How health care reform should have been handled.

[BurtWorm]

As I was listening to Anna Burger of SEIU fielding calls from the the usual idiots on Washington Journal this morning, I thought about the Republican-Lieberman-Conrad-Nelson argument that it's unfair to expect the insurance industry to compete against a "robust public option," considering how much bigger than any one company the government is. Somehow, this anti-competition message is sold, no questions asked, as the pro-business position, and as we Americans all know, pro-business is the position to beat in any political debate.

But why did the Democrats not adopt early on an aggressive pro-business position of their own?: Giving workers the option to have government pay for their health care will remove some of the burden on small businesses (in particular) of providing health care insurance to all employees. Imagine you're a small business owner and you hear one party loudly looking out for the interests of the insurance industry on the one hand and the other looking out for the interests of workers and small business owners on the other... who are *you* going to listen to? Furthermore, the Dems should have been stressing all summer and fall long, the public option, in providing a ruthlessly undercutting competitor to insurance companies, would necessarily force the cost of private insurance down. Is that a BAD thing for small private enterprises?

I thought Rahm Emanuel was a tough guy and legislative genius. Then how come we don't have health care reform with a public option passed and signed NOW, all ready to bulk up Democratic prospects in 2010? Why wasn't Rahm, or some strong-armer, leaning on these so-called centrists from the beginning and making it clear to them that they would not regret getting real health care reform passed--and would seriously regret standing in the way of it?

[dflprincess]

1. Rahm is DLC

the only "reform" he was interested in was protecting the insurance companies and the status quo and he got just what he wanted.