The public option now becomes a litmus test on the Democratic side in political campaigns.

I hope. I hope. I hope.

Of course, any candidate who answers, “I support it but prefer single payer.” would get campaign donations from me.

Mark this as a success for the progressive movement in general and the health care reform movement in particular. Obama knocked down the public option but he can’t kill it. In fact, it might just take him out instead.

I sincerely hope it doesn’t become an “Enduring Democratic Campaign Issue”.

If HCR passes with a Public Option, great. If it passes without one, well, that sucks, and we need to know who to punish for helping to kill it.

However, if HCR passes w/o a PO, then progressives should stop pushing for the measly PO, and go back to fighting for single payer (Medicare for All) or a British style NHS.

The Public Option was and is the right thing to fight for in this bill. But after this bill is passed, and if there is no Public Option in it, then let’s fight for real reform: Medicare for All.

The last thing we need is for a Public Option to become an issue like overturning Roe v. Wade is for the right: A bright shiny thing they dangle in front of the base to get votes, and nothing more.

A buy-in to Medicare sounds a lot like a real public option.

They all support it when they’re running for office, or else. Afterwards though most do an Obama about face.

One would think this would signal a significant defeat for the Progressive movement; considering it wasn’t Progressives that wanted the Public Option to begin with. They wanted Single-Payer, and were told by the Democratic Party leadership, and various veal-pen organizations that they couldn’t have it, and couldn’t be part of the discussion and the Grown-Ups table.

If the Public Option “becomes an enduring Democratic campaign issue,” then we’re completely sunk as a movement, because this asinine, unproven, and dubious policy-point will continue to be an unyielding distraction from actually moving for healthcare reform.

Last line should read: “This will not be the LAST primary where the public option becomes an issue, put it that way.”

This.

Heh. I like the comparison to Roe v. Wade. A shiny thing that even if finally attained will do exactly nothing to solve the problem the people set out to solve in the first place.

Hell, I’m a pro-life (as in sanctity-of-life) advocate, but I’d much rather put my efforts into making sure people have safe, reliable access to effective contraceptive birth-control, because the data shows that people by and large use abortion as a substitutable-good for contraceptive birth-control. The data also shows that material bans on demand-side issues don’t solve the problem of reducing incidence of the behavior. Internationally there’s essentially no correlation to per capita abortions and the legality of the procedure. Women who want, or need, one will find a way to do it, and it should be safe when they do.

If I want to see a decline in what I consider to be an often significantly questionable justification for killing, then any advocacy should be geared toward reducing the conditions which lead women to be confronted with that choice, and all of it within the scope of understanding that human beings are hard-wired to pursue their sexuality, so ignorant reliance on will-power (abstinence) is a non-starter. You don’t solve a problem of public policy by starting out, “First, reject your genetic biology and humanity.”

Halter is about to appear shortly on the Ed Show…! ;-)

However, if HCR passes w/o a PO, then progressives should stop pushing for the measly PO, and go back to fighting for single payer (Medicare for All) or a British style NHS.

Maybe you want that, but it’s hard to fight for real reform. To build a blog brand it’s much easier to make headlines like “The Public Option Becomes an Enduring Campaign Issue” to appeal to well-meaning but gullible people and get them all riled up while you accomplish precisely nothing. It’s also good for closet economic conservatives who want to pose as progressives for fame and profit.

Oh goodie. Here comes some one who’s gonna tell us what to do.

Say Goodnight, Blanche Lambert Lincoln

I hope he doesn’t support the public option the way Chris Dodd supports finance reform.

It’s the best, easiest, most efficient way.

We can’t tell of course if Halter would aggressively promote a Medicare buy-in once elected (I suspect odds are against that) but we know exactly where Blanche comes down on the issue. Time to give someone new a crack at it.

As for the 33 current senators who supposedly support a PO through reconciliation I’d have a lot more respect for them if they promised to vote against any version that lacks one.

Halter’s on the Ed Show right now, and I have to say he sounds kind of luke warm on EFCA. He’s calling it “card check”.

