THE TREATMENT JANUARY 19, 2010
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Rep. Anthony Weiner has been a uniquely valuable voice on health care over the last few months--pushing for the best possible bill, complete with a public option, but also embracing a compromise when it was the only available option. That makes his performance tonight all the more mystifying--and disappointing.
The future of health care reform rests entirely on the sentiments of rank-in-file Democrats. The White House and, I suspect, House leadership will be pushing to pass the Senate bill, as written, with an understanding that they can revise the bill later through the reconciliation process.
I think it's the smart play--and quite possibly the only play. But the original House bill barely passed. If even a handful of congressmen who voted "yes" last time vote "no" this time, reform is dead.
At the moment, nobody knows whether rank-in-file will follow the president and leadership. And that's because the rank-and-file are trying to figure out what the election--and a possible failure to pass health care reform--would mean. So what does Weiner do? He suggests on MSNBCÂ that maybe it'd really be better to drop health care reform--and pivot to jobs. At a moment like this, it's precisely that sort of talk that can push wavering members one way or the other.
I expected that sort of talk from the likes of Senator Evan Bayh, who never showed much enthusiasm for health care reform anyway. I expected more from Weiner.
7 comments
To the extent health care was an issue at all in the Massachusetts election, it had to work against the Dems. 98% of MA citizens already have health insurance - would national health care improve this? Unlikely. The main way the national HCR bill could help MA would be in controlling health costs - certainly important, but a more speculative, less concrete aspect of the bill. Basically, this result is a combination of the general angst and anti-incumbency fever brought on by the financial crisis and resulting recession and a poor candidate who ran an even worse campaign (You're from Mass and thought Schilling was a Yankee?). What could Obama have done? Basically, he could have much more proactive in determining the parameters of HCR, what would be in, what would be out, much earlier in the process. Instead of letting progressives get all excited about the public option, he simply could have pulled them aside and said, "I'm with you, but this will never pass. We have to drop this for now and try to add something like it down the road. We simply need to get a base plan in place for now." This might have also put him in a better position to negotiate with conservatives and moderates about the taxes used to finance the bill (the progressives are not pursuing a public option - how about passing some taxes on the wealthy?). This might have resulted in meeting the original goal of a signed HCR by the end of summer instead of months of debate about the public option.
- RobertW
January 19, 2010 at 11:34pm
I left off the last part of my comment since my last paragraph sort of contradicts the first (it's late - sorry). Anyway, the earlier HCR passes, the more time he could be seen to devoting to the economy. However, I'm not sure what else he would do - it would mostly be atmospherics. Maybe work on a further stimulus or try to focus on financial regulation?? I'm not sure what the conservative Dems want him to do - focus on economic recovery, but reduce the deficit. It makes no sense.
- RobertW
January 20, 2010 at 12:30am
Starting first thing today, the Democratic rodents in the House will be publicly trampling one another to see who can scamper fastest off the floundering wreckage of the S.S. Health Reform.
- dtohmatsu
January 20, 2010 at 12:58am
The health care abomination is dead.. even Barney Frank says so. And Jim Webb. Can you hear the democrats scurrying away from this terrible idea? And thus ends the 1 year experiment with socialism.
- mr_rationale
January 20, 2010 at 1:37am
Ah, no mr_rationale. Take it from someone who knows. This was not socialism, experimental or otherwise. Health care reform will come. And it won't be remotely socialist - it will be an American, private, for-profit, hybrid system that will ensure basic rules of fairness and equity. It won't be nearly as fair or just as any "socialised medicine", but that would be an impossibility.
- Mormon Socialist
January 20, 2010 at 4:42am
National government health insurance is still needed. Just extend Medicare to all, tighten the financial and management controls. Unfortunately, it has powerful enemies who will say anything and do anything (months of legislative sausage-making, anyone?) to stop it. Our current system threatens to bankrupt us, is unjust, and needlessly shackles employees to their employers like serfs to feudal lords. I'm amazed by all the useful fools who parrot the latest corporate and right-wing propaganda about health insurance. They are so suggestible. The political hypnosis is amazing. Our republic is under siege from unpatriotic corporations, drug cartels, Islamic terrorists, latter-day Elmer Gantrys, right-wing foundations and think tanks, and libertarian nutcases (like Grover Norquist) who are trying to destroy the American national state that protects our liberties and buffers us from economic earthquakes.
- amidut
January 20, 2010 at 7:43am
You can't blame people for blinkered short-term thinking. You can blame political leaders for not showing people what the alternative looks like. If we don't pass this thing, the system is going to run spiral on down with its morbid mix of exclusions, cost-per-item fees, ludicrous regional disparities, economic drag effect, and most of all the degrading of middle-class prosperity as more and more money goes into health care premiums and not into wages and salaries.
- ironyroad
January 20, 2010 at 12:21pm