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Time to Quit Obsessing Over the Public Option?
Sure, it's worth fighting for. But it's not worth sinking health care reform over.
-Kevin Drum

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So as much as I'd like to have a public option (primarily for its ability to force more robust price competition), I just don't see it as something to threaten nuclear destruction over. If insurance reforms are robust and low-income subsidies are decent, that's a huge win for millions of people, and it's a win we can build on. And contra Atrios, social legislation does have a history of getting better after it's first passed. Just ask Henry Waxman.

There's more to say about this. For example: most European countries rely on regulated private insurers of one kind or another to provide universal coverage, and they've managed to make this work. And: a credible threat only works if the opposition is afraid you might carry it out. But as near as I can tell, the folks who oppose the public option aren't really all that afraid of the possibility that healthcare reform sinks completely. Plus: the only way to get it is via reconciliation, and various comments to this post make it pretty clear that trying to pass a huge healthcare bill via reconciliation is probably impossible.

It's worth fighting for a public option. But it's not worth sinking healthcare reform over it. That would hurt too many real flesh-and-blood people who need this, and a second chance wouldn't come along for a long time. We've failed on the healthcare front too many times to accept failure again.

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http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/08/making-sense-public-option

as we saw yesterday.

And CEO bonuses - also winners.

Yes - there is much to be optimistic about should we lose the public option.

The Public Option is the COMPROMISED position. Single Payer is what Progressives wanted but we were told it would not make it through Congress, so we had to settle for a public option.

F*ck all those who say we don't need a public option.

We are in the majority, and last time I checked, we're technically a Democracy.

I guess it's possible to get the insurance companies to stop gouging their policyholders and deleting sick people from their rolls, but I don't think it's probable.

Even if a health care bill goes down in flames this year, I think the public is primed to push for one in the next session of congress. This has gone too far to be dropped now.

The countries that use private companies regulate them to a degree that our corporate vultures would never accept: mandated benefits, caps on premiums, no deductibles, caps on overhead.

Furthermore, in many places (the UK, Canada), private companies provide only add-ons to the basic care package, not the whole thing.

Time to make a stand and hold firm!