The Public Option

MANIFESTO

Obviously, there're miles to go before this one sleeps, but

the Obama administration [is] giving its strongest signal yet that it may be ready to drop the idea of a government-run insurance option to compete with private companies as part of health care reform.

Now, I only know what Bob Reich and Paul Krugman tell me, and they've both been promoting the public option like it's indispensable. Therefore, I'm on its side. (The fact that the predatory insurance companies and the craziest people to show themselves this century are against it also factors into the equation.) It also appears as if Congress's most progressive legislators are on the side of the public option.

Having said that, it might be instructive to note Kevin Drum's take on the subject.

[T]here's a group of liberal Democrats in the House who are threatening to vote against any bill that doesn't include a public option. Obviously they're hoping that this threat will be enough to force the conference committee to include a public option in its final report.

But even if this works, no one thinks that such a bill can get 60 votes in the Senate. This means the only way to pass it would be via reconciliation.

So here's my question: supposing this happens, what are we likely to lose if we go down the reconciliation road? The basic rule is that anything that doesn't affect the budget is off limits and would have to be discarded, but in practice only an expert could tell us which provisions are likely to fall foul of the reconciliation rules. So who's an expert on this kind of thing? I don't have a clue. But before I decide what I think of this whole idea, I'd sure like to have a better sense of what I'm likely to get out of it. On one side, I lose the public option but the rest of the bill has a pretty good chance of passing. That's straightforward. On the other side, I get a bill that includes a public option but loses a bunch of other stuff that can't survive reconciliation. Like, say, community rating, which I suspect doesn't have enough budgetary impact to stay intact. Ditto for just about everything else that reforms the private sector insurance industry.

So are we back to the bipartisanship crapola that too many legislators espouse in order to promote a Republican agenda? Or might something good come out of this even though a public option may not?

I'll be glad when August is over and legislators can get back to the real mudslinging.