able to retain his position and effectiveness as Majority Leader:
The other way of looking at it is: If Reid breaks that promise, he’ll have a shot at staying in the Senate and staying Majority Leader. If he keeps his promise, he won’t have to worry about being Majority Leader much longer because he’ll be unemployed come early November. The other thing I don’t get is: What is the problem? The PO is wildly popular, especially if there is a mandate. Where is Jesse Unruh when we need him.
I really don’t think they expected it to be this popular with all of the people. They figured they could do the bait and switch on the base… But the problem here is that it is wildly popular across the political spectrum.
Everyone expects it. Dems, indies and even a significant part of the conservative GOP base all want a public option.
Who in the extremely insulated Senate would have ever known that the people hate their private insurance that much? Or, at least, that the people recognize that we need to be offering a public option to people that want it to encourage some kind of real competition and cost control.
Booman, do you know if this giant boondoggle invitation is still open?
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/dec/06/nation/la-na-alternative-meds6-2009dec06
Rachel,
Alternative medicine is only a boondoggle until it helps you or a loved one improve the quality of their lives.
I think they should cover alternative therapies with evidence to show they work published in peer-reviewed journals – acupuncture for some conditions, for example.
Bee pollen (mentioned in the article) is a boondoggle. Homeotherapy is a boondoggle. A lot of alternative therapies are hoaxes. They need to narrow this down or get rid of it.
.
“The latest New York Times poll on this issue, in December, shows that despite the attacks of recent months Americans support the public option 59% to 29%. Support includes 80% of Democrats, 59% of Independents, and even 33% of Republicans,” they write. “Much of the public identifies a public option as the key component of health care reform – and as the best thing we can do to stand up for regular people against big insurance companies. In fact, overall support for health care reform declined steadily as the public option was removed from reform legislation.”
Or — either that or you have to deal with all the economic, other economic issues first. But the problem is, it’s very hard to see how America can be a leading economy in the world, in the 21st century, if we spot everybody else a trillion dollars before we ever start to work. And that’s essentially what we’re doing with healthcare costs.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."You’ve hit it right on the head. If 80% of dems support the public option and the White House and Harry Reid don’t push for it, they’re committing political suicide and will pay dearly for it in November. Not only will the base not turn out, but those Scott Brown Independents who said that Obama wasn’t doing enough on Health Care will be apathetic as well.
Anthem BC and and the other insurance carriers who nearly doubled their rates over the past few weeks have given the Dems a gift and an incredible opportunity to sway the public on this issue. But it takes something called ‘leadership’ which, I’m afraid, Obama severely lacks. Again, a government mandate to buy over-priced insurance from the criminals who control the system come will be the Dem’s Waterloo or ‘the Democratic Midterm Election Massacre of 2010.’
I’ll wait until after Thursday to see how they proceed on this, but I’m not optimistic.
The problem with this theory is that if the conservadems vote against a final bill w PO, they will be in the best position possible. They will be able to say they voted for health care. They will be able to say they voted against the PO. The big question on Congress’ mind is whether having voted for this thing will be an asset or liability come November, and only the centrists will be able to have it both ways, putting their finger to the wind and deciding at the time whether to run as friends or enemies of HCR.
I don’t get the sympathy for the poor red state Democrats. There are red state Democrats who voted for the public option and will again.
The folks with the long money trails to the industry that healthcare insurance is reforming would find it a breach of trust by Harry Reid if the public option was pushed through by reconciliation.
They should just suck it up. Blue state Democrats have to endure having voted for the Nelson amendment limiting abortion.
The politics of this bill isn’t internal to the Senate. A bad bill sinks the Democratic majority.
I don’t doubt Ezra’s reporting but I don’t doubt Glenn Greenwald’s analysis that there are nominally “progressive” Democratic Senators looking for excuses to cover the fact that they will not vote even with 50 votes for the public option.
Blanche Lincoln is already politically dead because she opposed the public option. Nelson is facing a rebellion of Democrats in Nebraska for the same reason. If Harry Reid can’t bring it to an up-or-down vote, he’s more dead politically that he is right now. One way or the other, he won’t be majority leader in 2011.
I believe that voters need to know straight up who has been for the public option and who has been dancing.
Sleep with dogs and wake up with fleas.
MoveOn.org and other organizations began their Virtual March for healthcare reform today.
Please log into their web site, call your Senators, contact your Senators through their web pages, Facebook, Twitter, and get folks in your personal network to do the same.
And don’t neglect the Republicans; they need to be called out on their games.
Or your House member, who needs to be told to support the stripping of antitrust exemption from health insurance corporations and to vote Yes when whatever bill comes out of the compromise and from the Senate amendments.
Sorry about the activism, BooMan. But this might be a historic day — or not — depending on what folks do.
I don’t mind activism. It’s Giordano that hates that word.