On Mon, 14 Dec 2009, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Funny. I understand the economics of Woolhandler's analysis, but I'm not
> so sure about the politics. Opponent Ben Nelson said the buy-in was a
> furtive way of getting to single-payer - more than the public option.
BTW, one other thing about Nelson's comment that's worth noting: this is the simple answer to why the administration never introduced single payer as an option. Because he says it very baldly: he's against single payer on principle. He's with the Republicans on that. And he will oppose anything that makes it even slightly possible.
The other centrists haven't said it quite so baldly. But is there really any doubt at this point that they think exactly the same way?
So now look at from the administration's perspective assuming they knew this from the beginning from talking to them directly.
On this view, all that guff about how single payer wasn't politically feasible because the American people didn't support it was all fuzzy and vague because it was intentional misdirection. It was impossible for us to believe anyone could base their strategy on such weak evidence because they didn't. It was all smoke, meant to veil the stark numerical reality they knew about from the beginning and didn't want to talk about and still don't: that all Republicans and 4 or 5 Democrats like Nelson were against single payer on principle. Not because they didn't know all about it, but because they did. And they were never going to be swayed and there was nothing that could sway them. This was the administration's original picture, and is was totally right. They never have been even a teeny bit swayed.
This is what they meant when they said it the political reality was that single payer couldn't be passed. To put everything behind single payer would simply be to have it come to a vote and fail. No amount of pressure would move these guys.
>From the left, in our dreams, I suppose we would have liked to bring it to
a vote anyway, and show the country where these guys stand, and demonize
them essentially as flacks for the insurance industry and against the
public welfare. And then get them voted out, get in better people, and go
forward.
But I'll bet the administration view would be that such demonization would be no help, because there isn't a national electorate for senators. And in their states, these rogue democrats' main selling point is their independence of the herd party. So this would probably strengthen them, not weaken them.
So when the administration has always said that single payer is impossible, what they mean is that they see no solution as to where to get those last 4 or 5 votes. And they don't see anyone offering one.
So in their eyes, if health care was going to be passed at all, it was going to have to be something without a trace of single payer. Anything else was DOA.
Obama and his camp then decided that a totally non-single payer health insurance reform was worth not only worth passing, but worth investing the majority of his political capital in. One can question whether that was a good choice, but I think it's pretty clear that's what they did.
And given those starting points, any time spent discussing single payer was not only a dead weight waste of time (in something that is already taking a year, since those 4 would not vote for it until it was all scraped back out) but a positive endangerment, since the more discussion of single payer, the more hopes and momentum would build for it, and the more people on the left of the party would say this other plan wasn't worth passing because it didn't have any trace of single payer.
I think this set of first premises also explains why the administration is always so willing, after an initial gambit, to give up on anything resembling single payer. They feel certain from the outset that these 4 or 5 senators won't budge an inch, nothing can make them, and poking them is wasting time to zero purpose. They let the Weiners of this world try to get them to swallow some new idea, they wait a day until some of the 4 say publicly that they will vote against the plan unless it is removed, and then they try behind the scenes to hurry along the process to get it removed.
Michael