Senator Max Baucus--with Democrats like him, who needs Republicans?
Brave, brave Max Baucus—just reelected to the Senate in 2008 and already running like it’s 2014. He’s patting himself on the back for the Senate Finance Committee’s rejection of a public option for health care reform. Baucus was quoted as saying, “My goal is to get a bill out this committee that becomes law….” Wow! There’s visionary leadership for you. Apparently it doesn’t matter if the bill is any good, as long as something passes. Let’s be brutally frank about this: If the final bill doesn’t contain a public option, who the f*%k cares? And while we’re at it, let’s ask another question: Who the f*%k needs cowards like Baucus or Kurt Conrad (North Dakota) in the Democratic fold if they’re going to act like rightwing Republicans?
Health care reform without a public option is a chimera; it’s no reform at all posing as action. Many of us—and this includes yours truly writing from Massachusetts—already have all the so-called “reforms” in place that the Baucus bill would require: portable insurance, no disqualifications for pre-existing conditions, and requirements that every resident buy insurance. We also have something Baucus and the Backroom Boys don’t want to talk about: some of the highest premiums in the nation. That’s because the entire system is based on protecting the bottom lines of private insurers, not on containing costs. As Senator Jay Rockefeller (West Virginia), one of the Democrats who “gets it,” commented about the current plan, “People come second and the profits come first.”
The whole debacle is a reminder of why Democrats are such perpetual electoral losers—they don’t lead, they equivocate. Harry Truman once remarked that if you give the public a choice between a faux Republican and a real one, they’ll choose the real one time after time. This is precisely the path on which Democrats currently find themselves. Who could blame voters for being put off by Democrats whose view of problem-solving is George Bush with a human face?
Health care reform will be a test of President Obama’s mettle. He needs to apply party discipline and make it quite clear that he won’t entertain any health care reform bill that lacks a public option. Privately he needs to let party leaders know that the president will not campaign for, fund raise, or publicly support those who don’t climb aboard. How he handles his own party will be the measure of whether he can be—as many voters hoped—the heir to Lincoln or the next coming of Jimmy Carter—a decent man out of his depth.
Health care reform without a public option is a chimera; it’s no reform at all posing as action. Many of us—and this includes yours truly writing from Massachusetts—already have all the so-called “reforms” in place that the Baucus bill would require: portable insurance, no disqualifications for pre-existing conditions, and requirements that every resident buy insurance. We also have something Baucus and the Backroom Boys don’t want to talk about: some of the highest premiums in the nation. That’s because the entire system is based on protecting the bottom lines of private insurers, not on containing costs. As Senator Jay Rockefeller (West Virginia), one of the Democrats who “gets it,” commented about the current plan, “People come second and the profits come first.”
The whole debacle is a reminder of why Democrats are such perpetual electoral losers—they don’t lead, they equivocate. Harry Truman once remarked that if you give the public a choice between a faux Republican and a real one, they’ll choose the real one time after time. This is precisely the path on which Democrats currently find themselves. Who could blame voters for being put off by Democrats whose view of problem-solving is George Bush with a human face?
Health care reform will be a test of President Obama’s mettle. He needs to apply party discipline and make it quite clear that he won’t entertain any health care reform bill that lacks a public option. Privately he needs to let party leaders know that the president will not campaign for, fund raise, or publicly support those who don’t climb aboard. How he handles his own party will be the measure of whether he can be—as many voters hoped—the heir to Lincoln or the next coming of Jimmy Carter—a decent man out of his depth.
As a lifelong Dem, I am mad as hell. You address another issue - whether Obama will take this moment to use the pulpit to bully his party into doing what they were elected to do!
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