Citizen masaccio:

Bingo…you get it, don’tcha Citizen??!! Yes indeed, a Medicare buy in is certainly a public option and it leads, inevitably, to real single payer healthcare.

Watching from afar one hopes that Halter will be successful in this campaign and that he will be true to his word. It is seriously important that people see a working example of how a grass roots campaign can win without the strings, chains and anchors associated with big corporate self interests campaign funding. This is the key to REAL “Hope and Change”.

Jane up on Ed now

Jane’s on the Ed show right now.

hey don’t want to raise the ire of the base, and would rather bask in their applause.

Let me guess despite Rahm and Obama’s private assurances nothing bad would happen if the Dems double crossed the Left. The Dems finally started to notice that after months of polling people’s feelings on the Public Option were not changing.

Seconded Where is that guy with a camera Jane gets to follow congresspeople around and ask them questions. We need him to ask the Senators will you vote against any bill without a good public option.

How’s she doing no tv here.

*sigh*

Citizen khin:

It’s all about the struggle, Citizen, if new ideas or ways of articulating old ones get movement off the status quo then we have won but only if we keep on pushin’…I am more worried about Obama’s statement that so many presidents had worked for healthcare reform but he would be the last. That ain’t a progressive statement and it reflects a dangerous idea about politics and social change.

Oh goodie. Here comes some one who’s gonna tell us what to do.

Other than MoveOn and OFA, you mean?

Whether we get a shitty po or not Medicare-for-all should be a campaign issue.

Agree!

Do tell. I’m all eyes.

Aloha, Norske…! It’s been awhile…! ;-)

I’ve got a new diary up…!

What do you think of Utah’s pending legislation criminalizing everybody involved in an abortion, including the pregnant woman?

Citizen CTuttle:

Hey there Citizen CT, where have ya been Bro?

The problem is that “public option” is a scam. It’s a convenient bread crumb pushed by the “leaders” of certain activist organizations who want to pose as progressive, rake in the bucks from donors, and win their founders status among the in-crowd. It probably will cover almost no one, and if it does manage to cover a substantial number it has no hope of pushing down rates.

Sorry if I sound upset. I am upset. People are being misled.

Fleeing a ‘tsunami’…! ;-)

Its been about a over a year now and the President has accomplished what we are still at war, people are still losing their jobs and homes Healthcare was suppose to be the big win after which we would focus on the next big problem and the next after that.
Now with nothing to show for a years worth of work the President is desperate to pass any healthcare bill, even if it means passing such a horrible bill that it will hurt Dems in the next election.

That was an extra bonus, eh…? ;-)

All those poor surfers waitin’ a couple miles inland. *g*

I assume the Supremes will call this unconstitutional unless the Mormons found a loophole the Supremes can live with?

Can we please add one word to that???

Improved Medicare for all?

Cause plain ‘ol Medicare just is NOT all that great. It covers 80% of most things. And let me tell ya, 20% of a $150,000 hospital bill is still going to end up with lots of folks financially ruined.

I do not think this current bill will pass. It will be very difficult for Pelosi to flip any no votes to yesses in this election year. WHY would any blue dog from a red district or Senator from a red state even entertain the possibility?

I am sure there are a few representatives who voted yes and now regret it. Many of these may want to put up a no so they an go back home and talk that up.

Suffering a broken arm at the hands of Pelosi will be far less painful than committing political suicide in November.

So…the bill will die…a long, slow, agonizing death. The progressive dream of “Medicare for All” will become the litmus test for all Dem candidates moving forward because the left insists on clinging to the notion that the majority of Americans want another huge entitlement program that we cannot afford.

The base will be satisfied with nothing less.

Citizen khin:

Ya just don’t get it Citizen, a public option is NOT the status quo, it is a change from what we have now, a change that we need to fight to make work once we have won the opportunity to implement it. Progressive politics is the struggle to move from what is to what is next, if you believe in democratic politics that is.

