“The public option – whether we have it or we don’t have it – is not the entirety of health care reform,” the President said. “This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it. And, by the way, it’s both the right and the left that have become so fixated on this that they forget everything else . . .” – CNN
Every battle is won before it’s fought.
So, if you thought we were going to get health care reform, I’d say you didn’t read this very carefully. Hey, but if you can’t get everything you want the first time, can’t you compromise then come back to fight, aka expand, on your efforts another day?
As Sen. Conrad said today, nobody among the D.C. power elite was ever interested in fighting for the public option.
A key Senate negotiator said Sunday that President Barack Obama should drop his push for a government-funded public health insurance option because the Senate will never pass it. Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota said it was futile to continue to “chase that rabbit” due to the lack of 60 Senate votes needed to overcome a filibuster.
“The fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the United States Senate for a public option. There never have been,” Conrad said on “FOX News Sunday.”
That we’re just now getting an op-ed from Pres. Obama, all these months after the health debate began, with the Democratic message long ago hijacked, illustrates that whatever the Administration thought would be the battle line in health care, they didn’t learn from Clinton era mistakes in the 1990s and preemptively prepare for the foreseen onslaught.
Will Democrats get a health care bill? I still contend they will. Is it health care reform? It depends on how hard you want to push the partisan rhetoric compared to what actual health care reform should look like.
Pres. Obama today in The New York Times:
This is what reform is about. If you don’t have health insurance, you will finally have quality, affordable options once we pass reform. If you have health insurance, we will make sure that no insurance company or government bureaucrat gets between you and the care you need. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan. You will not be waiting in any lines. This is not about putting the government in charge of your health insurance. I don’t believe anyone should be in charge of your health care decisions but you and your doctor — not government bureaucrats, not insurance companies. – Pres. Barack Obama
But I sure don’t envy the Democrats readying the party to celebrate what’s been accomplished.
As for my take, health insurance reform, what Obama proclaimed was his goal in his last big press conference, the one that didn’t go so well, isn’t a bad thing at all. Getting the uninsured covered is important, as is regulating an industry that causes far too much grief to people at a horrifically challenging moment in their lives. But the proof is in the actual manifestation of both.
But the reality is that with all the power in the laps of Democrats, it says a lot about their ability to lead, sell and deliver on an idea that when this started a plurality of Americans supported. Progressive groups and some blogs like Firedoglake showing far more courage and zeal for the cause than anything that came out of the White House.
Whether health insurance reform, which is what we’re likely to get, makes the health care reform glass half empty or half full is up for you to decide.
But expect dueling victory laps when this is over, because on the right, if the public option is dropped, the right will be claiming they beat Democrats, see Sarah Palin, even when all the power was on their side and when just a few months ago the Republicans and the conservative movement had been left for dead.
At last bipartisanship accomplished something.
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