Ezra Klein Joins The Chorus Preparing Us For No Public Option

[masuki bance]

I am sensing a theme this week, no public option out of committee?- "Don't worry, they'll fix it in conference".

No public option sent to the White House? "Don't worry, Obama will veto it"

Now, "The public option really wasn't that important anyway".

My prediction, any bill signed into law with health reform in it's name will be celebrated and rejoiced by many here at DU, and people like Ezra are doing their best to prep everyone to accept it.

"(E)ven if getting any bill called 'health care reform' passed would be good short-term politics," writes political scientist Scott Lemieux, "it's worth further emphasizing that signing a bill without (at a minimum) a public option would be a substantive disaster." Elsewhere, he says, "the public option is the core of the reform; a Blue Dog bill isn't so much half a loaf as a few meaningless crumbs." And, finally, "a bad bill would be worse than no bill."

The public option, as it exists in any bill moving through Congress, is not the core of reform, nor anything near it. It is, for one thing, limited to the Americans who buy into the Health Insurance Exchanges, and the exchanges are in turn limited to the unemployed, the self-employed and small businesses. In the House bill -- which is the strongest of the bills -- the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 27 million Americans would be in the exchanges by 2019. That's not nothing, but it's not much. Imagine half choose the public option (CBO estimates many fewer than that). You now have 13.5 million Americans in a public insurer with no substantive advantages over private insurance. That's not a gamechanger, it's a tweak.

But it's also worth offering a more general reality check here: The public option is not now, and has not ever, been the core of the argument for heath-care reform. It is the core of the fight in Washington, D.C. It is an important policy experiment. But it was not in Howard Dean or John Kerry or Dick Gephardt's plans, and reformers supported those. It was not in Bill Clinton's proposal, and most lament the death of that. It is not what politicians were using in their speeches five years ago. It is a recent addition to the debate, and a good one. But it is not the reason were are having this debate.

Rather, what has kept health-care reform at the forefront of liberal politics for decades is moral outrage that 47 million of our friends and neighbors are uninsured. That medical costs are one of the leading causes of bankruptcy in the United States. That an unemployed machinist gets screwed by fly-by-night insurance schemes while a comfortably employed banker need never worry. That the working class ends up in emergency rooms with crushing chest pains because they didn't have health insurance and didn't get prescribed cheap blood pressure medications five years before. ...

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/07/the_195_years_test.html

[MarjorieG]

1. Other countries may be private, but heavily regulated. No money w.o. serious regulation.

[bluestateguy]

2. He does bring up one good point

Everyone here laments the demise of Hillary's efforts in 1993-94, but that bill never had a public option. It was fully reliant on private insurance.Yet if Hillary's bill was proposed today, I sense that DU would be in an uproar, calling it a sellout.

[FrenchieCat]

3. I think Ezra Klein understand a whole lot about health care....

as he has been following this debate and reporting on it for a long time.
I just think that he understands the process,
and you're mad that he is actually explaining it,
and that we aren't all screaming like chicken little with his head cut off,
crying and moaning and whining.....

[masuki bance]

4. I expect you to support whatever bill Obama ends up signing, no surprise there. nt

[dionysus]

6. and i expect you to cry about it and gnash teeth, no surprise there.

:shrug:

[Political Heretic]

8. Actually, I bet he can give you a list of policy implementation he's supported. You however,

can't name me next to anything you've ever opposed.

Whatever the administration does, you and people like you automatically agree with. The details don't matter. You START from the premise that if the administration does it, its good, and then invent spin to justify everything under the sun.

See normal, critical thinking adults, look at the policy first and hold it up against core principles or values one believes in while considering the need to compromise at times and the political strategy of it all. Those normal people end up agreeing with the administration on some things, and disagreeing on others.

I agreed with the administration on the stimulus bill for example, even though I felt the spending could have been more focused and thus made even more effective, I was still a big fan, because a lot of that spending was great social welfare spending that we desperately needed.

I disagree however, with passing insurance reform and pretending that its health care reform. I'm not inflexible, I've already compromised because I know that single payer is the only system that is truly fair and that is most effective and beneficial for ordinary people, and yet I accept that it is simply not possible to get a single payer system through this congress in this political climate. And so, we have to compromise. But without any public option, we don't have health care reform at all. We just have insurance reform. That's not a compromise any of us should be willing to make.

[Teaser]

12. fail

.

[jefferson_dem]

13. This poster has assumed the role of resident concerned contrarian...

Sprinkled with snarkiness.

Fail indeed.

[Political Heretic]

16. Try my post then.

[TheKentuckian]

5. We need a legit public option. Regulatory changes would be meaningful but we must cut the % of GNP

and get people covered. That means a public option.

[Political Heretic]

7. "It's not a gamechanger its a tweak." Ezra, YOU ARE A LIAR.

Liars should be called liars.

[flpoljunkie]

9. The version of a public option that is being discussed in Congress is a 'tweak.'

It's available only in a HIE (health insurance exchange) and is limited to only those without insurance.

[Inuca]

11. But if I understand correctly

(and of course depending on what the version will look like), these exchanges will become available to individuals and larger companies after 10 (I think) years.

[Inuca]

10. I see no reason for outrage

First of all, Ezra Klein is not "preparing" us for anything, he just explains things and provides facts, and as noted by others above he is quite knowledgeable about these issues. Second, the famous public option is something I would very much like to have, but I think Klein is correct is claiming that it is NOT the core of the reform. It's just an issue that many people, both for and against it, chose for various reasons to obsessively cling to. I am more bothered by the talk coming out of the secret gang of 6 in the finance committee about not having a provision that obliges employers to provide health insurance than by the absence of a public option.

[Uncle Joe]

14. Ezra focuses on treating the symptoms instead of giving the cure.

Those 47+ million uninsured, not to mention tens of millions in the under-insured classification are merely the symptoms from relying on a dysfunctional for profit "health" insurance system and that system is the disease.

Furthermore, the American People are more aware today than they were pre or nascent Internet, just because the corporate media never pressed the political leaders of the past to consider universal single payer; aka cure or a strong public option; aka; treatment doesn't degrade the argument. Indeed this is a testament to the American People and their capability to grow from the uplifting and enlightening power of the First Amendment when not censored by a select few, one way gatekeepers of vital information.

The American People are waking up Mr. Klein; get your ass out of bed.

[Zodiak]

15. If there is no public option, then I will disappear from DU

...and disappear from any political activism whatsoever. No fanfare....just fucking gone. No more voting, no more nothing other than filling out applications to get out of this shit-stain of a country.

With Congressional majorities that political parties only dream of, public support in overwhelming numbers, and a popular President, there is NO EXCUSE for a watered down piece of shit legislation that helps little else but the insurance companies while leaving Americans to die from neglect.

At that point, I will give up on American politics. It is MORE THAN CLEAR that they do not care about the welfare of the citizens, and I have much more important ways to spend my time than to have my chain yanked time and again.

Don't like it? Tough shit. They can continue to play their political games of legalized bribery without me as a spectator/cheerleader. This was the litmus test, and our party has failed it miserably in order to pad their pockets with lobbyist money.

And yeah, if Obama signs legislation without a public option, then he is more interested in remaining President than bringing real change...typical of our Washington culture of corruption. How many people could have been saved if we just fought for what is right a little bit?

[masuki bance]

17. Firedoglake has a great pic of Ezra

Ezra Klein Plays His Part in the “Co-op Squeeze Play”



http://campaignsilo.firedoglake.com/2009/07/29/ezra-klein-plays-his-part-in-the-co-op-squeeze-play/