Shoot, right at the ‘Leaving Tsunami Zone’ signs we had block parties happening…! ;-)

I want a system that requires no outlay other than the “Medicare tax” that comes out of every paycheck. I am not going to believe that we are incapable of taking the best of every other country’s health care system and creating an universal health care system second to none.

Citizen CTuttle:

“Fleeing a tsunami!”

Yeah, you folks had ta lock down the hatches after the thump from Chile…any ripples in yer pond Brother?

Jane on Ed, just for you Things

I wouldn’t bet on that. With this “activist reichwing court” I can see them taking any challenge to the Utah law, if it passes, and making the Utah law the law of the land. I don’t put anything past these ideologues.

It’s hurricane parties here.

I’m listening/watching Crist’s state of the state address. Blah, blah, blah, blah…blah. Rethugs didn’t clap when he outlined what FL did with the stim dust. Cretins.

It definitely ‘surged’, we had sea water puddles well above the typical high water mark…! We did dodge the bullet from that 8.8 Chilean earthquake… Ironically, the last destructive tsunami to hit Hilo was the 1960 9.5 Chilean earthquake that had an epicenter located a mere 150 clicks away from that 8.8 quake…! ;-)

Awesome!

That’s what I’ve been preaching too. It should be free at point of service just like public education, police, etc.

Yet that’s considered RADICAL???? WTF??? It’s the way it is in most other countries, isn’t it?

Damn, listening to this guy Halter, I’m not exactly overjoyed. He sounds like a typical Dcrat trying to talk around the issue to sound like he’s going to support something but then isn’t going to when the rubber meets the road.

His responses to Ed’s questions about the PO and EFCA were definetly NOT an unqualified YES.

I just don’t know…

An example of coincidence, not irony. :-)

Signed,

The Irony Sheriff

For the first time since the Great Depression, Americans took more aid from the government than they paid in taxes.

The Democrat party is looking to force Americans into a mandatory health-care system, fundamentally changing the government’s relationship with the middle-class.

Americans want jobs, opportunities to provide for themselves and their families, they want the government to promote their success.

The Democrats vision of HCR seeks to forever bind the middle class to their government benefactors.

Yet another lesser of evils vote, undoubtedly.

In any event, Blanche must go.

A bread crumb is a change from nothing. Yes, a bread crumb is an improvement other nothing. But if you have dignity you demand what you deserve: a full dinner. Maybe you don’t get it, but you stick up for yourself and demand it. The people who push “public option” are broken, either because they don’t realize it’s a bread crumb or because (I’m convinced, in the case of certain “leaders”) they know but don’t care or are even pleased.

It was nice to hear the words voluntary all comers buy-in to Medicare from Halter as an alternative to for profit insurers. The more general currency this notion gets from viable leftist candidates the more mainstream the notion becomes.

Not only that but the fact that the left has thrust into the limelight an appealing candidate that may well win the Senate seat and is beholden to grassroots money is a double boon. It shifts the center of power away from Democrats and to the left.

This message will not be lost on Obama although of course he will play it down. He may soon start to hear the footsteps himself hopefully.

I am so glad I don’t have to make that “evil of 2 lessers” vote this time around.

Well, I don’t live in Arkansas, but I’m just NOT doing the lesser of two evil votes any longer. Thought I remember seeing you say that too. Good on you.

If we don’t ever send the message to the party that they have to earn our votes, then we can’t really bitch and moan when they don’t do anything we want. After all, why should they?? If we give them support simply because they’re the lesser of two evils, then they can feel free to not deliver anything for us while simultaneously delivering everything to the corporations that provide them dollars.

They get it both ways. Our votes AND corporate dollars. Unless and until we STOP giving them both.

Bunning standoff over (per Ed)

Busted, eh…? ;-)

After decades and decades of voting for lessers it has gotten very tiresome.

I’ve decided I will still vote for Dems at the local level, since they are invariably the better choice. At state and national level they have to earn my support. I don’t live in Arkansas but from here Halter sounds like pretty weak tea.

If I could I’d probably make an exception though, just to vote against Blanche.

