On Wed, 2 Sep 2009, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Hey, it's an opportunity to show he's no socialist:
>
> http://doughenwood.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/ciao-public-option/
Which seems like excellent bargaining politics, since he's giving up nothing.
The public option fight is a death match over a delusion. The left is for it because they think it's the entering wedge of single-payer. The right is against it for the same reason. And they are both completely wrong. But they're both sure they're right because of the conviction of the other side.
It's not single payer, not even a little bit. It's not even going to keep prices down, since the plans as offered have already been stripped of any of the competitive advantages they might theoretically have been provided with.
Since Obamacare, if passed, is going to fail financially, just like the Masscare it's modelled on and the Dukakiscare that preceded it 20 years ago, we're probably better off without any public option, since its involvement in that failure would taint the idea of single payer: See, the gov't plan didn't help!
Leave it out, and perhaps it will be the obvious road not taken when we have our next round of health care reform in less than a decade from now. Then hopefully the far-left position will be VA for all.
But even if not, the fact is that dropping it is dropping nothing important. The Obamacons are completely right to be baffled as to why the left cares so much about it.
Michael