Holy Joe strikes again, cont'd

MANIFESTO

While I realize Connecticut isn't called the Insurance State for nothing, it's still disquieting to see its junior senator reject the notion of a health care public option out of hand.

“If we create a public option, the public is going to end up paying for it,” Lieberman said following an hour-long confab with public-health experts at the Ashmun Street community center of the Monterey Homes public housing complex. “That’s a cost we can’t take on.”

For those who came in late,

“Public option” is shorthand for a Medicare-like government plan that would compete with private companies to cover many of the 47 million Americans who don’t get private health insurance through their employers or elsewhere ...

Connecticut’s other U.S. senator, Chris Dodd, supports the public option.

(Godd certainly does, given the efforts he's got to make to show the state's denizens he's not the over-privileged clod everyone knows he is.)

It doesn't exactly take a rocket scientist to figure out Senator Sanctimony's reasoning here. He is, after all, the fellow who was the recipient of $731K in insurance company contributions just for his 2006 Senate race. Such companies are terrified that the public option

will actually work. If the program operates well, more and more people will make the rational decision to choose it over private insurance (what we're supposed to do in a market, after all) and the insurance companies will lose customers.

And, should that happen, Holy Joe will perforce receive less for his coffers.

tparty shows that this behavior is by no means a new phenomenon.