Monday, March 18, AD 2024 9:05pm

A Public Option: the Left's Waterloo?

Blackadder has had a couple very interesting posts lately arguing that a public health insurance program wouldn’t sound the death-knell to private insurance companies (and hence competition for the consumer) which many have been arguing it would.

What I find interesting is the vehemence of the left regarding a public option… consider this quote from a WaPo story today:

“I don’t understand why the left of the left has decided that this is their Waterloo,” said a senior White House adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We’ve gotten to this point where health care on the left is determined by the breadth of the public option. I don’t understand how that has become the measure of whether what we achieve is health-care reform.”

Indeed. Isn’t there plenty of reform which can be enacted without a public option? Why is it now the sine qua non of health care reform?

At the same time, we find in the same article indications that the GOP’s strategy is yet again merely to try to take down ObamaCare without proposing a real alternative… Sen. Kyl from Arizona and Rep. Price from Georgia both offer comments critical of the co-op proposal, but offer nothing as an alternative strategy. Perhaps this is just the WaPo reporter leaving them out, but I have my doubts.

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Blackadder
Blackadder
Wednesday, August 19, AD 2009 8:59am

One wonders how many of the people now loudly insisting that a public option is essential to health care reform had even heard of the idea a year ago.

Matt McDonald
Matt McDonald
Wednesday, August 19, AD 2009 9:09am

Chris,

At the same time, we find in the same article indications that the GOP’s strategy is yet again merely to try to take down ObamaCare without proposing a real alternative… Sen. Kyl from Arizona and Rep. Price from Georgia both offer comments critical of the co-op proposal, but offer nothing as an alternative strategy. Perhaps this is just the WaPo reporter leaving them out, but I have my doubts.

You’re simply repeating the left’s talking point that the Republican’s don’t offer alternative reforms. The Republicans have offered numerous times reforms which have been defeated by Democrats at every turn.

– tort reform!
– allowing individuals to deduct their private health care premiums
– allowing small businesses to pool across state lines to purchase health insurance for their employees

John McCain’s health care proposal included eliminating the employer deduction in favor of an individual tax credit, this would eliminate the majority of “previous condition” issues because people would not lose their coverage if they lose their job.

At the current time, due to Democrat majorities in both houses the Republicans can not bring any of these proposals to the floor, and the media is not cooperating in getting them out to the public.

Matt McDonald
Matt McDonald
Wednesday, August 19, AD 2009 10:23am

Chris,

Fair enough, Matt. I guess I’d like to see a more coordinated communications strategy on the part of the GOP, then, to get their word out. If the media isn’t cooperating… go around them. It’s not impossible.

I agree, if we don’t figure out how to do this, we will fail, regardless of unfairness.

Blackadder
Blackadder
Wednesday, August 19, AD 2009 12:38pm

Obama appears to be stuck. He wants to jettison the public option portion of his health care plan out of (legitimate) concern that it could bring down the entire bill. It appears, however, that the more left-wing Democrats won’t vote for a bill without a public option.

I’m not really in the business of helping Obama out. However, it might be interesting to see what sort of concessions he would be willing to make in order to garner Republican support for a public plan. Suppose, for example, that the health care bill kept a public option but was altered to include some or all of the reform items Matt mentioned above. Wouldn’t such a bill be preferable to the status quo?

Matt McDonald
Matt McDonald
Wednesday, August 19, AD 2009 12:50pm

BA,

Wouldn’t such a bill be preferable to the status quo?

I’d still be concerned by a lot of the other interventions in the existing bill. Also, it seems like the trade-off from a “public” option would be a “co-op” option, which is funded by the government and controlled by the government as a sort of trojan horse government option.

Phillip
Phillip
Wednesday, August 19, AD 2009 1:14pm

As a tangent. The “Death Panels” were supposed to be a figment of the right’s imagination. I wonder how that plays given this:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204683204574358590107981718.html

DarwinCatholic
Wednesday, August 19, AD 2009 1:31pm

It’s certainly interesting to see how firmly the left has latched on to the fairly anemic public option in the current plan.

I wonder if some of this is that the second half of the 20th century wasn’t exactly kind to collectivist-minded idealogues. The ideas of Smith turned out to be a lot better at creating liveable societies than those of Marx. But health care has, to many, remained the one area in which people can convince themselves “market bad, centralized planning good”. As such, having the government provide health care has an appeal to partisan Democrats out of proportion to the amount of good that a particular program is likely to do.

Fr Charlie
Fr Charlie
Wednesday, August 19, AD 2009 11:38pm

One thing that bothers me is that all the fuss over the public option has allowed the abortion provision in the bill to go unchallenged. As Catholics are we really more concerned about the economic implications of the bill vs its deadly intent to fund infanticide?

Matt McDonald
Matt McDonald
Thursday, August 20, AD 2009 12:10am

Fr. Charlie,

I thunk you’re mistaken, the outrage over the government No private or blocked number calls please takeover is multifaceted and it include opposition to taxpayer funding of abortion, and coercive euthanasia. I don’t think there’s a shortage of vocal opposition to any of these aspects.

All of these elements are a natural extension of the government takeover. Even if hey weren’t mentioned in the law they would become enshrined in practice. That’s part of the reason Catholics should oppose any government takeover.

Matt McDonald
Matt McDonald
Thursday, August 20, AD 2009 8:32am

er.. think.

Fr Charlie
Fr Charlie
Thursday, August 20, AD 2009 2:36pm

I would like to think you are right Matt, but I don’t know. While the Ins. companies need some serious regulation, I am totally opposed to a govt. run health care system. But at the end of the day, I can live with almost anything except publically-funded abortion and euthanasia. The “death-panel” campaign may have protected us on the latter, but besides the US Bishops Conf, I hear almost nothing in the public debate about abortion. What I am saying is that some of the energy needs to go into exposing what this bill will do to the unborn.

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