The two English words most often used incorrectly (I suspect) are “ironic” and “literally.” How often have you heard someone say something along the line of, “I literally died laughing.”

Uh, I don’t THINK so… “g”

Man, you got that right.

Except when Samm ran against Young I wrote in whatever socialist was in the race. The local stuff is a horse of a different colour.

Literally…! *g*

I’d think it rather obvious that I’d oppose such a thing. It’s patently ridiculous. What’s the point? Deterrent? As noted, the legality of it appears to have almost no stable statistical correlation to its incidence. All such an absurd law would do is fill our prisons with even more people who don’t belong there.

I’m not going to pretend like this isn’t a complicated issue with all kinds of moral and ethical pitfalls. We’re talking about where we set the bar on when life/personhood begins, and what ownership, if any, any person has over that life/person. The symbiotic relationship between the mother and the fetus/child only more thoroughly complicates the matter; obviously.

It’s really, really hard to set that bar. For the most part I think where society has decided to set it makes about as much sense as anything else. All manners of measurement are rife with their own failings, and so probably social consensus, rather than objective measurement, is absolutely appropriate. Things like viability, etc. are all thrown out of whack by advancements in medical and biological science. Almost ironically most of the typical pro-life appeals to things like “brain activity,” when thoroughly understood, push the bar further away from where they’d like to see it moved.

An outright ban would be both pointless and counterproductive, and so I’d never advocate one. If I want to see a decline in abortions, then the means to success is through accessible, safe, reversible and reliable contraception. It’s what the sociology indicates to me, and it’s what the economics indicate to me.

I’ve contended in the past that the most typical bullshit that surrounds this issue is a national inability to address our sexuality maturely. It’s also probable that we should move this out of this thread. :-)

Citizen khin:

I want you to take a moment and reflect on whatever the fuck it is that you’re talkin’ about, Citizen. You are WAAAY outta your league lecturin’ ME about the dignity of struggle. From what you have said and the way you have said it you don’t have a fuckin’ clue what struggle is and as for “dignity” you have lost yours. What psuedo-radicals like yourself don’t understand is that dignity comes from struggle not from a can of beer and a belch in front of the TV. You and those like you have filled the dustbin of history to overflowin’ in the last 50 years.

Sadly agree. He seems to be straddling the wire.

The problem with making endorsement of the public option a litmus test is twofold: the term is vague enough at this point to allow infinite wiggle room and endorsement is, well, cheap. My own Senator, Mr. Bennett, made a splash with his letter calling for the public option. But he is already walking it back, saying that he won’t insist on a public option and thinks the Rahmbama plan is something he could support.

My litmus test won’t be endorsement. It will be action. Last summer and fall, when an aggressive Senatorial advocate for publicly financed healthcare could have had a significant effect, Mr. Bennett was unseen and unheard. A mere endorsement, at this late date, is a day late and a dollar short.

A day late and a dollar short pretty much typifies Mr. Bennett’s whole approach to public service, as near as I can tell. He is a fitting successor to Ken “Nightcrawler” Salazar and Ben Nighthorse Campbell: a Democrat in name, an aristocrat and oligarch in fact.

it’s not radical, or at least it shouldn’t be, to advocate for progressive issues like universal healthcare and progressive policies that can work instead of stupid neoliberal policies that leave millions behind and that have never worked when they’ve been tried.

solutions aren’t radical. and especially not solutions with boad loads of peer reviewed studies and years of analysis and grass roots organizing.

if basis human rights and non-stupid policy are too radical for progressives, then we are worse off than i thought.

because of “the” public option (wtf does that mean? seriously – what exactly is the policy and where is the analysis that shows it’s worth fighting for) is now the enduring democratic campaign issue, instead of universal healthcare, as it used to be, then we’ve lost to the corporatists already.

Norske, if the PO were by itself, and were implemented immediately your argument would be more acceptable, but since the PO, even if implemented, would exist only in the context of the individual mandate, and some form of excise tax (since the House won’t get rid of all of that) you’ve got change that we can’t believe whose overall impact will be to slow down and block real change while allowing a majority of the fatalities, bankruptcies, and foreclosures to continue to occur throughout the next ten years.

Even more, while passage of this bill with a PO provides a foundation for future progressive action, this foundation sets us on the wrong path to future reform. That path is bound to channel our efforts toward expanding the PO and the exchange to more and more people, while relying in market forces to humanize the private insurance companies. This neo-liberal theory of how to make things right in health care just won’t work, however. The reason is that any initial PO will cover very few people and provide very little competition for the privates. So, people will be disappointed with it, especially in the face of the exaggerated claims the Dems will make about what a great victory their passage of the PO is. When people compare that rhetoric with the reality that the PO won’t cover people until 2014, and that even when they are covered by it very few of them will even have the ability to choose it, it will prove very, very difficult to build support for further expansions of the PO.

The PO path to single payer is a pipe dream. We would much better off if the House would resurrect the Medicare and Medicaid expansion ideas so that all over 45 and all up to 200% of FPL were covered by one of the other That kind of incremental approach to change is progressive because it is on the straight path to enhanced Medicare for All and it puts the insurers on notice that if they don’t start delivering real insurance and stop raising prices beyond the overall rate of inflation, they won’t be in business very much longer.

In short, I think the present attempt to resurrect the PO is a misplaced use of resources, attention, and political pressure. We should be beating everyone over the for enhanced Medicare for All, and begin primarying Democratic officeholders who are most opposed to it. That would probably still mean primarying Blanche Lincoln, But I’d like to do it because she’s an enemy of enhanced Medicare for All, and make that very, very clear.

This will not be the last primary where the public option becomes an issue, put it that way.

any dem who supports a nebulous public option instead of universal healthcare will NOT be getting any support from me.

progressives i will support. but not corporatist neoliberals.

It’s not that it’s a bread crumb, khin. Even bread crumbs are acceptable as long as they’re connected to a big shit sandwich, which is what the House and Senate bills both were, and also what the “reconciled” legislation is almost certainly going to be. In the past you and I have both done diaries outlining all the reasons why the House and Senate bills ought to be killed. Those reasons are just as valid today as they were a few months ago. The overall situation and prospects have hardly changes at all. Any bill coming out this process which is consistent with principles outlined in Obama’s most recent plan should be killed, because of the damage it will do to real reform.

Kill the Bill!

Halter told Arkansas reporters today, as seen in the video to the right, that he would favor “an option for members of the public to voluntarily buy into a program like Medicare. And I think you’ll see that people understand that, if it’s voluntary, if it’s something that they can buy their way into, if it’s something that, where the costs are met, I think you’ll see a lot of support for that.”

halter’s campaign website also says “Lieutenant Governor Halter led the campaign to establish a state-run lottery in Arkansas with all proceeds dedicated to scholarships for Arkansas citizens to attend Arkansas colleges and universities.”

it’s a sad commentary on the state of liberal politics if bill halter is its new face.

Geez Norske, What’s radical about khin? All he’s saying is that if one wants Medicare for All then one needs to support that and not pre-compromise it away with solutions that may not work. Again, what’s radical about that?

We have. We had already lost when mosy of our organizations went PO crazy at the beginning of last year. We have to stop the madness now and return to enhanced Medicare for All advocacy and demand that same advocacy from our representatives. You said:

solutions aren’t radical. and especially not solutions with boad loads of peer reviewed studies and years of analysis and grass roots organizing.

Not to mention successful experience with similar programs to Medicare for All in other nations, and in the public sector here. The bottom line is that we already know what works, and what works isn’t radical. What’s radical is backing an entirely new solution with little experience behind it just because it’s in harmony with the bankrupt neo-liberal economic theory that led us into the Great Recession, and that continues to keep us mired in it, with its renewed emphasis on deficit neutrality and Hooverism. That radicalism is leading to the total transformation of American Society into a Plutocracy with an impotent and much shrunken middle class providing welfare for both the rich and the poor under a crushing tax burden.